I know God exists & the court of highest appeal is me.

And how do you distinguish your "perception of reality" and "actual reality" in order to compare them?Would you examine your last sentence closely, and think about circular reasoning? Are you really saying that what you know to be the case is not the case. If you know it is, how do you know it's not?

Yes, I agree that we're obliged to do that, almost by definition. But if you look at what you said in the O.P., don't you agree that you've phrased things badly? You seem to be talking about comparing the reality you percieve to something else, which you call reality.Where does the second reality come from?{ABE}I've just reread the O.P., and perhaps what's really the problem is your use of the word "know".Edited by bluegenes, : addition

I agree. So, in correct English, you don't know whether your God exists, but you want to describe the likelihood as being essentially the same as the likelihood of your computer existing.

All this amounts to is saying that you know God exists, and then using an argument that illustrates that you cannot know that he exists. So why make the claim in the first place?As most of us would agree that no-one can conclusively know whether or not such things as Gods exist, it's your use of the "know" word that's causing the problem in the first place.

According to that contradictory statement, you definitely do not know that your God exists, and you cannot know, because you do not trust your senses.Stating that we all have to rely on our senses, and trust them, is not the same as saying that our senses cannot perceive reality, if they're functioning properly.Perceiving supernatural things via our senses, as you claim to have done, is becoming increasingly recognised as a sign of malfunction of the brain, and is much more common amongst people with identifiable neurological conditions than those without.You may be right in doubting your senses, but don't assume that the rest of us are in the same condition. I've never seen or sensed any magic beings, and if I ever do, I'll check my experience with a doctor or two.

Agreeing and verifying aren't the same things.How can two different individuals have the same subjective experiences? If we question the two of you on your Gods, will we get exactly the same answers?.And Iano's God has the same likelihood of existing as you being a brain in a jar. Are you going to preach that to your flock?It's a big misconception that all Christians believe in the same God. If you're all relying on subjective "experiences", then 2 billion Christians = 2 billion Gods.The differing descriptions of the Christian God that we get here on EvC don't support the view that you're all believing in the same thing.

The trouble with all this subjective experience of God stuff is that Christians all end up believing in different Gods, as illustrated above.

I third that request. Iano doesn't seem to agree with the creationist/I.D. types on this site, who look for external evidence of their Gods, so his evidence, perhaps, arrives in the brain directly, just like thoughts, dreams, hallucinations and delusions. These four seem to exist, but an experience of God would have to be distinguishable from them in order to convince an honest and sane person that it was valid, and could provide the same level of evidence as he has for the existence of his computer.We can all think up Gods, dream about Gods, hallucinate Gods, and have religious delusions, (for the last two, which many may not have experienced,(see here) and here ), but this kind of information arriving in the brain doesn't seem trustworthy to me at all.

What the O.P. amounts to, really, is just a slightly more elaborate way of stating or asking something which we often see here on EvC. That is, why can't personal "experiences" of God be counted as evidence of his existence. That's why I frequently point out that different people experience different Gods, and that the word God would never be used in the singular if we were to take these experiences as evidence, so monotheistic religions would automatically go out the window.It's worth pointing out that the Christian God will show distinct geographical preferences when choosing to whom he will "appear", a Christian experience being much more likely in Iano's native Ireland than in Saudi Arabia, for example. Other Gods show the same bizzare preferences, Allah clearly preferring areas where there are already lots of Muslims to areas where there are virtually none, and the Hindu Gods hanging around almost exclusively on the subcontinent and amongst the diaspora.For any thinking person, that would knock the idea of the personal experience of Gods as having any relation to reality on the head (other than local cultural realities)."Brain in a jar" type arguments are just an attempt to bring faith based beliefs up to the level of beliefs based on observation and external evidence. They're pointless, because the observed reality is the one we have to live by in order to survive, and no-one's going to put their reality to the test by walking across a busy road without looking beforehand, on the basis that the traffic they might perceive if looking could be an illusion. But many ex-theists have done away with the Gods in their heads with no adverse effects. The reason I put the links through to articles on epilepsy and schizophrenia in the post you're replying to was to highlight this. We're forced to trust our senses, and those are illustrations of how they can let people with certain neurological conditions down.An interesting way of looking at both those conditions might be suggesting that none of us are completely free from them. In other words, all brains probably have slight glitches in them, some more than others, and it's interesting to look at the prophets, seers and visionaries of all the religions in that light.As a Christian, you might not find the idea of St. Paul or Moses being epileptics appealing, and especially the idea of Christ seeing himself as God to be the product of delusions, although I'm sure we could find plenty of people who believe they're God or the second coming alive today, both inside and out of institutions.Mohamed is an excellent candidate for temporal epilepsy, as he is reported to have fallen to the ground in fits before delivering sections of the Koran to his followers. Which means 1.5 billion people in the world are probably following a God who's the product of someone's neurological condition. Mind boggling.So, are religions cultural delusions, and could religion be described as madness? Read your coreligionists on this site carefully, and see what you think.Iano has his God, and Ray his, and others, theirs. There must be some delusions going on, or we'll all have to become polytheists. Take comfort, your God goes in mysterious ways, his wonders to perform.