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Leaving aside evidence based cases in which a decision is made to convert to Christianity, what do you suppose is happening, neurologically, when "the Holy Spir

Leaving aside evidence based cases in which a decision is made to convert to Christianity, what do you suppose is happening, neurologically, when "the Holy Spirit reveals to each believer that the Scriptures are the word of God" i.e. the case of spontaneous, enlightened conversion? Consider the case when a human sponteneously converts to a non-Christian belief system. If the neurological correlates of that case could be shown to align with the Christian case, what might that tell us about religiosity?

pmdulaney 6y ago
I don't believe conversion occurs in an epistemological vacuum. You need to have some exposure to the assertions and content of the gospel message. But I do believe that there is divine communication to the mind of the believer which is unrelated to sense data. Your suggestion, I suppose, is that if the "neurological correlates" of converting to a non-Christian religion are indistinguishable from those associated with conversion to Christianity, then there is no reason based on scientific data to give Christianity a privileged position relative to other religious (or non-religious) belief systems. Christianity and what I might call "scientism" are both in my view internally consistent systems. From the secular viewpoint the Christian view of reality is akin to explaining that airplanes fly because angels hold up their wings. If God really exists and if He is determined that people enter into a personal relationship with him not by sense data evidence but rather through faith and, as I claim, divine personal revelation, then no amount of sense data or lack of it, or scientific data or lack of it, can be a cogent argument against His existence or of believers' relationship with Him. It is, then, neither provable or falsifiable. And yet, according to Romans 1, unbelieving man has some knowledge of God -- knowledge which he suppresses and knowledge that makes him culpable if he ultimately does reject God.

pmdulaney 6y ago

I don't believe conversion occurs in an epistemological vacuum. You need to have some exposure to the assertions and content of the gospel message. But I do believe that there is divine communication to the mind of the believer which is unrelated to sense data. Your suggestion, I suppose, is that if the "neurological correlates" of converting to a non-Christian religion are indistinguishable from those associated with conversion to Christianity, then there is no reason based on scientific data to give Christianity a privileged position relative to other religious (or non-religious) belief systems. Christianity and what I might call "scientism" are both in my view internally consistent systems. From the secular viewpoint the Christian view of reality is akin to explaining that airplanes fly because angels hold up their wings. If God really exists and if He is determined that people enter into a personal relationship with him not by sense data evidence but rather through faith and, as I claim, divine personal revelation, then no amount of sense data or lack of it, or scientific data or lack of it, can be a cogent argument against His existence or of believers' relationship with Him. It is, then, neither provable or falsifiable. And yet, according to Romans 1, unbelieving man has some knowledge of God -- knowledge which he suppresses and knowledge that makes him culpable if he ultimately does reject God.