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Originally Posted by SATCHMO
How does one explain a religous experience,(of which I've had a few), on a psychological or metaphysical level?
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No disrespect and I hope I don't offend you, but I believe a lot of religious experiences are basically caused by suggestion, placebo effects and the like.
Imagine if you had a lot of people on a plane and suddenly, someone there had contagious meningitis which potentially puts everyone on the plane in mortal danger. It's not sure how many are contaminated and everyone has to be put in quarantine and thoroughly checked before they are let out of the plane.
In that situation, it's easy to imagine that many people who are not sick would not feel so well and perhaps have imaginary meningitis symptoms. It could be caused by mass hysteria, sugggestion (you look kinda pale) or even a kind of placebo-effect - you feel sick because you think you are sick.
People are affected by other people, we're good at sniffing up on eachothers vibes and I think when people collectively feel God's presence in a church, I think it's basically working by the same psychological mechanisms. For some reason, speaking in tongues is a lot more common when you have gatherings.
Religious experiences being caused by something in the mind of people themselves rather than something external also helps explain why long term sufferers of drug addiction are often more likely to have religious experiences than the average joe from the same society. You could explain that Jesus or God takes care of those who need it the most, but then you also have to ask yourself "doesn't God care if those who have it alright believe in him? Isn't he willing to make the same effort and appear for them like he does for the less fortunate?" You can probably come up with more questions and many will likely be hard to answer from a theological perspective, but yet quite simple from a purely psychological perspective.