First, this came about from the following Facebook comment:
“Suppose your uncle tells you God is real because he saw Him in a vision. Your cousin tells you heaven is real because he saw it during a near-death experience. Should you accept these as real? Yes, personal experiences can hold profound truth. While we can’t all embark on a shared journey to see God or heaven, these experiences offer a personal form of evidence. Just because they aren’t publicly verifiable doesn’t mean they lack validity.”
My Answer:
If someone has a personal spiritual experience, then that experience is real to them as an experience. But that is not the same thing as saying the object of the experience has been established as empirically real.
Empirical claims about the material world require public evidence. They must be testable, falsifiable, or at least open to shared verification. A private vision, near-death experience, or inner revelation may be deeply meaningful, life-changing, and worthy of respect, but it does not by itself establish a public truth claim about reality.
In TST terms, this is where truth and belief must be kept separate. A person may reasonably treat such an experience as part of their personal worldview, but others are not warranted in accepting it as an empirical fact without stronger evidence. That does not make the experience worthless. It means its role is personal, existential, or spiritual rather than publicly verified.
Our ideas about the material world are either empirical, rational, or irrational. Empirical ideas are tested against reality. Rational ideas are judged by logic and coherence. Irrational ideas include fiction, disproven beliefs, and speculative ideas that have not yet earned stronger standing. Personal spiritual experiences usually belong in that third category unless and until they become publicly testable in some way.
So yes, people can believe in their personal spiritual experiences. They may even build a meaningful life around them. But from an epistemological standpoint, private experience alone does not establish empirical truth.
