*sigh* Arouet i would have to type SO much to even begin to answer your question.
I'm not sure where to start.
Have you ever read
this book? FWIW it only touches on the topic, but a knowledge of that essay is still essential to understand the nature of the concept.
In a crude nutshell negating the need to tell you my life story, I have experienced direct correlations between inner spiritual experiences and outer solid reality, and although the former can be explained by brain activity, the latter cannot.
I also don't believe that the brain being found to have created something automatically or in any way at all contradicts the spiritual reality of that thing. We are spiritual beings, our brain is serving a purpose in that respect. It is a very narrow and unenlightened view to draw a thick black line between the two imo.
Also I have never had a direct and unambiguous revelation of God in the manner described above, I have had other experiences which leave me personally with no real doubt that there is a reality behind the word "God", perhaps different to mainstream conceptions, but none of direct revelation of God, in the manner that I am aware others have had. My direct revelations and experiences have all been firmly spiritual in nature, but not directly and unambiguously of God or a god, as such.
It is nigh on impossible to put these things into words though, so I don't imagine that helped much.
The most powerful thing I can say to you is this and this alone: if you ever experience a "revelation", mystical transmission, whatever you want to call it, you will then have a perspective on the matter. Before I experienced these things myself my mind was
literally incapable of conceiving of the nature of these experiences, as is the mind of anybody who has never experienced them, such is the extra dimension of consciousness they bring.
The idea that a person could ever gain any sort of insight into the mystical experience by reading a scientific journal or setting up a controlled experiment to monitor brain waves is so ludicrously pointless and laughable it genuinely pains me to think there are ppl out there who put stock in it.
I was born and raised devout thoroughbred secular atheist with no exposure to spirituality or religion whatsoever at any point, I could not have given two hoots or two seconds of my attention to it all, it simply did not show up on my radar, and had I never experienced the things I have, I would still be that way. At the risk of sounding incredibly bold, that is all that seperates me from the next guy who thinks it's all a load of ballz.