This is going to be a long one.
First, I do think Keith is smart. He is insightful and can reference experiences from many points in his life. That is useful. I get the feeling Craig dismisses this type of intelligence. I laughed when Craig referenced, "Oh what a tangled web we weave..." and Keith followed up with his version of, "When first we practice to deceive." I laughed at the attempt, but it was totally left unacknowledged. I think the farts confuse people.
But I think Keith is right about something: Topographic Agnosia. I've sat on this for a while, thinking somebody on air is bound to talk about it. There are conditions where people struggle with direction and/or orientation. (And didn't everybody learn the cross? North, South, East, West? [Father, Son, Holy Ghost]. What is this North East South West nonsense?) Here's a
link on topographical disorientation.
There are lots of people who can't make sense of direction. And they're not making it up! I'm not a professional, so I can't make a diagnosis, but I believe Keith falls somewhere on this spectrum. It just happens to be a fun fact of the brain; sometimes, it likes to screw people. I think the test for Keith is whether or not he feels anxiety with directions or maps.
I have face blindness (prosopagnosia) where I don't recognize people's faces. This caused a lot of social anxiety for the longest time. It still does. Every time I go into public, I get anxiety about whether or not I'm supposed to know who somebody is when I'm in a public place. Frequent exposure to something regularly burns it more into my memory, so it's not like I never remember anybody. Just as frequently traveling the streets would get someone used to the directionality of their movement.
Next, OMG! I've had "demons" in my sleep too. It's called sleep paralysis, and I've dealt with it since I was a kid. It's a situation where you're kind of awake, but your body thinks it's asleep, so you can't move. This is terrifying. It often manifests in feelings of dread and thinking you can see figures moving about in your actual space. I specifically remember a situation where I thought I saw two red eyes coming closer to me. I couldn't move. I told my mother years later, and her response was, "Oh, that must be when the devil got you." I'm gay and was aghast that this person thought there was a physical thing that made me gay. I've never been religious and never believed any of that.
It still happens today.
The problem with this conversation is disregarding the things people say they experience. I experience this frequently, as do millions of others. To brush it off as you do, as simply "justification," is erasing the actual experience. I can 100% see how someone with sleep paralysis can link it to religious experiences. It makes sense, but it also makes me wonder what came first: the sleep paralysis or the religion. Are concepts of "the devil" actually just things people have experienced and had no explanation for?
No amount of knowing what this actually is prevents it from being terrifying every time it happens. I sleep with a red light on so that I have some room illumination. It will happen if the room is completely dark, and I have gotten to the point where I shout out in my sleep. So much so that one time, someone else in the dorm I lived in knocked on my door to ask if I was okay.
I'm not saying you have to believe what someone is saying they saw in their dreams. Interpretations get whacky depending on where you're coming from. This is something that people legitimately experience, though.