(August 19, 2015 at 1:34 am)robvalue Wrote: If God speak to them, clearly it won't tell them anything they don't already know. I've proved this point multiple times. I have an open challenge for any theist to tell me what four digit number I'm thinking of. God either can't or won't tell anyone this number, to provide some sort of vague evidence. Or if he has, the person hasn't dared to put forward the answer so they can't be confident in it.
This may be a time to address something I said in my OP, about me testing whether or not I was talking to god, because I'm a normal human being, who actually cared whether or not that I was talking to god. To the lurking theists, this isn't why I stopped believing in god, but something, on top of many many other tests I did, that gradually led to me realizing that I was talking to myself. It may sound stupid, but I try to lay out all my previous beliefs/actions out on here, so I can have constructive criticism, because I always try to learn by putting my beliefs out there, for people to question them, no matter how embarrassing they potentially are perceived.
Here's one little stupid experiment I did: I had thoughts that popped in my head that had absolutely no relevance to anything I was thinking about. These thoughts, at times, I thought had to have supernatural explanations. It really seemed as if I was getting information from an unknown source, which I believed to be a god, and that he was helping me out along my way (I of course, ignored all the information that didn't quite work out, and only noticed the information that helped me out). Anyways, I had a coin next to me in these conversations in which I felt I was having with god. The thoughts popped in my head so clearly, and definitely didn't seem to be my thoughts, they seemed that they just came to me from somewhere else. I decided while in this state, and in conversation with god, I'd flip the coin, and ask god what side it landed on. I did this multiple times, along with other testable experiments of that nature. The same thought (god's voice) popped in my head so clearly, that I still felt I was talking to god, but the thoughts/voices that I thought to be god's, actually turned out that I had to come to an honest conclusion, that it was just my thoughts. God got the coin tosses wrong at least 50% of the time. I then had other points where I thought I was talking to god randomly, and I tried it again. The same thoughts that would just pop in my head, turned out to be wrong. Sometimes they'd be right, but not always.
What do you know, I have the balls to be honest and say I was talking to myself for years, and I'm glad I don't do it anymore. I feel much more rational and skeptical than I used to be. However, I never actually realized this when I was a believer, I thought I was being rational, just like many other theists out there. Thankfully, there was some skepticism and logic in my brain, that I got out of that crazy habit of talking to my imaginary friend.
Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.' -Isaac Asimov-
