There are no answers in Genesis

[Belacqua]

Presumably we both start with the same question 'does God exist?' (or even 'does a god exist?')?
From there can we, or do we, agree that there are only two ways to answer that question:
1. personal experience - what we experience in our own minds
2. indirect experience, ie through [accepting or rejecting] the claims of others

Oh my, this is a big jump. 

I don't think I address the question of whether God exists or not. I certainly don't know the answer.

Generally what I do on this forum is provide counter evidence of the extremely shallow objections made by many atheists. Many false claims are made about history, and many arguments against theology are shallow and silly. So generally what I do is talk about the poor quality of the arguments, rather than my own conclusions. 

That said, the two categories you give make sense. One can know things from personal experience or through reading the claims of others. 

Though I think you'll agree that personal experience in and of itself doesn't constitute knowledge. An experience has to be interpreted, and the way we interpret things depends very much on the claims of others. So nothing is pure here. An experience that one person interprets as mystical union with God will be interpreted by another as a temporary aberration in brain chemistry. 

For you, I can only speculate. I don't think I've ever seen you talk about signs, but you do talk about 'inspired' a lot. So that already seems a great divergence between our views; to you [externally] 'inspired' seems to have great importance, but to me, it's very dubious and uninformative towards the question because it's inherently unreliable and unfalsifiable.

I agree that there's a great deal going on in the mind, including the subconscious mind. Things which some people will interpret as signs or inspirations, others will attribute to different, more mundane sources. 

Moving on to indirect experience:

For me, given my view of my own personal experience, and the unreliability of the concept of external inspiration within, you can imagine how much weight I give to those sorts of claims from others. Basically then, that avenue, of personal experience - inspiration, signs, etc - is closed to me as a way of answering the original question, leaving only concrete testable claims as something that would satisfy and help answer that question for me, and the truth or falsity of which speaking to the credibility of the 'claimant' especially as a mouthpiece for god, if such is the claim.

Yes, this is pretty much the same. We are aware that different people will attribute their experiences to different sources. 

For you, again I can only speculate. For you, the importance seems to lie in the ideas themselves rather than their authenticity (or original ownership).

There are many ideas in religion which I find wise and beautiful. This doesn't mean that I've signed up to the whole religion, or its conclusions. 

Like it or not, for a very long time most serious thought concerning the mind, morals, and aesthetics were carried out in religious frameworks. It would be a great waste to throw all this out and start from scratch. (In fact I think the influence of religious thought remains strong in most atheists whether they're aware of it or not, so we can't really avoid it.)

 Is that because the question 'is there a god?' is already answered for you (ie by Aquinas' arguments etc)? 

Absolutely not. I do not know.

And all this search for 'inspiration' is just about honing in on the nature of that god? Basically if you're not looking for, and informed by (regarding the original question), concrete claims in the Bible, or any other text (since you've said elsewhere that in this regard, you're accepting truth from multiple sources, or that there can be multiple truths), what are you looking for?

Well, in a non-supernatural way I think it's good to be inspired by the wise writing of people from all traditions. I'm not sure if there can be "multiple truths" if this means that contradictory claims can both be true. I certainly think that thinkers from outside our own recent tradition can challenge us to think more carefully about things we take for granted -- economic, political, aesthetic, ethical -- and at the very least show us that what seems so obvious that it requires no thought is actually contingent on temporary conditions. The worst thing would be to be stuck in a little narrow range of beliefs and spend your time stamping out anything which falls outside this acceptable range. (And one sees this happen a great deal.) 

The world is rich and beautiful in its diversity and I would hate to be one of those people who spends his time attacking difference. Especially if it's difference of which I have a very shallow understanding.