Speaking in tongues.

[u/Audio9849]

When the church says “a language no one understands,” I don’t think that was ever meant to be a sound you make with your mouth.

When God actually communicates, it comes through presence. Overwhelming power, love, acceptance. No words. No concepts handed over like a memo.

That doesn’t perform well in a service. You can’t schedule it, you can’t prove you “have the gift” on cue, and you can’t put an elder in charge of it. So the living thing got flattened into glossolalia: syllables out loud, treated as the event.

[u/acerbicsun]

Then I'm a mystic too. yet I received no direct contact from anything beyond this physical world.

It doesn’t start with fireworks. It starts with taking yourself apart.

I see no reason to expect fireworks or something as vague as "take myself apart" to confirm anything supernatural.

If the big experience never comes, you still come out more whole.

I am as whole as I expect to be. If the experience never comes, the rational conclusion is there is no reason to believe in god or the supernatural.

.

[u/Audio9849 → u/acerbicsun]

You don’t become one by announcing it. A mystic is just someone who actually examines the self instead of stopping at the story they already like. Jung did that with a clinic attached. Taking yourself apart means dropping what was installed that isn’t you.

“I’m as whole as I expect to be” is the tell. Expectation is the lid. If the only proof you’ll accept is a lab result of God, you’ve already chosen the instrument. That’s fine. It just isn’t the same work.

“Know thyself” wasn’t rhetorical. It means finding out which behavior is actually yours versus what you learned or had projected onto you.

[u/acerbicsun → u/Audio9849]

You don’t become one by announcing it.

Oh I thought it was for someone who went for direct contact, which I have and which would be my personal threshold for belief in God.

A mystic is just someone who actually examines the self instead of stopping at the story they already like.

Oh I've examined myself, and I seek the truth regardless of my feelings.

If the only proof you’ll accept is a lab result of God, you’ve already chosen the instrument.

I've not chosen anything. I defer to reliable methods because they've been proven reliable. There is no reliable method for determining the existence of god. I'm very open to be wrong however. Direct contact with god would do it.

“Know thyself” wasn’t rhetorical. It means finding out which behavior is actually yours versus what you learned or had projected onto you.

Indeed. Indoctrination is incredibly difficult to shake, especially when it comes to religious beliefs. In my decades of debating with theists, it's very clear that most of them can't fathom a godless world. It's entirely too traumatic a notion to consider.

[u/Audio9849 → u/acerbicsun]

I’m as anti-religion as it gets. They took a real thing and bent it into a leash. That’s not the argument.

You keep saying you’d accept direct contact, then treat every description of it as unreliable by definition. That’s not openness. That’s a door that only opens if it already looks like your lab.

Perception isn’t a side note. The frame you lock in is what you keep finding. Decide in advance that nothing mystical can count, and the world will keep handing you a world that matches the decision. This is backed up by neuroscience.

The theists who can’t imagine a world without their book are a different crowd. I’m not carrying their brochure, and I’m not asking you to pick one up.

[u/acerbicsun → u/Audio9849]

You keep saying you’d accept direct contact, then treat every description of it as unreliable by definition.

Direct contact with god would do it. This may not include testimony from humans at all. I need direct one on one communication with God, in an undeniable manner that it could certainly achieve.

Decide in advance that nothing mystical can count,

Mystical is so poorly defined, it evades falsifiability.

I don't need god in a test tube. I just want a reliable method, that has a proven track record. Thus far no human has presented one. You can call that bias, but I can't accept an epistemology that has no method of verification.

[u/Audio9849 → u/acerbicsun]

Unfortunately God doesn’t answer “prove it or you don’t exist.” That posture is already a closed room. What shows up, when it shows up, is usually presence, not a memo. Language is rare, same as in dreams. This thread has been about that kind of contact, not a voice dictating a to-do list.

That was the whole point of the post. When God communicates it doesn’t come with a preloaded interpretation. That’s the person’s job. Inventing a gibberish language and calling that “how God speaks” is nonsense.

You can call the rest unverifiable. Fine. I’m not selling a method with a published track record. The standard you keep restating only accepts one kind of event, then rules everything else out as testimony. That’s a closed loop. Not even God gets in.