What's the appropriate explanation for the supernatural (holy spirit, miracles, etc.) if there's no god?
Maybe it's too much to say people who experienced this stuff are delusional? I know a lot of them personally and they live a normal life, but they keep saying testimonies about holy experience, that God talks to them etc.
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What miracles? What supernatural?
These are all things we don't understand. They literally mean we don't know how or why things happened the way they did. You can't use "I don't know" to claim you therefore know the answer.
When someone claims a god is responsible, the only appropriate response is "how do you know that?" When the answer comes back "what else could it be?" I respond with "literally anything else." They must still meet their burden of proof before they can claim victory for their answer.
Why do you believe that your account should be preferred over theirs?
I don't have an account. I simply don't believe theirs. You can't use "I don't know" to then say "therefore this is the answer."
When something happens, people try to explain it. So when someone has a religious experience, feels the presence of the holy spirit, talks to god or something like that, I see no reason for that person to say this is just a delusion, as opposed to interpreting this experience religiously. I would not. And I think you would not either, but who knows.
That's because we're conditioned to turn to religious explanations when we don't understand, and that's fallacious thinking. It's called the argument from ignorance.
At no point at any time in all of history has a religious answer to physical phenomenon been validated as the correct answer. It has been accepted as the default assumption because of the dominance of religion in society, but that doesn't make the answer true. No answer is true just because it's popular or traditional.
But I am talking about religious experiences specifically, not physical phenomena.
Also, you seem to think that when society was more religious people had beliefs about physics that were informed exclusively by religion, but this is not the case. Greek tradition of philosophy has been inherited by Christianity (which has elements of both Greek rationality and Jewish mysticism), and in the middle ages physics and other sciences were rooted in Aristotle.
But that is hardly relevant. As I said, I am talking about religious experiences, not explanations of natural phenomena.
How is a religious experience not a physical phenomenon? Define it for me, please, with sources where possible. How did you eliminate brain activity, such as with the god helmet?
The Greek tradition of physics that Christianity adopted was established by Aristotle, not Epicurus. If they'd chosen to follow the evidence instead of inference, the world would look very different today. You can't think anything into existence the way Aristotle proposed. He had good ideas, but his approach to physics was completely wrong.
I did say that Aristotle was a major inspiration.
You can't think anything into existence the way Aristotle proposed.
I am not sure what you mean by this. I have not found that in Aristotle and it is hard to imagine someone from that time saying this, seems very uncharacteristic. Feel free to clarify what you meant.
What "evidence" are you speaking of? The experimental method was not employed by anyone then, philosophy is a speculative endeavour. There were arguments, however, and saying that Plato, Aristotle, or any other non radical materialist is somehow intellectually deficient simply shows a lack of familiarity with antique philosophy.
Also, materialism is about as metaphysical as it gets.
I am not sure you noticed, but no pre-modern physical ideas are currently employed, whether Epicurean or Aristotelian.
While I disagree woth you on everything you said with regards to philosophy, I will grant you thatyou are correct and a religious experience is in a sense, a natural phenomenon. I will add, however, that while it is possible to deny the spiritual nature of such an experience(which I mentioned), it is, philosophically speaking, possible to deny any proposition, so this alone is not a refutation.
Much of the church's insistence that there has to be a god to explain things is based on Aristotle. He gave them the tools to construct logical constructs in which faulty assumptions about reality are used to say "I want there to be a god, therefore this thought process is all the proof I need." For example, Aquinas' "Five Ways" are a classic demonstration of how to misuse Aristotlean physics to justify belief in a god.
I'm definitely not going to debate philosophy with you. It's a waste of time.
I will continue to challenge the validity of spiritual thinking until such time as anyone can objectively demonstrate the existence of anything spiritual. I will follow the evidence, and complaints about how evidence doesn't allow for spiritual answers just reaffirm the conclusion that it's not based on reality. It's just an irrational perspective with no basis beyond wishful or magical thinking.
You can try to challenge spiritual thinking all you want, but you have not provided any arguments against it yet.
If you don't want to debate philosophy, it is fine. I can't say I agree with your understanding of historical philosophers in any case, and it does eem rather pointless.
Philosophy is always based on assumptions, just because people had different assumptions and intuitions in the past, doesn't mean they are intellectually deficient in any way. If you think your intuitions are definitively true, or that you do not assume anything at all, debating or, possibly, reading philosophy might not be so pointless as you think.