Personal relationships with deities

[robvalue]

Sure, I know what you mean.

It's like I said in my reply to Atlas, god appears to be deliberately choosing extremely vague methods of communication which are indistinguishable from nothing particularly happening at all. I would have thought if anyone would be capable of clear, concise communication, it would be the very author of communication itself.

You're right, what people talk about as "god" would be in another reality. At best, we could conclude that "something" is trying to communicate with us. But since we have nothing to go on but the supposed messages, we have no idea what that something is. To conclude that it's the creator of our reality is premature; although even if it is, it could just be a computer programmer. Would people be so pleased with themselves if they thought this was who was on the other end?

Or it could be the equivalent of a crank call.

PS: people praying and then interpreting events as answers is like me continually sending letters to a celebrity, just assuming they are arriving and actually being read by that celebrity, and then assuming that anything that happens vaguely related to my letter was orchestrated by that celebrity. That is clearly a one way relationship, which doesn't even require the other party to be aware of your existence.