What if we're all wrong though?

[Strongbad]

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@ strongbad-
Yes a simplistic definition of “soften the heart” would be “change your mind”, which of course happens only in the brain.
I'm not saying theist or atheist has more resentment, hatred, malice, etc than the other. I am contending that the reason a person cannot hear god is that the mind is cluttered with the negative emotions you outline, correct, and that if a person would set aside all of this negative “bias”, the mind would become “open” to god.
Everyone has a degree of bias.Everyone has some degree of resentment or unresolved issues either conscious or subconscious, that is the foundation of the Christian idea that the human heart (or mind/consciousness more precisely) is inheritly flawed. I am saying that if you truly knew God and now no longer believe in God it's because of something you either resent or have left unresolved. For me persoanly I used to believe blindly that God was. I never questioned and when that blind faith was questioned it created issues I couldn't resolved. I dwelled on those and thus "hardened my heart". I went through a frantic period of trying to find where God was through different religions, then realized I wasn't going to find those answers because no one was there to answer. Later in my life I studied and researched from a more objective perspective and decided to allow for that possibility again. I was just sharing the process that I took for me to hear God, better than before, with faith not blind faith. You hold that God is less likely to exist than exist, good for you. The deep thinking your referencing without a resolution are the unresolved issues. The deeper you think on them and don't resolve them the harder your heart gets. There are also some atheists who truly have malevolence towards God/Gods/Religion/Abrahamic God/Christianity, I'm not saying anyone in particular it's just that some do.
You've accepted the reality that the God concept is a man-made construct, which I agree with. You've also accepted that you can't hear God, and therefore he most likely doesn't exist. That's a very reasonable position. I believe God expects only a response proportional to the light/revelation given.
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@tackattack - Ok, we’ve firmly established that the heart is not actually involved in matters of god – it’s all in the brain. Now you are asserting that the reason that one cannot hear god is because of either some resentment they harbor or because of some unresolved issues they might have. You further assert that if a person once believed in god and no longer does, it is because of this supposed resentment and/or lack of resolution. Again, I’ll disagree. I have no resentment to being indoctrinated with religion as a child; I fully understand why my parents did this. And, the deep thinking that I spoke of actually led to the resolution that in all likelihood there is no god. My mind is not closed to the (extremely remote) possibility that a god exists, but the complete lack of evidence for any sort of deity has led my mind to the conclusion/resolution that none does exist.

I take the position that if a person “believes” in a god, they have convinced themselves (or more likely were convinced by others) that the delusion of god is real.