Well, as best I can tell my maintainer didn’t install the religion patch, so all I’m working with is the testaments of others; but I have seen quite a variety of such testaments. Buddhism and Hinduism have a typology of religious experience much more complex than anything I’ve seen systematically laid down in mainline Christianity; it’s usually expressed in terms unique to the Dharmic religions, but vipassanā for example certainly seems to qualify as an experiential pointer to Buddhist ontology.
If you’d prefer Western traditions, a phrase I’ve heard kicked around in the neopagan, reconstructionist, and ceremonial magic communities is “unsubstantiated personal gnosis”. While that’s a rather flippant way of putting it, it also seems to point to something similar to your experiences.
Careful, you may end up like Draco in HPMoR chapter 23, without a way to gom jabbar the guilty parties (sorry about the formatting):
“You should have warned me,” Draco said. His voice rose. “You should have warned me!”
“I… I did… every time I told you about the power, I told you about the price. I said, you have to admit you’re wrong. I said this would be the hardest path for you. That this was the sacrifice anyone had to make to become a scientist. I said, what if the experiment says one thing and your family and friends say another—”
“You call that a warning?” Draco was screaming now. “You call that a warning? When we’re doing a ritual that calls for a permanent sacrifice?”
“I… I...” The boy on the floor swallowed. “I guess maybe it wasn’t clear. I’m sorry. But that which can be destroyed by the truth should be.”
Nah, false beliefs are worthless. That which is true is already so; owning up to it doesn’t make it worse. If I turned out to actually be wrong—well, I have experience being wrong about religion. I’d probably react just like I did before.
Do they actually exist?
Well, as best I can tell my maintainer didn’t install the religion patch, so all I’m working with is the testaments of others; but I have seen quite a variety of such testaments. Buddhism and Hinduism have a typology of religious experience much more complex than anything I’ve seen systematically laid down in mainline Christianity; it’s usually expressed in terms unique to the Dharmic religions, but vipassanā for example certainly seems to qualify as an experiential pointer to Buddhist ontology.
If you’d prefer Western traditions, a phrase I’ve heard kicked around in the neopagan, reconstructionist, and ceremonial magic communities is “unsubstantiated personal gnosis”. While that’s a rather flippant way of putting it, it also seems to point to something similar to your experiences.
Huh, interesting. I should study that in more depth, then.
Careful, you may end up like Draco in HPMoR chapter 23, without a way to gom jabbar the guilty parties (sorry about the formatting):
Nah, false beliefs are worthless. That which is true is already so; owning up to it doesn’t make it worse. If I turned out to actually be wrong—well, I have experience being wrong about religion. I’d probably react just like I did before.
Feel free to elaborate or link if you have talked about it before.
I used to be an atheist before realizing that was incorrect. I wasn’t upset about that; I had been wrong, I stopped being wrong. Is that enough?
Intriguing. I wonder what made you see the light.
Sure. Pick a religion.