Hello!

[vulcanlogician]

Welcome to the forums my dude,

I think I get what you're talking about with your personal experience, I've had moments in my life where I felt like I meditated on the Lord during a time of great emotional strife that he actually answered my prayers but not in some vague way where I wasn't sure it was him. I think this is the kind of thing you are getting at, you meditated and entered a state of mind where you feel like you heard from God.

Of course atheistformus.org is not where experiences like this are respected very much, especially by doggo as he can be pretty ruff with supernatural claims.

You seem like a cool guy, hope to hear more from you.

It's true. If somebody wanted validation or sympathetic voices about a mystical experience, this ain't the joint to come get that. But then again, if you had communion with the divine, what is validation from internet randos gonna do? All that being said, I've always been cool with people who treat such experiences as meaningful. Even though (in my assessment) these experiences have a physiological origin. But that shouldn't take them out of consideration for a person finding them meaningful.

Think about romantic love. There is an obvious physiological cause for it. But if a friend tells me he is falling in love with a woman he is dating, and she makes him feel alive and effervescent, I'm not gonna pull out the biology text book and tell him to "get real." There is a physiological cause for his experience, yes, but he's also allowed to find his experience meaningful in a way that doesn't boil down to human biology. In fact, sometimes such things should be encouraged because life is too joyless for us to scoff at genuine enthusiasm.

Same goes for religious experiences.

Now, I think we need to be rational at the same time. If my friend begins stalking the woman (or if a religious person goes off the deep end), well... then they might need to chill out. 

But I'm not (in principle) against people being inspired by such "inner experiences." Especially when they lead to a healthy outlook.

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Supernatural claims are a different animal. If someone wants to convince me that God was responsible for their experience, well, shit. That's gonna take a lot of convincing. Solid arguments... evidence... all that jazz. Because a "claim" is not an experience a person has on their own. It's something they pass off to others as true. And if I suspect it's untrue, I have no qualms about expressing my doubts.