I have mentioned before neurosurgeon Eben Alexander's best selling book Proof of Heaven, in which he recounts what he believes to be an experience of heaven.  I commented that whatever we may think of the facticity of Alexander's vision, we can nonetheless take away that despite any protestations to the contrary, we live in a universe whose deepest dimensions we will never, in this life, fully understand.  It's very difficult to reduce everything to chemicals and neurons.
     Competing for a place on the best seller list is another book about an experience of heaven, a book that has been made into a movie, Heaven is for Real.  It's a father's retelling of his three year old son's vision of what he believed to be heaven while he was having an emergency appendectomy.  While most of us might tend to believe Eben Alexander's vision more than that of a three year old boy, we must acknowledge that both people are, as far as we know, rational, likely as rational as you and me.  We may not believe their accounts, but we cannot deny that they experienced them.
     Does this make their accounts valid?  Not necessarily.  But it should serve to remind us that even if we reject or have no use for religion, we should recognize that many of our fellow human beings have experiences which they cannot explain using the things of this world.  Granted, sometimes these experiences are induced or shaped by prior belief, but as William James pointed out long ago, sometimes they occur in the absence of such things and, most importantly, prove to be life changing for those who experience them.
     Religion as dogma means little unless religious experience validates it.  Faith's truest test is in the road its adherents take.