The Subconscious Mind and the Intuitive Perception of God – An LDS Analysis of William James’s Incubation Theory of Conversion

Many a polemic atheist has tried to discount the validity of religious belief by dismissing it as a psychological aberration. Some pundits, such as Bill Maher, have gone as far as to say that it is a “neurological disorder.” Religious experience, in the mind of many atheists, is explainable by psychology, and is thus invalid. It is true that many – if not all – spiritual experiences have directly related physical and psychological mechanisms. A general rule of the sciences however, is that “correlation does not imply causation.” Because a spiritual experience has a physical parallel, does that necessarily dismiss the spirituality of it? Associations are not underpinnings. The design is not the designer. In philosophical terms, we would call this a “genetic fallacy.” It is illogical to conclude falsity on the grounds of something’s origin.
If God is the designer of all, then could He not create man’s body in such a way as to make it accessible to things of the spirit? Indeed, many have argued from a teleological standpoint that those physical processes are only further proof of an intelligent designer. The scientific mindset admits of an observable order in the universe. The religious mindset affirms the same and adds that there is also an unseen order. William James argues that the two orders are not necessarily divisible from one another (The Varieties of Religious Experience, Lecture III). Conversion, he argues, has many traceable, related, psychological processes, but that these processes do not dismiss the possibility of Divine involvement. Read more...

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