Reddit reviews The Question of God: C.S. Lewis and Sigmund Freud Debate God, Love, Sex, and the Meaning of Life

> It's possible that schizophrenic people are being haunted by demons, that are actually real but only visible to them. However, we found that this was a trick in the brain caused by chemical imbalance, and we found that administering treatments that would fix this chemical imbalance would end the hallucinations.

In The Question of God the author (a psychology professor at Harvard) rejects this explanation. He says that these kind of things are associated with the inability to maintain regular self care, keep jobs and relationships. And though there are Christian who suffer from schizophrenia and the sorts of brain dysfunctions you are describing it is not more common than the general population. And Christian churches are filled with people who can take care of their lives at least as well as others (and though I don't have the data to back it up would be willing to bet that there is a positive correlation between regular church attendance and most positive life outcomes).

>Yes, you would need to explain the extraordinary event. If nobody can find proof that what you claim actually happened, then there's a great risk to an outsider that you may have been hallucinating, dreaming, or worse, lying.

That's the thing, no I don't need to explain the extraordinary event. I experienced it and don't need to prove it to anyone. A while back I was on this subreddit talking about the practices of the American Indian religion. I know about them because my brother follows their religion. Someone said they didn't believe me about their practices. The user did a google search and since they couldn't find anything decided that I was wrong. While I do not blame the person for being skeptical they insisted that I was actually wrong to believe what I knew since I couldn't prove it to them. There is a degree of ridiclousness in the skeptical circle which thinks that if you can't believe something that I shouldn't be able to believe it either.

And yeah to an outsider who doesn't know me they might conclude I am "hallucinating, dreaming, or worse, lying" but that is unavoidable. I am sure if you spent a year working with me as a coworker none of those would be reasonable conclusions.

Did you check out The Question of God: C.S. Lewis and Sigmund Freud Debate God, Love, Sex, and the Meaning of Life It is an excellent read.

They went for walks at Oxford or Cambridge. On vacation atm and can't look up the details, but this book is where I read up on it: https://www.amazon.com/Question-God-Sigmund-Debate-Meaning/dp/074324785X