As I've said before, I don't think I ever actually believed in God, so becoming an atheist wasn't hard to do.

A lot of people remain steadfast in a belief in God even if, logically, they know it makes no sense.  They call it faith.

I call it brain chemistry.

I've felt it.  It feels to me like my head is on fire and flames are coming up through the top of my head.  But it's not burning hurting flames, it's sort of hair-raising, it's accompanied by a feeling of excitement and momentousness.  It's sort of like falling in love, but different, in that there's no human object of the love, it's just an excited, alive, singing with the universe feeling.  It can stay for a few moments or last for days.

I never assumed it was God.  But I can imagine if you believe in God and can't imagine that your senses will fool you,  that this would be the feeling of being touched by God or spoken to by God.  Intensified or prolonged, it would be a vision, a revelation. 

Maybe the fact that I learned how to go on an LSD trip without LSD (after having taken it a few times) makes me a bit more accepting of the idea that the brain has the power to do almost whatever it wants in changing your perceptions.  Or maybe more precisely, that the brain is your perceptions, and it doesn't follow the straight-line Euclidean universe we might think it does.

It seems many atheists avoid discussing this.  The social forces that impel one to claim religious belief are always covered.  The logical errors in supposed proofs of God's existence are well-cataloged.  The suggestion that we need religion to behave is easily refuted.

But this one thing that impels people to say, "I believe, because I feel it"?  Not so much.   Because it's hard to argue that someone's feelings aren't real.  It's just your brain making a happy, really.  But we normally don't have PET scans sitting around to check, so in most cases there's no proof it's a physical brain phenomenon.  Even when there is, believers can just say it's proof of God because God made this happen.

Some few atheists mock it.  They approach it as if it were a disease, or an anomaly.  But it might be better to think of it as like an optical illusion.  The way our brains are built, we cannot help having this kind of experience, given the right cues, just like we can't help thinking that these lines are not parallel or squares A and B here are not the same shade of grey.

God is a trick?  Religious feeling is a trick?  Not exactly.  What is happening is real.  But the interpretation is the trick.  There's some small nugget of truth in the idea that God reveals himself to different people in different ways.  The details are different, the aims and precepts of the religions are different, but the feeling is the same.  This thing happens in every culture, and to anyone who tries hard enough and gets in the right mindspace, which, surprise surprise, is in places that are big, where people are repeating monotonous phrases, where there are flickering lights, where you're encouraged to think about things bigger than yourself, and unity, and infinity, and love or some other strong emotion.  It's just that there's no God behind it. 

There's a book newly out called The Third Man Factor, about how people in extremis not uncommonly believe there is another person there with them, helping them, guiding them.  Like a guardian angel.  Or maybe a brain activity, huh?

I haven't read the book, but, from a Wall Street Journal review:

Ron DiFrancesco, the 9/11 survivor who walked out of the South Tower, is convinced that a divine being was by his side, and indeed a spiritual interpretation is common.  Scientists, by contrast, have discovered how to evoke the sensation of a shared ­presence by stimulating the brain with ­electricity.

You know where my vote goes.