It seems reasonable to be extra sceptical towards evidence that is obtained when your evidence-evaluating-engine is distorted and extremely sceptical toward evidence which can only be obtained in such state.
Experiencing divine grace under lsd is as much evidence in favour of god actually existing as witnessing psychic with an earphone telling you the details of your life is an evidence in favour of telepathy. Both performances can be impressive, but the design of the experiments is completely flawed.
I expect rationality adjacent people to understand it. And if they nevertheless change their mind on the subject of religion, this seems mildly disturbing.
Of course it can be completely harmless things. For instance, some people couldn’t have imagined how anyone can be religious, then took some psychedelics and understood the idea of religious experience in principle, which technically made them more religious than they used to be. But I suspect it can be much more dramatic than that. I wish we had more information about such matters.
It also depends on how one defines “religious”. A commonly used definition, which seems to be same as the one you’re using, is something like “believes in the objective existence of supernatural entities”. But while that may be a reasonable description for many of the Abrahamic religions in particular, it’s not a universal part of all religions, nor does it even accurately describe the psychology of many followers of those religions (even if it does describe the psychology of some).
For instance, someone might get a feeling of all experience being sacred and beautiful in some sense, in a way that is not strictly incompatible with traditional atheism (as it implies no difference in factual beliefs, at least not beliefs with regard to what actually exists or not), but nonetheless feels so different to them than what they had previously associated with atheism that it feels more right to identify as being spiritual from that moment on.
Or psychedelics might unlock intuitive access to phenomena which have traditionally been associated with religion, e.g. experiences of energies or seeing auras, that can be non-supernaturally interpreted as a native way for the brain to represent subconscious judgments of the emotional states of self and others. Those kinds of things are currently mostly discussed in the context of religion/spiritual practices, in which case one might describe themselves as “becoming religious” if they then start practicing systems for making use of that information that have been developed in the context of specific religions—which again doesn’t require belief in anything supernatural.
Or if one starts more strongly intuitively picking up on other people’s emotional states, perceiving states and moods most strongly associated with people e.g. causing each other to get upset in certain predictable and repeatable patterns (e.g. the same arguments playing out over and over between the same people) can cause one to perceive those people as being “possessed by demons”, “demons” the being particular patterns of noise / maladaptive emotional schemas that drive such behavior. And so on.
It’s certainly true that simply having an experience while on psychedelics doesn’t prove anything; however if being on psychedelics gives you access to a recurring experience that you can afterwards try to empirically test and see whether its predictions are valid, that may be a different matter.
Completely agree! Such possible explanations are the reason why I’m only mildly worried about psychedelic values drift. Cautious curiosity still seems to be the reasonable response.
It seems reasonable to be extra sceptical towards evidence that is obtained when your evidence-evaluating-engine is distorted and extremely sceptical toward evidence which can only be obtained in such state.
Experiencing divine grace under lsd is as much evidence in favour of god actually existing as witnessing psychic with an earphone telling you the details of your life is an evidence in favour of telepathy. Both performances can be impressive, but the design of the experiments is completely flawed.
I expect rationality adjacent people to understand it. And if they nevertheless change their mind on the subject of religion, this seems mildly disturbing.
Of course it can be completely harmless things. For instance, some people couldn’t have imagined how anyone can be religious, then took some psychedelics and understood the idea of religious experience in principle, which technically made them more religious than they used to be. But I suspect it can be much more dramatic than that. I wish we had more information about such matters.
It also depends on how one defines “religious”. A commonly used definition, which seems to be same as the one you’re using, is something like “believes in the objective existence of supernatural entities”. But while that may be a reasonable description for many of the Abrahamic religions in particular, it’s not a universal part of all religions, nor does it even accurately describe the psychology of many followers of those religions (even if it does describe the psychology of some).
For instance, someone might get a feeling of all experience being sacred and beautiful in some sense, in a way that is not strictly incompatible with traditional atheism (as it implies no difference in factual beliefs, at least not beliefs with regard to what actually exists or not), but nonetheless feels so different to them than what they had previously associated with atheism that it feels more right to identify as being spiritual from that moment on.
Or psychedelics might unlock intuitive access to phenomena which have traditionally been associated with religion, e.g. experiences of energies or seeing auras, that can be non-supernaturally interpreted as a native way for the brain to represent subconscious judgments of the emotional states of self and others. Those kinds of things are currently mostly discussed in the context of religion/spiritual practices, in which case one might describe themselves as “becoming religious” if they then start practicing systems for making use of that information that have been developed in the context of specific religions—which again doesn’t require belief in anything supernatural.
Or if one starts more strongly intuitively picking up on other people’s emotional states, perceiving states and moods most strongly associated with people e.g. causing each other to get upset in certain predictable and repeatable patterns (e.g. the same arguments playing out over and over between the same people) can cause one to perceive those people as being “possessed by demons”, “demons” the being particular patterns of noise / maladaptive emotional schemas that drive such behavior. And so on.
It’s certainly true that simply having an experience while on psychedelics doesn’t prove anything; however if being on psychedelics gives you access to a recurring experience that you can afterwards try to empirically test and see whether its predictions are valid, that may be a different matter.
Completely agree! Such possible explanations are the reason why I’m only mildly worried about psychedelic values drift. Cautious curiosity still seems to be the reasonable response.