Religious experiences are real and certain, even if God isn’t. Part 3: We accept that we’ve lost our former foundation stone but also accept that we have sufficient grounds to justify our leap up to reach God
See how we have by-passed the moment of conflict, doubt and possible rejection of faith – by both believers and atheists. Before, because there was no proof that God existed or that he was the cause of my religious experiences there was an impulse to abandon faith or never take it up and be an atheist. Now, our focus on the value of our religious experiences as supremely precious, enables us to make the personal judgement and faith commitment: whoever, wherever they come, whatever is their cause, I take them to my heart as the bedrock of my life.
Very importantly – and surely this is a “big clue” as to the reality of God -is that the content of our religious experiences is exactly what traditional believers say God is like. When I was a boy I was told that this peculiar invisible person exists who is overwhelming love. Then when I “met God” by having my first religious experience, it was an experience of overwhelming love. I put 2 and 2 together and concluded that what I had been told as a boy was right after all.
Perhaps counter-intuitively, but increasingly important for me: it makes no difference in practice whether God is real or just something I believe in, as, in practice, the effect is the same.
Now I must be careful. I’m not saying that it’s OK to believe there are fairies at the bottom of the garden if that gave people pleasure – even though there are no fairies. Our belief in God is not like that. The experience of transcendent love, joy and peace, which we are capable of receiving and which countless people through the ages have attributed to God, is an undoubted reality.
Provided I feel within myself that there is a reasonable probability that this experience of the transcendent comes from God – and I regard that as entirely reasonable – then I am fine
In effect, I have redefined God, so that when I say the word “God” I mean: “the experience of transcendent love, joy and peace that comes to me in personal terms from a person who is the mysterious stranger, I know not whom, but he loves me”. I know that God understood as that is definitely real. I am happy in my own faith, to believe that this mysterious stranger is the traditional God of Christianity. It’s just that I have to be agnostic about the existence of God understood in that traditional way, but I can be certain that God as the mysterious giver of transcendent love exists – because I receive those gifts of transcendent love.
Spiritual Devotion 