John Derbyshire on the end of faith

What turns a Christian into a Mysterian? A shred of an answer:

Q. Have you ever had a religious experience?

A. No. I’m a bit miffed about this. I’ve read some of the literature on religious experiences, and they aren’t particularly uncommon. One informal study, by the BBC religious-affairs unit, found that a quarter of people reported some such thing. I don’t know why I’ve been left out.

I haven’t really tried very hard, never practiced meditation or anything like that; but then, neither did most of the people making those reports. In fact, you don’t even have to be religious to have a religious experience, though I’d guess that a really intense cultivation of your religious module must help some. William Blake seems to have had at least one religious experience per diem, yet he wasn’t religious at all in any conventional sense, certainly not any kind of orthodox Christian.

There's more, much more, and it's all mildly self-deprecating, honest, and interesting reading.

[See on Pseudo-Polymath]