How do we test personal experience?  This was the question we discussed at the monthly meeting of my atheist discussion group last night.  The speaker with whose words we began stated that although we cannot deny that a person has had an experience which she considers to be religious, difficulties arise when a person outside the faith tries to determine one, the actual content of the experience, and two, whether it actually reflects material foundation.
     The speaker also pointed out that we all bring baggage to our interpretations of events.  No one, he noted, is a totally impartial observer of thought or behavior.  For this reason, he suggested that we should only interpret personal religious experience through the lens of the scientific method, the approach he considers to be the most free from personal bias.
     Unfortunately, though I readily applaud the usefulness of the scientific method, I also say that to elevate it above all other hermeneutical possibilities and insist that it is wholly impartial is to commit the same error of presuppositional baggage of which its user is accusing others of doing.  To be fully fair to all the evidence, the scientific method must understand that although examining subjective experience is problematic, it must nonetheless consider William James's (who did not invest in an orthodox approach to faith) long ago observation that at the heart of religious experience is "something more."
     Like every other hermeneutic, the scientific method must also think outside the box. If the supernatural indeed exists, surely we can find, eyes wide open, evidences for it. Billions of people around the world cannot all share the same illusion.