God and Schizophrenia

Question from David:
What is the general consensus amongst atheists about the experiences of schizophrenics? Perhaps this is a naive question but bear with me.

I am referring particularly to the profoundly spiritual aspects of the experiences often had by schizophrenics, particularly in regards the feeling of depersonalisation and spiritual isolation and/or feeling of connection and closeness to God and depth of these experiences. This is often the case with people who have previously been complete atheists. I thought this type of spiritual conversion process might well be of interest, especially because it is considered a psychological/ physiological issue.

Any replies or insights would be helpful.

Answer by SmartLX:
Many Christians, especially those belonging to charismatic churches which celebrate, encourage and actively seek dramatic personal experiences of God or Jesus, will tell non-believers the stories of their own experiences because they think it’s the best way to convert them. This is because a perceived personal encounter with a deity can be so convincing that it makes people forget how much less convincing it is to hear others testify about the same thing. It’s a lot easier to suspect that another person is either lying or wrong about such a thing than to suspect your own senses.

Schizophrenics have it tougher than the rest of us in this respect. The condition produces aural and/or visual hallucinations which seem to the sufferer to be unambiguously real. In many cases they can be demonstrated not to be, but hallucinations people keep to themselves may never even be questioned. If I saw God in a full-blown ecstatic delusion, and didn’t know I was delusional, as far as I was concerned I’d have really seen God and I might not question it until I was diagnosed with a mental illness…maybe not even then.

So what do the intense experiences of schizophrenics and victims of other mental maladies tell the rest of us about ourselves? That our brains, though incredible, are fallible and susceptible things. We have a hard enough time sorting lies and falsehoods from truth and facts at the best of times; any impairment to our own faculties might make the task impossible. (That includes temporary impairment: intoxication, sleep deprivation, migraines, you name it.) We ourselves are among the things we must question in order to improve our understanding of reality.