What's your crazy ideas about the existence of the universe?

[Zen Badger]

You can prove that with science: gather believers from every religion including some offbeat or defunct ones, and add an equal number of atheists, agnostics, deists and so on. Have them all "open themselves up and seek" god, according to any method you would like, and see just how many find, and more importantly, what they find.

My prediction is that all the christians will find precisely their denomination of christian god, all the hindus will find their particular god, all the jews would find their god, all the muslims will find their god, all the worshippers of Bast will find Bast. The atheists won't find anything, and in a sterile environment without outside influences from others, the agnostics won't either, and those are the ones most open to the kind of thing you're suggesting.

See, that's the problem: you propose something that is testable, but you dismiss the very idea of actually testing it because I think you know it won't produce the results you're looking for.

The situation you propose wouldn't be a good test because you would have no way of knowing if your subjects were really opening themselves up or just pretending; or thinking they are. Opening yourself up means you're really meaning to accept what you find, which most people are not. Seeking God means seeking his will also. Concerning the comment about each religion finding it's own version of God, that's probably true to a great extent. Don't get me wrong. I believe salvation comes through Jesus Christ, but I believe that truth is found in varying degrees in most religions. If a person is raised as a muslim say, and that's all he knows, I believe if he truly follows the light that God has provided he will be saved through Christ's sacrifice. I have to be very careful here because I don't believe that all religions are equal paths to God. I just believe that all people are not equally exposed to the truth and are not held responsible for the knowledge they never had the opportunity to learn, but they do know God, because they truly will to know him.

Aren't you lucky you found the right path to god then........