Dan Barker on The argument from religious experience

Dan Barker's critique of the argument from religious experience is particularly potent because he once had those experiences himself. As a Pentecostal-leaning evangelical, he experienced speaking in tongues, feelings of divine presence, and moments of overwhelming spiritual conviction. These experiences were real and profound — and, he now believes, entirely natural in origin.

Barker argues that his deconversion did not come from doubting the reality of his experiences but from realising that the experiences did not prove what he thought they proved. People of every religion have identical experiences — Muslims, Hindus, Mormons, and practitioners of religions now extinct all reported powerful encounters with their particular deities. If religious experience were evidence for the truth of a religion, all religions would be equally confirmed — which means none of them are.

He connects this to the broader epistemological point that the feeling of certainty is not the same as certainty itself. The human brain is capable of generating states of overwhelming conviction under the right conditions — emotional music, group worship, fasting, sleep deprivation — and these states feel like encounters with ultimate reality. But feeling certain is a psychological state, not an epistemic achievement.