While maintaining the caveat that one must entertain the possibility that various alleged experiences are bogus, but continuing to assume the good faith of those who claim to have them, one still must ask how they can best be explained. Divine existence is not necessarily the simplest available interpretation and/or explanation of the events under discussion. Thus, again, the case is not made.
The only problem with taking "encounter" events to be transparent is that, like all events, they require interpretation. Given that every event can be explicated in more than one way, one has to decide which way to interpret any particular event.
St. Theresa of Avila and others have seen this clearly. Here are some responses that you might also have run across.
- Religious believers have made those sorts of objections to natural explanations for centuries. And in countless cases, after they've insisted that X cannot possibly be explained by science, people who are earnest, curious, thoughtful and who weren't willing to invoke God as soon as they encounter an intellectual challenge have come up with a correct, natural explanation of X.
- The historical factor represents a vital need, to which a wise economy must respond. Somehow the past must become vocal, and participate in the present. Complete assimilation to the object, therefore, encounters the protest of the suppressed minority, elements belonging to the past and existing from the beginning. From this quite general consideration it may be understood why it is that the unconscious claims of the extroverted type have an essentially primitive, infantile, and egoistical character. When Freud says that the unconscious is "only able to wish", this observation contains a large measure of truth for the unconscious of the extroverted type. Adjustment and assimilation to objective data prevent inadequate subjective impulses from reaching consciousness. These tendencies (thoughts, wishes, affects, needs, feelings, etc.) take on a regressive character corresponding with the degree of their repression, ie. the less they are recognised, the more infantile and archaic they become. The conscious attitude robs them of their relatively disposable energy charge, only leaving them the energy of which it cannot deprive them. This remainder, which still possesses a potency not to be under-estimated, can be described only as primeval instinct. Instinct can never be rooted out from an individual by any arbitrary measures; it requires the slow, organic transformation of many generations to effect a radical change, for instinct is the energetic [sic] expression of a definite organic foundation.
- Using a telescope generally much poorer than one might purchase in any retail store today, Galileo observed, recorded, and reported observations of the moon, Venus, Saturn, Jupiter, the Milky Way, star clusters, and many other things. His crude telescope kept him busy for years, providing him with evidence that the prevailing view of the time -- that the Earth was the centre of the entire cosmos -- was clearly and demonstrably wrong.
This raises the issue of whether rival interpretations and perspectives can be evaluated on any kind of objective grounds. This is a highly complicated matter, however, especially when the interpretive stance in question is very broad in scope.
Note, however, that any interpretation or belief can be maintained if one is willing to alter the rest of one's belief in order to accommodate it.
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