1984 & A/S/K revisited

[FallentoReason]

#1) My senses can't detect God talking to me
#2) I'm being told A/S/K works though
#3) I'm certain God isn't talking to me according to my senses
#4) In order to effectively A/S/K, I need to ignore my senses
#5) God is there

Not big fan of A/S/K myself, since I'm not convinced that its about requesting the Holy Spirit in order to be converted. I think its more about asking to receive the gifts of the Holy Spirit after accepting Jesus, as in: "Lord I believe, help me in my disbelief!"

Anyway, back to your OP argument. I think it's pretty good. I see premises 1 and 4 as problematic, as follows:

Premise 1 assumes that God communicates to the believer as sensible speech, i.e. an inner voice. God has many means of communication available to Him: visionary experience, compelling intuition, reason, scriptural revelation, contemplation of nature, or usually some combination of the above.

My objection up to this point would be that the line is now being blurred between experiencing God and "experiencing" God. Literally experiencing him (as I talked about in the OP) could arguably be said to have little room for ambiguity in the believer's mind i.e. they're pretty much convinced that what their senses picked up was in fact God (whether actually God or not.. let's not worry about that). Now, with "experiencing" God... correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like the nature of the experience and the experience's content is at the mercy of the believer; "I was eating pickles, and I had 4 pickles left. Just at this moment my grandfather clock hit the new hour and struck the bell 4 times! This is a sign from God that I was meant to have 4 kids." A rather silly example, but I'm sure you get the gist of what I mean. Your presupposed world-view becomes the god of your reality.

Premise 4 calls on the person to ignore their senses in order to find God. This follows from taking premise 1 as a given. However, since multiple channels are available to God and some of these come to us by means of the senses, then 4 is not a precondition for arriving at your conclusion, 5.

This is yet to be a valid objection depending on what you think of my concerns above.

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Ok, perfect. Why are you justified in doing this for your god but not the Muslim? You need to meet me half way and understand that your convictions match your presuppositions, therefore I can't take your suggestions seriously because they are, so far, unjustified. I therefore propose a method for being able to come to truth, but you want to override it and simply urge me "to have faith". So ok... perfect... but why your god and not Baal? It seems like there's no reason at all to choose the Judeo-Christian god apart from the one thing that was out of your control: your geographical starting point on this earth.

Do you see what I'm saying? It's illogical for you to tell me "look! The evidence is all in the Bible!" because I could do the same with you: I could convert to Islam and say "hey, the Qu'ran explains everything you need to know!".

Are you sitting here arguing against Islam or Christianity? Christianity, because it is already apparent to you that its evidence is stronger. Again, faith goes beyond reason, but reason is still paid attention to. The Bible contains no convincing internal contradictions. The Quran does. And a loving, personal God is more consistent with the creation we see around and in us.

I don't really know what to tell you... I mean, every response of yours assumes the Christian god just because. Yeah, if I presuppose the same god, then I agree with your above statement... but this isn't just a matter of asserting proposition p because p and coz I said p. You have yet to give any formal explanation why I should grant you the liberty of being able to presuppose your god exists in order to then base your arguments off that belief. Until then, all you're doing is a) the Judeo-Christian god exists which then means b) some proposition must be true and therefore c) the Judeo-Christian god exists. I find myself standing outside your perfect circle looking for where it begins so that I can jump on board... the beginning is nowhere to be found.

'Sensory intake' generally refers to the observation of material objects through sight, touch, taste, smell or hearing. Revelation is encountered directly in the mind. Spiritual inspiration is one example. There are instances in the Bible of 'revelation' in the form of a physical appearance, but that's not what we're referring to here. We're referring to the mental realization of God's immediate presence.

Ok, thanks for clearing that up. So from the paragraph where my question came from, you say faith is the thing that will give us these revelations, correct? Well then, we're back at square one: I am putting unjustified faith into your god i.e. I am using the devious method I describe in the OP which can also be seen as faith -> belief -> knowledge(/revelation in this case) instead of the other way around, which would seem the logical way of being able to put faith into something. In other words, for all you know, you've fed yourself non-truths because you decided to put faith into something just because, rather than examining it for truth (i.e. knowledge -> belief -> faith).

If this were an argument, it would go like this:
1. The Bible could be a deception
2. Therefore, the Bible is a deception

If I were to describe what the believer is doing, it would be this:

1. The Bible could be a deception
2. I don't know, therefore I will put faith into it
3. I have formed beliefs about theology
4. I have come to know this is the truth
C. The Bible is true

Premise 2 highlights the fact that unjustified faith is going into the Bible for some reason i.e. there's actually no reason to think the Bible is true before you put faith into it. Since you have compromised yourself by jumping head first with an unjustified faith, the conclusion might seem rational to you, but whether it's because you actually found the truth OR the deception worked.. well, you're actually in no position to say! You've compromised yourself.

But we have reasons to believe the Bible is more than mere human ingenuity. Fulfilled prophecy, for one. No other religion has real fulfilled prophecy. http://www.answering-islam.org/Quran/Prophecy/
http://www.accordingtothescriptures.org/...ecies.html
http://pleaseconvinceme.com/2012/the-old...-prophecy/

This is a moot point because I can point to either side of you and say the Jews and Muslims will tell you they haven't been fulfilled.

Do you consider yourself a good person worthy of heaven?

Paradox. If I aim to be good so that I can be worthy of heaven, then my motives weren't sincere.