(November 9, 2018 at 2:07 pm)MysticKnight Wrote: You never know - just try it!
For me, that would be an incredibly dangerous exercise. I've always had a vivid imagination, and could easily imagine a whole pantheon of gods into existence, complete with a chatty left brain / right brain dialogue that would make it seem like the gods' {imagined, internalized} voices were separate from my own internal voice. (I actually had that barrier break down in a moment of extreme danger, for a period of about two seconds, and heard what I perceived as an external voice in my left ear.)
Without strong physical evidence, in the form of an inexplicable and highly improbable real-world event, I cannot distinguish between "messages" coming from real god-like beings and imagined god-like beings. Even with such evidence I see no way to determine what a god-like being actually is; in that regard I am a strong agnostic and believe it impossible to determine a god's true identity with certainty.