Stimulate some discussion on the relationship between serious delusional mental health issues and religious experiences. But you missed the point and I don't feel like having a discussion about it with you now.

And no, I did not miss your point.

However, if you wish to really discuss more of James' actual feelings about religion, fee free to do so.

“I speak not now of your ordinary religious believer, who follows the conventional observances of his country, whether it be Buddhist, Christian, or Mohammedan. His religion has been made for him by others, communicated to him by tradition, determined to fixed forms by imitation, and retained by habit. It would profit us little to study this second-hand religious life.”

He’s not talking about you or the millions of others who “have faith” in the religion they follow, he is talking about those few ( and he notes arguably nut jobs ) in history who believed they had a direct line to the divine. Of course he also wrote long before psychedelics made this sort of first hand experience readily available.

But the vast majority of any group of people are not the subject of his attention.

Psychedelics have always been with us.

Psychedelics and religious experiences western philosophy is recent.

1) discussing whether or not proof is needed of God's existence.
2) Whether or not religion plays any role at all in religious oppression (can't believe that's an actual debate, but it is), and
3) Meta-discussions about logical fallacies.

On the actual subject of James' writings, I read The Varieties of Religious Experience a long time ago and he introduced me to the idea that religion was a refuge and a treatment for mental illness and still is today. I think people who experience depression or hallucinations have found a way to deal with and find meaning in their sufferings through religion. I also think some of the ancient prophets may have been schizhophrenic, and the Psalmist was bipolar.

I think people still use religion this way today because modern psychiatry still can't cure many mentally ill people.

J

...the more they stay the same.

Anything to say about the excerpt I posted from Mr. James?

Mr. James did have some things to say about atheists as well as theists.

Understood.

1) Based on the presuppositions of James, was the vision in the woods Joseph Smith reported a religious experience, an hallucination caused by a psychological dysfunction, either chronic or temporary of the type caused by metabolic disturbance, or a figment of his over active imagination?
And 2) If we start by disregarding any notion that religion is a basis for neurological dysfunction, does it exist beyond the scope of the individual?
And 3) Is organized religion just another fraternity based on imaginings that once shared with another person are devoid of religiosity and therefore no longer meaningful as religious experiences?

I don’t know if James considered that aspect.

James treated religious experience phenomenologically, ignoring the question of whether they were physically real, only looking at the psychological aspects. I don't know what he thought of Joseph Smith, but he wrote about the "dark night of the soul," which he recognized as depression, and finding God at the end was the lifting of the depression. People who experience dark nights share their experience as a guide book to help others through their depression. I don't think organized religion is devoid of religiosity, but people who don't experience dark nights don't understand this part of the religious experience.