Dr. Richard Swinburne defines a religious experience as “an experience which seems to the subject to be an experience of God (either of his just being there, or doing or bringing about something) or of some other supernatural thing.”

[The Existence of God, 1991]

Millions of people, from all cultures, eras, and religious backgrounds, have claimed to have had experiences of the supernatural and the divine. I’m going flirt with an argumentum ad populum here, but personally I find it a bit smug when non-theists dismiss with such vast swaths of human experience and testimony. It smacks of a sort of late-modern Western triumphalism. “If only these poor savages knew the truth like we enlightened, rational westerners…”

Our kneejerk reaction to arguments from religious experience usually runs along the following lines: “Religious experiences are just psychological projections from the brain.”

Yet, to view religious experience as merely a psychological projection is not only reductive, it presupposes that the experiences are not genuine. See: Circular Reasoning.

Furthermore, to be able to explain what goes on during a religious experience in purely physicalist terms merely gives one a very consistent material Cosmology. The phenomena described could simply be the physical correlates of a spiritual reality, so there’s no contradiction there.

(Having a consistent material Cosmology also doesn’t do away with questions of Ontology, either.)

Once one leaves open the possibility for such experiences (and one does not need to be a Christian to do so), I really see no reason why skeptics, in the name of open mindedness and following the evidence where it leads, shouldn’t at least attempt prayer.

David Bentley Hart touches on this idea in an article addressing Daniel Dennett:

“If Dennett really wishes to undertake a scientific investigation of faith, he should promptly abandon his efforts to describe religion in the abstract and attempt instead to enter into the actual world of belief in order to weigh its claims from within. As a first step, he should certainly—purely in the interest of sound scientific method and empirical rigor—begin praying. This is a drastic and implausible prescription, no doubt, but it is the only means by which he could possibly begin to acquire any knowledge of what belief is or what it is not.”

And Hart opines elsewhere,

“If you would like evidence, there are evidentiary paths that all the great traditions recommend [ed.: speaking of Sikhism, Vedanta, Christianity, or otherwise]– paths of prayer, paths of devotion. If you want to know if the Living God is the Living God, look for him where he is said to be… but not elsewhere.”

“Look for him where he is said to be… but not elsewhere.” Sounds like a decent course of action to me.