Is J. Neil Schulman justified (logically) in believing in God?

[George H. Smith]

Brad Linaweaver, in his Preface to I Met God, presented the following as criteria why a reader should take my account more seriously than some other accounts:

What fascinates me about so many people who claim to be religious, or so many people who claim to have had mystical experiences, is how few ideas they get from that experience. One would think — if you have an experience of the Ultimate — a few ideas might stick to you. But you’d never know it from traditional religious people; you’d never know it from the traditional — if I may say so — mystic types, and the modern manifestation of the New Age types.

Neil is overflowing with ideas, and insights, that I find of great value, and I am an agnostic.

I'll therefore offer this as a first cut for analyzing "the philosophical implications and problems associated with [my] claim to have talked to God."

Joan of Arc certainly did a lot with her mystical experiences. From the Wiki article:

Joan asserted that she had visions from God which instructed her to recover her homeland from English domination late in the Hundred Years' War. The uncrowned King Charles VII sent her to the siege of Orléans as part of a relief mission. She gained prominence when she overcame the dismissive attitude of veteran commanders and lifted the siege in only nine days. Several more swift victories led to Charles VII's coronation at Reims and settled the disputed succession to the throne.

Are you skeptical of Joan's claim to have had visions and instructions from God? If so, why?

Ghs

[Brant Gaede]

Neil, what can be done with you testimony?

--Brant

Are you asking about reprints rights of it, or what utility it might have?

The latter.

--Brant

[J Neil Schulman]

George, do you find me to be non-credible reporter otherwise? Did you regard me as a non-credible reporter when I was still an atheist?

The question is stacked the way you put it. Try this:

Do you find me to be a credible reporter (on the subject of meeting god/religious experiences)? Did you regard me as a credible reporter (on the subject of meeting god/religious experiences) when I was still an atheist?

Neil, I don't believe anyone doubts you have more or less accurately reported 'the experience' -- especially since you have laid out the circumstances, the thoughts in your head, your physical and mental state, and so on); what is not easy to accept on its face is the claim that the voice in your head was the voice of a god, and that the account of the experience has been interpreted correctly.

You said in the interview that you were only 98% certain of the reality of the god in your head. Moreover you have written that you feel your only choice of interpretation was either Psychotic Break or Reality.

Why not a third interpretation choice, or more?

Aside from your position as a libertarian/Rand admirer, there doesn't seem to be much out of the ordinary in your reported experience, in terms of other reported 'mystical experience.' The hallmarks of a conversion experience are strong in your case.

It is difficult for me to understand your insistence that your experience (of god) was of a different order or class from these other experiences.

I suggest that you move on from discussion of this narrow issue. It isn't going anywhere fresh or fruitful, and it will be frustrating to you that few beyond theists/believers accept your experience as viridical.

Lots and lots of interesting and infuriating topics at hand at this forum, some of which are no doubt of interest to you. Why not set aside the god talk and enliven us with your take on other issues?

First off, I didn't start a forum topic here at Objectivist Living titled, " Is J. Neil Schulman justified (logically) in believing in God?" It was started by a member here, who emailed me and asked to participate, and since it's a discussion of interest to me I agreed.

Second, your statement that theists/believers are more likely than atheists to accept my experience as veridical doesn't test out as true in my experience, nor after a moment of thought should you expect it to be the case. Atheists -- at least Objectivist-based atheists -- pride themselves on not accepting anything as true based on dogma or faith. Therefore they reject as irrational belief in God based on religion, based on non-verifiable scripture or traditions, or based on faith. I have found that religious people have a strong tendency to reject my reports of a new God contact out of hand, because it's not already part of their scripture and my accounts don't match up with their sectarian traditions. In business this is called "Not Invented Here" syndrome and comes into play any time someone from outside the company presents a new proposal; the merits of the proposal aren't even considered because it's not from someone in the company already.

I've spent a lot of time in my book trying to explain why the concept of God coming out of my experience presents a new description of God: his nature, identity, powers, limitations, cognitive habits, personality, values, sense of humor, and a back story not written about in existing canonical (or even non-canonical) scriptures. It's a set of attributes describing a God not discussed by George H. Smith in ATCAG, nor by Ayn Rand, nor by Nathaniel or Barbara Branden, nor by Madelyn Murray O'Hair, nor by Richard Dawkins, nor by Penn Jillette, nor by Ricky Gervais, nor by Samuel Edward Konkin III, nor by pre-1997 J. Neil Schulman. It's a God whose consciousness came first and created all subsequent conscious, volitional beings including us, but who is not omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent -- nor even (any longer, since he made others with his own cognitive nature and potential powers) the sole deity.

When I was an atheist I can't tell you how many times I heard, or participated, in discussions in which the existence of God was dismissed as even a possibility because the advocate of such existence said "you have to have faith" or because the concept contained impossible contradictions, or violated some contemporary concept of natural law. I took all of that very seriously and never stopped doing so, even to this day.

So when I come along and say, "Yes, I'm fucking well aware of that argument, and here's why it's irrelevant to the existence of God as I'm telling you about him," I think my well-documented prior skepticism -- and my credibility as a writer on other matters -- should give me a modicum of credibility -- enough to do what so many members of this forum have been doing quite nicely: asking me to explain as best I can what happened to me, why I think it reflects something objectively real and external to my own psyche, and why my interpretation of the experience might provide a new paradigm for someone else to contemplate.

George H. Smith did an improv riff earlier in this forum thread in which he reversed roles and told me God was talking to him, denied contacting me, and that God wanted me to head to the Sinai desert. I followed the conventions of improv by never negating the premises George was asserting, but George's improv ended when I did precisely what I would have expected any rational person to do when informed by a priest that God had marching orders for him: challenge the priest to send over the orders with God's notarized signature.

I can't present such credentials to George -- but then again, I've asked no one ever to take any action speaking as God's appointed priest. I suspect George appreciated my non-authoritarian take on that (even atheist Protestants tend to) and that's why George dropped the bit.

George and I are both libertarians, and share those sensibilities and values. Not even the Deists made claim that God was a libertarian as I have done. I think that earns me a place of respect in the history of free thought.

Why not a third interpretation choice, or more?"

Like what? It's a simple either/or with a sharply excluded middle. Either someone objectively real who thinks he's God was in extraordinary communication with me and temporarily provided me with supercognition, or the experience was objectively not real -- a medically caused break with reality, a hallucination, a waking dream, a failure of my mind to distinguish between reality and the completely imaginary.

Aside from your position as a libertarian/Rand admirer, there doesn't seem to be much out of the ordinary in your reported experience, in terms of other reported 'mystical experience.' The hallmarks of a conversion experience are strong in your case.

Except that most everything about what I report on my experience is unreported in the accounts of others' claiming divine contact, and my experience prompted me to convert to nothing.

Edited December 20, 2010 by J. Neil Schulman

[J Neil Schulman]

Brad Linaweaver, in his Preface to I Met God, presented the following as criteria why a reader should take my account more seriously than some other accounts:

What fascinates me about so many people who claim to be religious, or so many people who claim to have had mystical experiences, is how few ideas they get from that experience. One would think — if you have an experience of the Ultimate — a few ideas might stick to you. But you’d never know it from traditional religious people; you’d never know it from the traditional — if I may say so — mystic types, and the modern manifestation of the New Age types.

Neil is overflowing with ideas, and insights, that I find of great value, and I am an agnostic.

I'll therefore offer this as a first cut for analyzing "the philosophical implications and problems associated with [my] claim to have talked to God."

Joan of Arc certainly did a lot with her mystical experiences. From the Wiki article:

Joan asserted that she had visions from God which instructed her to recover her homeland from English domination late in the Hundred Years' War. The uncrowned King Charles VII sent her to the siege of Orléans as part of a relief mission. She gained prominence when she overcame the dismissive attitude of veteran commanders and lifted the siege in only nine days. Several more swift victories led to Charles VII's coronation at Reims and settled the disputed succession to the throne.

Are you skeptical of Joan's claim to have had visions and instructions from God? If so, why?

Ghs

I'd say I take it just as seriously as a football coach who attributes his team's victory to God giving him the winning play in a dream the night before.

You'll note I'm not telling anyone to follow me into battle, George.

[J Neil Schulman]

Neil, what can be done with you testimony?

--Brant

Are you asking about reprints rights of it, or what utility it might have?

The latter.

--Brant

Almost all of Robert A. Heinlein's literary output was labeled fiction and the ideas he presented in the stories he told changed my life and changed the lives of men who built rockets and others who rode them outside the earth's atmosphere, as far as the surface of the moon. Before she had published a word of non-fiction, Ayn Rand's fiction changed lives.

Thoreau's autobiographical writings inspired Gandhi, and Gandhi's autobiographical writings inspired Martin Luther King.

What utility does my documenting my experiences have? Doing it was the job, dude. What happens as a result if and when people read it is above my pay grade.

[Brant Gaede]

Neil, what can be done with you testimony?

--Brant

Are you asking about reprints rights of it, or what utility it might have?

The latter.

--Brant

Almost all of Robert A. Heinlein's literary output was labeled fiction and the ideas he presented in the stories he told changed my life and changed the lives of men who built rockets and others who rode them outside the earth's atmosphere, as far as the surface of the moon. Before she had published a word of non-fiction, Ayn Rand's fiction changed lives.

Thoreau's autobiographical writings inspired Gandhi, and Gandhi's autobiographical writings inspired Martin Luther King.

What utility does my documenting my experiences have? Doing it was the job, dude. What happens as a result if and when people read it is above my pay grade.

Heinlein was the cat's ass. The Green Hills of Earth, The Earth Is a Harsh Mistress, Glory Road, etc., etc. Gotta, gotta, reread these and all the other stuff!

--Brant

let's hoist a drink to that! You're makin' me young again!

Edited December 20, 2010 by Brant Gaede

[BaalChatzaf]

Heinlein was the cat's ass. The Green Hills of Earth, The Earth Is a Harsh Mistress, Glory Road, etc., etc. Gotta, gotta, reread these and all the other stuff!

--Brant

let's hoist a drink to that! You're makin' me young again!

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. One of my holy books. I keep it on the High Shelf right next to -The Dispossed- (by Le Guin) and -Atlas Shrugged- (by You Know Who).

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Starbuckle]

Neil writes: "...I think my well-documented prior skepticism -- and my credibility as a writer on other matters -- should give me a modicum of credibility..."

Neil, when did Linaweaver conduct the interviews with you that make up the book I Met God? I ask because during the interviews you seem to continue to support your theory that O.J. Simpson was framed for the murders of Nicole Simpson and Ron Goldman. (Neil's book The Frame of the Century? was published in 1999.) You state that when God took over during the mind-meld and you were God for those hours, you learned that your theory about Simpson was correct.

You say of your state during the mind-meld: "I realize that I am revealed to myself. The game of hiding from myself [i.e., the fact that you are God] is over and now obviously I’m here. And now the mission begins. This is what’s going through my mind at that point and I begin asking myself certain questions about what’s going to happen. What’s going to happen in terms of the O.J. thing — is my [Neil's] investigation correct? Yes, your intuition there was correct."

That is, O.J. was in fact framed, according to God; although God is not omniscient on your account, he would seem to be a savvy and powerful enough guy to give an unequivocally true thumbs up or thumbs down to your proposal that O.J. was framed.

I ask about the date of the interviews because the first news report that Simpson was going to publish his pretend-spurious account of the murders, If I Did It, was published in 2006. (I thought I saw the date of the interviews on the web site but can't find it again.)

In any case, do you still hold that O.J. was likely (or definitely) framed?

Edited December 20, 2010 by Starbuckle

[PDS]

Here is my main frustration with direct revelation: how come God never "reveals" the cure for cancer to those lucky few who hear the call? Why are the revelations so often either self-serving, or generally useless to humanity?

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Neil,

I don't know if the question below has ever been asked of you, so if it has, sorry.

But first the set-up. From what I have observed, there are only 3 ways we can know things:

1. By growing into the knowledge (usually our mental capacities, affects and emotions, but there are some other things like left-handed and right-handed, etc.),
2. By what we experience and/or observe, and
3. By what others tell us.

We also mentally manipulate that knowledge (volitionally and subconsciously) and come to conclusions, which could be called "knowing." But that's one step removed from direct knowing.

You said you talked to God somewhat like the George Burns character thing.

I'm cool with that.

But how do you know He was God? Just because He said so?

I have found that I usually need to verify what someone tells me. This is because folks are not always truthful or precise.

So here's my real question.

How do you know you were not talking to the Devil and he was pretending to be God?

Looking at history, that would account for your lack of public projection in this project.

Michael

[George H. Smith]

George H. Smith did an improv riff earlier in this forum thread in which he reversed roles and told me God was talking to him, denied contacting me, and that God wanted me to head to the Sinai desert. I followed the conventions of improv by never negating the premises George was asserting, but George's improv ended when I did precisely what I would have expected any rational person to do when informed by a priest that God had marching orders for him: challenge the priest to send over the orders with God's notarized signature.

I can't present such credentials to George -- but then again, I've asked no one ever to take any action speaking as God's appointed priest. I suspect George appreciated my non-authoritarian take on that (even atheist Protestants tend to) and that's why George dropped the bit.

I appreciated your good humor about my God bit, but I also expected no less from you. I dropped the bit when no one asked God any more questions, but there was a point to it.

Suppose someone sincerely believed that he had a visitation from God, suppose his experience was very similar (in form) to yours, and suppose God revealed to this person that he never talked to you. Hence if we believe your revelation we must reject his, and if we believe his revelation we must reject yours. And since we don't have criteria we can use to separate the true from the false in this area, we might as well toss a coin.

This is more than an idle hypothetical. You reject other mystical experiences but can give no reason for doing so except that they are not sufficiently similarly to yours. Other claimants would reject your experience for the same reason. So we might as well toss a coin.

George and I are both libertarians, and share those sensibilities and values. Not even the Deists made claim that God was a libertarian as I have done. I think that earns me a place of respect in the history of free thought.

There was a close relationship between Deism and early libertarianism. Although Deists didn't specifically claim that God is a libertarian, they attributed to him a laissez-faire attitude toward the world at large, claiming that God endowed humans with reason so they could manage their own affairs through voluntary cooperation. This was the point of consent theory, which virtually every major Deist supported.

Ghs

[George H. Smith]

Are you skeptical of Joan's claim to have had visions and instructions from God? If so, why?

Ghs

I'd say I take it just as seriously as a football coach who attributes his team's victory to God giving him the winning play in a dream the night before.

You'll note I'm not telling anyone to follow me into battle, George.

You are scarcely doing justice to Joan's visions. She was a 16-year-old farm girl when she received her instructions from God. (This was not her first vision, however.) Joan subsequently embarked on a venture that seemed impossible at the time. The notion that an illiterate teenage girl with no military experience would end up leading a French army and winning numerous military victories strikes us as highly improbable even today. Yet this is precisely what happened. The events are not at all comparable to a football coach; for one thing, Joan announced God's instructions long before she successfully carried them out.

Here is an account of Joan of Arc from The Catholic Encyclopedia. I have added some italics for emphasis:

It was at the age of thirteen and a half, in the summer of 1425, that Joan first became conscious of that manifestation, whose supernatural character it would now be rash to question, which she afterwards came to call her "voices" or her "counsel." It was at first simply a voice, as if someone had spoken quite close to her, but it seems also clear that a blaze of light accompanied it, and that later on she clearly discerned in some way the appearance of those who spoke to her, recognizing them individually as St. Michael (who was accompanied by other angels), St. Margaret, St. Catherine, and others. Joan was always reluctant to speak of her voices. She said nothing about them to her confessor, and constantly refused, at her trial, to be inveigled into descriptions of the appearance of the saints and to explain how she recognized them. None the less, she told her judges: "I saw them with these very eyes, as well as I see you."

Great efforts have been made by rationalistic historians, such as M. Anatole France, to explain these voices as the result of a condition of religious and hysterical exaltation which had been fostered in Joan by priestly influence, combined with certain prophecies current in the countryside of a maiden from the bois chesnu (oak wood), near which the Fairy Tree was situated, who was to save France by a miracle. But the baselessness of this analysis of the phenomena has been fully exposed by many non-Catholic writers. There is not a shadow of evidence to support this theory of priestly advisers coaching Joan in a part, but much which contradicts it. Moreover, unless we accuse the Maid of deliberate falsehood, which no one is prepared to do, it was the voices which created the state of patriotic exaltation, and not the exaltation which preceded the voices. Her evidence on these points is clear.

Although Joan never made any statement as to the date at which the voices revealed her mission, it seems certain that the call of God was only made known to her gradually. But by May, 1428, she no longer doubted that she was bidden to go to the help of the king, and the voices became insistent, urging her to present herself to Robert Baudricourt, who commanded for Charles VII in the neighbouring town of Vaucouleurs. This journey she eventually accomplished a month later...

Given the practical and highly improbable success of Joan's visions, if I had to choose between her experiences and yours, I would choose hers.

Ghs

[J Neil Schulman]

Neil writes: "...I think my well-documented prior skepticism -- and my credibility as a writer on other matters -- should give me a modicum of credibility..."

Neil, when did Linaweaver conduct the interviews with you that make up the book I Met God? I ask because during the interviews you seem to continue to support your theory that O.J. Simpson was framed for the murders of Nicole Simpson and Ron Goldman. (Neil's book The Frame of the Century? was published in 1999.) You state that when God took over during the mind-meld and you were God for those hours, you learned that your theory about Simpson was correct.

You say of your state during the mind-meld: "I realize that I am revealed to myself. The game of hiding from myself [i.e., the fact that you are God] is over and now obviously I’m here. And now the mission begins. This is what’s going through my mind at that point and I begin asking myself certain questions about what’s going to happen. What’s going to happen in terms of the O.J. thing — is my [Neil's] investigation correct? Yes, your intuition there was correct."

That is, O.J. was in fact framed, according to God; although God is not omniscient on your account, he would seem to be a savvy and powerful enough guy to give an unequivocally true thumbs up or thumbs down to your proposal that O.J. was framed.

I ask about the date of the interviews because the first news report that Simpson was going to publish his pretend-spurious account of the murders, If I Did It, was published in 2006. (I thought I saw the date of the interviews on the web site but can't find it again.)

In any case, do you still hold that O.J. was likely (or definitely) framed?

I am confident to this day that O.J. Simpson did not murder Nicole Brown or Ronald Goldman. I'm confident that the subject of my book, The Frame of the Century?, was involved with the "framing" of O.J. But Detective Bill Dear's investigation of O.J.'s oldest son, Jason, makes me think now that Jason -- a psychiatric patient with unresolved anger and violence issues -- was the actual murderer. Where I differ with Bill is that I believe Jason used Shipp to help in the cover up the night of the murders, with perhaps the unintended consequence that O.J. was framed. I also believe that O.J. directed his attorneys not to "Plan B" Jason and that O.J. has purposively redirected public and press suspicion away from Jason and toward himself post his criminal acquittal.

[J Neil Schulman]

Here is my main frustration with direct revelation: how come God never "reveals" the cure for cancer to those lucky few who hear the call? Why are the revelations so often either self-serving, or generally useless to humanity?

Why doesn't a teacher hand out the answer sheet to students taking a test? Why do parents whose teenager asks for a car make the kid work a summer job before they'll help pay for it?

I propose that God's central intent with respect to humanity is to encourage thinking for yourself and growing into an adult with an independent mind and learned moral compass. I'm also confident that some breakthroughs in various fields of study, including oncology, have been "inspired."

[PDS]

Here is my main frustration with direct revelation: how come God never "reveals" the cure for cancer to those lucky few who hear the call? Why are the revelations so often either self-serving, or generally useless to humanity?

Why doesn't a teacher hand out the answer sheet to students taking a test? Why do parents whose teenager asks for a car make the kid work a summer job before they'll help pay for it?

I propose that God's central intent with respect to humanity is to encourage thinking for yourself and growing into an adult with an independent mind and learned moral compass. I'm also confident that some breakthroughs in various fields of study, including oncology, have been "inspired."

With respect, Neil, I think the average cancer patient might find your response wanting, and hopeful for some accelerated "inspiration."

[J Neil Schulman]

Neil,

I don't know if the question below has ever been asked of you, so if it has, sorry.

But first the set-up. From what I have observed, there are only 3 ways we can know things:

1. By growing into the knowledge (usually our mental capacities, affects and emotions, but there are some other things like left-handed and right-handed, etc.),
2. By what we experience and/or observe, and
3. By what others tell us.

We also mentally manipulate that knowledge (volitionally and subconsciously) and come to conclusions, which could be called "knowing." But that's one step removed from direct knowing.

You said you talked to God somewhat like the George Burns character thing.

I'm cool with that.

But how do you know He was God? Just because He said so?

I have found that I usually need to verify what someone tells me. This is because folks are not always truthful or precise.

So here's my real question.

How do you know you were not talking to the Devil and he was pretending to be God?

Looking at history, that would account for your lack of public projection in this project.

Michael

Michael, it was a Mind-Meld, not a conversation with somebody outside of me. My mind and God's mind were in sync during the experience. I had his multidimensional cognitive powers and sense of self.

The person I was linked with was good, kind, wise, and benevolent, and his sense of self was God. There was nothing mean or vindictive about him. He thought of himself as human. His concern was with the goodness of people and that we make good choices. His sense of humor was in no way based on derision towards others.

If that's the Devil, then where did the idea of the Devil as destructive and evil come from?

[J Neil Schulman]

George H. Smith did an improv riff earlier in this forum thread in which he reversed roles and told me God was talking to him, denied contacting me, and that God wanted me to head to the Sinai desert. I followed the conventions of improv by never negating the premises George was asserting, but George's improv ended when I did precisely what I would have expected any rational person to do when informed by a priest that God had marching orders for him: challenge the priest to send over the orders with God's notarized signature.

I can't present such credentials to George -- but then again, I've asked no one ever to take any action speaking as God's appointed priest. I suspect George appreciated my non-authoritarian take on that (even atheist Protestants tend to) and that's why George dropped the bit.

I appreciated your good humor about my God bit, but I also expected no less from you. I dropped the bit when no one asked God any more questions, but there was a point to it.

Suppose someone sincerely believed that he had a visitation from God, suppose his experience was very similar (in form) to yours, and suppose God revealed to this person that he never talked to you. Hence if we believe your revelation we must reject his, and if we believe his revelation we must reject yours. And since we don't have criteria we can use to separate the true from the false in this area, we might as well toss a coin.

This is more than an idle hypothetical. You reject other mystical experiences but can give no reason for doing so except that they are not sufficiently similarly to yours. Other claimants would reject your experience for the same reason. So we might as well toss a coin.

George and I are both libertarians, and share those sensibilities and values. Not even the Deists made claim that God was a libertarian as I have done. I think that earns me a place of respect in the history of free thought.

There was a close relationship between Deism and early libertarianism. Although Deists didn't specifically claim that God is a libertarian, they attributed to him a laissez-faire attitude toward the world at large, claiming that God endowed humans with reason so they could manage their own affairs through voluntary cooperation. This was the point of consent theory, which virtually every major Deist supported.

Ghs

George, C.S. Lewis's stepson, Douglas Gresham, rejects my claims as blasphemous because my statements are not dogmatically Christian. But then again, the Hebrews rejected as blasphemous any statements by "prophets" or "messiahs" that were not dogmatically Hebrew. Your own arguments to me in this forum thread is that mystics tends to be abrasive to existing religious authority. I'd suggest that every time God decides to introduce a software upgrade the poor sap (excuse me, glorious volunteer) stuck with the job of spreading it around is welcomed the same way Julian Assange is welcomed by the U.S. State Department.

I appreciate the Deists very much, except on one point, which I find offensive. They want to put a muzzle on God, telling him to shut the fuck up. Now I consider myself a freethinker, but I think telling God he's not welcome to participate in the discussion is just rude.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Neil,

If you felt only goodness and no guile, I'll buy that. (I don't believe in a Devil, anyway.) For me, the information is second hand, of course, but I believe in your sincerity, so I'll buy it.

But if we're going there, let's go all the way. Your Mind-Meld experience sounds very similar to what Esther Hicks describes happens to her in channeling "Abraham," except she presents herself as a more traditional medium and milks it for money and fame (denying this all the while, of course). But, somewhere I read or saw, she claimed to be aware of the presence during the sessions and can even discuss stuff with "Abraham."

(Don't even ask what I, someone impacted by Ayn Rand, was doing bopping around Esther Hicks materisl. I have a very quirky side and I look at all kinds of things. But I'll say why, anyway... I was investigating The Secret to see if I could detect the universal human values and emotions that make such a work so instantly appealing to such a massive number of people as it did--with aims at using these appeals in my own works if I could make them fit.)

The more I looked at Hicks, the more I became ambivalent about her. At first, I scoffed. I have a very hard time believing in channeling. But over time, I started to believe that she believes in what she is doing. I don't think she's a charlatan, even as I cannot embrace the story she tells as real (for me, at least). And some of the advice she hands out is very wise. I like wise people. Thus, ambivalence it is.

Hicks claims the Abraham consciousness is evolving and learning, similar to what you described. There are some differences, such as her "God" is a group of consciousnesses melded as one and acting as one, and she can invite "Abraham" to appear and use her to communicate when she wants to, but overall, I see many parallels.

Michael

[J Neil Schulman]

Are you skeptical of Joan's claim to have had visions and instructions from God? If so, why?

Ghs

I'd say I take it just as seriously as a football coach who attributes his team's victory to God giving him the winning play in a dream the night before.

You'll note I'm not telling anyone to follow me into battle, George.

You are scarcely doing justice to Joan's visions. She was a 16-year-old farm girl when she received her instructions from God. (This was not her first vision, however.) Joan subsequently embarked on a venture that seemed impossible at the time. The notion that an illiterate teenage girl with no military experience would end up leading a French army and winning numerous military victories strikes us as highly improbable even today. Yet this is precisely what happened. The events are not at all comparable to a football coach; for one thing, Joan announced God's instructions long before she successfully carried them out.

Here is an account of Joan of Arc from The Catholic Encyclopedia. I have added some italics for emphasis:

It was at the age of thirteen and a half, in the summer of 1425, that Joan first became conscious of that manifestation, whose supernatural character it would now be rash to question, which she afterwards came to call her "voices" or her "counsel." It was at first simply a voice, as if someone had spoken quite close to her, but it seems also clear that a blaze of light accompanied it, and that later on she clearly discerned in some way the appearance of those who spoke to her, recognizing them individually as St. Michael (who was accompanied by other angels), St. Margaret, St. Catherine, and others. Joan was always reluctant to speak of her voices. She said nothing about them to her confessor, and constantly refused, at her trial, to be inveigled into descriptions of the appearance of the saints and to explain how she recognized them. None the less, she told her judges: "I saw them with these very eyes, as well as I see you."

Great efforts have been made by rationalistic historians, such as M. Anatole France, to explain these voices as the result of a condition of religious and hysterical exaltation which had been fostered in Joan by priestly influence, combined with certain prophecies current in the countryside of a maiden from the bois chesnu (oak wood), near which the Fairy Tree was situated, who was to save France by a miracle. But the baselessness of this analysis of the phenomena has been fully exposed by many non-Catholic writers. There is not a shadow of evidence to support this theory of priestly advisers coaching Joan in a part, but much which contradicts it. Moreover, unless we accuse the Maid of deliberate falsehood, which no one is prepared to do, it was the voices which created the state of patriotic exaltation, and not the exaltation which preceded the voices. Her evidence on these points is clear.

Although Joan never made any statement as to the date at which the voices revealed her mission, it seems certain that the call of God was only made known to her gradually. But by May, 1428, she no longer doubted that she was bidden to go to the help of the king, and the voices became insistent, urging her to present herself to Robert Baudricourt, who commanded for Charles VII in the neighbouring town of Vaucouleurs. This journey she eventually accomplished a month later...

Given the practical and highly improbable success of Joan's visions, if I had to choose between her experiences and yours, I would choose hers.

Ghs

Damn it all, George, how many people do I have to slaughter before you'll take my revelation seriously?

You asked me before if I thought of myself as a singular messiah rather than a lowly dime-a-dozen prophet. I'm a media professional -- I think a pretty good one. I can talk before large crowds with no fear of public speaking. I'm good on a radio show and would feel good about doing more TV if I weren't so fucking fat. (I'm sure Buddha would have preferred radio to TV, also.) I can write fiction, nonfiction, and dramatic continuity. I've written both music and lyrics for songs. I can do music production and editing. I write poetry as well as technical monographs that have been published in academic journals and books. I've designed book covers and dust jackets. I'm one of the pioneers of the commercial bestselling eBook, written up in the Wall Street Journal for it as early as 1989. I've learned how to produce and direct movies and many post-production skills. I've learned a wide set of computer skills, including website design and Photoshop. I've designed my own DVD's and CD's, my own movie posters, flyers, and ads, can write press releases and ad copy, put videos on YouTube and Facebook, even do Xtranormal videos. I'm probably going to be teaching myself Auto-tune in the next few weeks, unless pre-production on my prophetic Alongside Night book-to-movie project gets in the way. I taught a graduate course for the New School to students going for a Masters in Media Studies -- and I don't even have a bachelor's degree.

Alongside Night is more popular and influential than it's ever been. I'll probably announce that there have been 250,000 downloads of the novel's free PDF within the week. (As of Saturday the number was 248,865, and I haven't checked Sunday's download figures yet.)

The episode I wrote for the Twilight Zone has some of the best comments on Youtube of anything I've ever received in my career.

I've won awards for my first and second novels, for journalism, for libertarian activism, and for the first independent feature film I wrote, produced, and directed.

I've reached the point in my career as a public speaker that I'm now getting invitations that pay my travel expenses.

I'm not exactly a lone voice crying in the wilderness. I have no sense of what my long-term influence will be but I think it's not safe to make a high-odds wager that I'm doomed to disappear into the dustbin of history.

Edited December 20, 2010 by J. Neil Schulman

[J Neil Schulman]

Here is my main frustration with direct revelation: how come God never "reveals" the cure for cancer to those lucky few who hear the call? Why are the revelations so often either self-serving, or generally useless to humanity?

Why doesn't a teacher hand out the answer sheet to students taking a test? Why do parents whose teenager asks for a car make the kid work a summer job before they'll help pay for it?

I propose that God's central intent with respect to humanity is to encourage thinking for yourself and growing into an adult with an independent mind and learned moral compass. I'm also confident that some breakthroughs in various fields of study, including oncology, have been "inspired."

With respect, Neil, I think the average cancer patient might find your response wanting, and hopeful for some accelerated "inspiration."

All of us live in bodies subject to disease. I'm morbidly obese and Type-II diabetic. Both my mother and sister are breast cancer survivors -- my mother both breast cancer and melanomas. My dad survived carcinoma to die of complications from Type-II diabetes. (Well, that's what the death certificate said; he lost his will to live when he was no longer able to play violin up to his lifelong virtuoso standards.)

The perspective on disease that I have, which differs from my old atheist view, is that having had out-of-body experiences I no longer expect my mind to die when my physical brain and body does. My body is mortal; I'm not.

And I don't think the average cancer patient will die when their body does, either.

[George H. Smith]

Damn it all, George, how many people do I have to slaughter before you'll take my revelation seriously?

You asked me before if I thought of myself as a singular messiah rather than a lowly dime-a-dozen prophet. I'm a media professional -- I think a pretty good one. I can talk before large crowds with no fear of public speaking. I'm good on a radio show and would feel good about doing more TV if I weren't so fucking fat. (I'm sure Buddha would have preferred radio to TV, also.) I can write fiction, nonfiction, and dramatic continuity. I've written both music and lyrics for songs. I can do music production and editing. I write poetry as well as technical monographs that have been published in academic journals and books. I've designed book covers and dust jackets. I'm one of the pioneers of the commercial bestselling eBook, written up in the Wall Street Journal for it as early as 1989. I've learned how to produce and direct movies and many post-production skills. I've learned a wide set of computer skills, including website design and Photoshop. I've designed my own DVD's and CD's, my own movie posters, flyers, and ads, can write press releases and ad copy, put videos on YouTube and Facebook, even do Xtranormal videos. I'm probably going to be teaching myself Auto-tune in the next few weeks, unless pre-production on my prophetic Alongside Night book-to-movie project gets in the way. I taught a graduate course for the New School to students going for a Masters in Media Studies -- and I don't even have a bachelor's degree.

Alongside Night is more popular and influential than it's ever been. I'll probably announce that there have been 250,000 downloads of the novel's free PDF within the week. (As of Saturday the number was 248,865, and I haven't checked Sunday's download figures yet.)

The spisode I wrote for the Twilight Zone has some of the best comments on Youtube of anything I've ever received in my career.

I've won awards for my first and second novels, for journalism, for libertarian activism, and for the first independent feature film I wrote, produced, and directed.

I've reached the point in my career as a public speaker that I'm now getting invitations that pay my travel expenses.

I'm not exactly a lone voice crying in the wilderness. I have no sense of what my long-term influence will be but I think it's not safe to make a high-odds wager that I'm doomed to disappear into the dustbin of history.

Sorry, but I fail to see the relevance of any of this. Are you attributing your successes to God?

If the U.S. were invaded by a foreign power, do you rule out a priori the possibility God would take an interest in this matter and possibly inspire someone to lead a fight against the invaders?. You said God is a libertarian. Is he also a pacifist?

Frankly, Neil, it is highly presumptuous of you to claim to know what God would and would not tell someone to do. Joan's experiences were as vivid and dramatic as yours, and there can be little doubt that she was as sincere as you are. So I ask the question once again: On what grounds do you reject Joan's mystical experiences as inauthentic? What did she do wrong that you did right? She saw very graphic images and heard very audible voices, and she proved successful, in spite of tremendous odds, when she did what God told her to do -- yet you seem to dismiss her accounts out of hand, without giving them serious consideration.

So, for the umpteenth time, why should we react any differently to your claims? If you do not grant credibility to Joan's reports, why should we grant credibility to yours? Will you say that Joan's experiences were not the same as yours? If so, how do you know that God communicates to people in exactly the same way on every occasion?

Ghs

[J Neil Schulman]

Damn it all, George, how many people do I have to slaughter before you'll take my revelation seriously?

You asked me before if I thought of myself as a singular messiah rather than a lowly dime-a-dozen prophet. I'm a media professional -- I think a pretty good one. I can talk before large crowds with no fear of public speaking. I'm good on a radio show and would feel good about doing more TV if I weren't so fucking fat. (I'm sure Buddha would have preferred radio to TV, also.) I can write fiction, nonfiction, and dramatic continuity. I've written both music and lyrics for songs. I can do music production and editing. I write poetry as well as technical monographs that have been published in academic journals and books. I've designed book covers and dust jackets. I'm one of the pioneers of the commercial bestselling eBook, written up in the Wall Street Journal for it as early as 1989. I've learned how to produce and direct movies and many post-production skills. I've learned a wide set of computer skills, including website design and Photoshop. I've designed my own DVD's and CD's, my own movie posters, flyers, and ads, can write press releases and ad copy, put videos on YouTube and Facebook, even do Xtranormal videos. I'm probably going to be teaching myself Auto-tune in the next few weeks, unless pre-production on my prophetic Alongside Night book-to-movie project gets in the way. I taught a graduate course for the New School to students going for a Masters in Media Studies -- and I don't even have a bachelor's degree.

Alongside Night is more popular and influential than it's ever been. I'll probably announce that there have been 250,000 downloads of the novel's free PDF within the week. (As of Saturday the number was 248,865, and I haven't checked Sunday's download figures yet.)

The episode I wrote for the Twilight Zone has some of the best comments on Youtube of anything I've ever received in my career.

I've won awards for my first and second novels, for journalism, for libertarian activism, and for the first independent feature film I wrote, produced, and directed.

I've reached the point in my career as a public speaker that I'm now getting invitations that pay my travel expenses.

I'm not exactly a lone voice crying in the wilderness. I have no sense of what my long-term influence will be but I think it's not safe to make a high-odds wager that I'm doomed to disappear into the dustbin of history.

Sorry, but I fail to see the relevance of any of this. Are you attributing your successes to God?

If the U.S. were invaded by a foreign power, do you rule out a priori the possibility God would take an interest in this matter and possibly inspire someone to lead a fight against the invaders?. You said God is a libertarian. Is he also a pacifist?

Frankly, Neil, it is highly presumptuous of you to claim to know what God would and would not tell someone to do. Joan's experiences were as vivid and dramatic as yours, and there can be little doubt that she was as sincere as you are. So I ask the question once again: On what grounds do you reject Joan's mystical experiences as inauthentic? What did she do wrong that you did right? She saw very graphic images and heard very audible voices, and she proved successful, in spite of tremendous odds, when she did what God told her to do -- yet you seem to dismiss her accounts out of hand, without giving them serious consideration.

So, for the umpteenth time, why should we react any differently to your claims? If you do not grant credibility to Joan's reports, why should we grant credibility to yours? Will you say that Joan's experiences were not the same as yours? If so, how do you know that God communicates to people in exactly the same way on every occasion?

Ghs

Sorry, but I fail to see the relevance of any of this. Are you attributing your successes to God?

You were basing your judgment that Joan's revelations were more likely authentic than mine on the basis of the unlikeliness of a 14-year-old girl successfully leading an army into battle. Fine. What are the odds that a first novelist whose science-fiction novel after 18 rejections -- and originally scheduled to be published as a category science-fiction mass-market paperback, which will get no serious reviews -- ends up published in hardcover with endorsements on the dust-jacket not only from a Nobel laureate in economics but with a statement from the most-respected English novelist and literary critic at the time who writes that he wished he'd written it?

I do know that Anthony Burgess expressed a belief in God during the time he endorsed a first novel by a young American libertarian atheist.

If the U.S. were invaded by a foreign power, do you rule out a priori the possibility God would take an interest in this matter and possibly inspire someone to lead a fight against the invaders?. You said God is a libertarian. Is he also a pacifist?

God is not a pacifist. If another George Washington steps up I suspect God would back his play. But I don't expect that maintaining the current highly degraded institutional structure would be the end game of divine intervention. But that's just my personal opinion; I have no current info on the subject. I'll have a better sense once I know whether a movie production of Alongside Night appears to me to be one of God's chosen projects. I've been frustrated but it might be a matter of timing with me being a player in an overall strategy I can't see.

Frankly, Neil, it is highly presumptuous of you to claim to know what God would and would not tell someone to do. Joan's experiences were as vivid and dramatic as yours, and there can be little doubt that she was as sincere as you are. So I ask the question once again: On what grounds do you reject Joan's mystical experiences as inauthentic? What did she do wrong that you did right? She saw very graphic images and heard very audible voices, and she proved successful, in spite of tremendous odds, when she did what God told her to do -- yet you seem to dismiss her accounts out of hand, without giving them serious consideration.

I don't so presume -- not with Joan, not with Buddha, not even with the football coach who says his team's victory was based on plays he received in a divinely-inspired dream. I don't see it as part of my job to affirm or deny revelations claimed by others, except when such claims of revelation embrace doing obvious evil. I would deny that Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden or Fidel Castro were following divine instructions.

If you asked me whether I think George Washington or Martin Luther King, Jr., or Nelson Mandela acted with divine approval I'd say I believed that to be true. I'm simply not familiar enough with the consequences of Joan's military battles in the overall scheme of things to offer an educated opinion.

So, for the umpteenth time, why should we react any differently to your claims? If you do not grant credibility to Joan's reports, why should we grant credibility to yours? Will you say that Joan's experiences were not the same as yours? If so, how do you know that God communicates to people in exactly the same way on every occasion?

Because my lifelong adult cause is seeding greater individual liberty, justice, and decency rather than any religious doctrine or political agenda. Because I demand no one follow me on faith. Because I advocate relying on reason no less today than I did when I was an atheist. Because I do not regard atheism as unreasonable if one has not been given a compelling personal experience necessitating one to reason one's own way away from it. Because I present my reasons why I regard God's existence as a real person as not violating Aristotle's and Rand's axioms, nor violating of a reasoned understanding of natural law.

I don't know how God communicates with others. I do know how and what he communicated to me. I do consider the possibility that the reason I was invited into this discussion is to clear some intellectual debris so he can engage in future discussion with you.

Edited December 20, 2010 by J. Neil Schulman

[George H. Smith]

Sorry, but I fail to see the relevance of any of this. Are you attributing your successes to God?

You were basing your judgment that Joan's revelations were more likely authentic than mine on the basis of the unlikeliness of a 14-year-old girl successfully leading an army into battle. Fine. What are the odds that a first novelist whose science-fiction novel after 18 rejections -- and originally scheduled to be published as a category science-fiction mass-market paperback, which will get no serious reviews -- ends up published in hardcover with endorsements on the dust-jacket not only from a Nobel laureate in economics but with a statement from the most-respected English novelist and literary critic at the time who writes that he wished he'd written it?

Again, are you attributing these successes to God? Many writers have been more successful than you. Did God favor them even more than he favored you? Did God help Ayn Rand, one of the most influential atheists of modern times, more than he has helped you?

If the U.S. were invaded by a foreign power, do you rule out a priori the possibility God would take an interest in this matter and possibly inspire someone to lead a fight against the invaders?. You said God is a libertarian. Is he also a pacifist?

God is not a pacifist. If another George Washington steps up I suspect God would back his play. But I don't expect that maintaining the current highly degraded institutional structure would be the end game of divine intervention. Bu that's just my personal opinion; I have no current info on the subject. I'll have a better sense once I know whether a movie production of Alongside Night appears to me to be one of God's chosen projects. I've been frustrated but it might be a matter of timing with me being a player in an overall strategy I can't see.

I sometimes don't know when to take you seriously. Do you seriously mean to say that your movie might be "one of God's chosen projects"? -- that God actually takes an interest in movies?

Frankly, Neil, it is highly presumptuous of you to claim to know what God would and would not tell someone to do. Joan's experiences were as vivid and dramatic as yours, and there can be little doubt that she was as sincere as you are. So I ask the question once again: On what grounds do you reject Joan's mystical experiences as inauthentic? What did she do wrong that you did right? She saw very graphic images and heard very audible voices, and she proved successful, in spite of tremendous odds, when she did what God told her to do -- yet you seem to dismiss her accounts out of hand, without giving them serious consideration.

I don't so presume -- not with Joan, not with Buddha, not even with the football coach who says his team's victory was based on plays he received in a divinely-inspired dream. I don't see it as part of my job to affirm or deny revelations claimed by others, except when such claims of revelation embrace doing obvious evil. I would deny that Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden or Fidel Castro were following divine instructions.

This is "not your job" unless you decide to advertise your experience and expect others to take you seriously. Then it is part of your job, philosophically speaking.

So, for the umpteenth time, why should we react any differently to your claims? If you do not grant credibility to Joan's reports, why should we grant credibility to yours? Will you say that Joan's experiences were not the same as yours? If so, how do you know that God communicates to people in exactly the same way on every occasion?

Because my lifelong adult cause is seeding greater individual liberty, justice, and decency rather than any religious doctrine or political agenda. Because I demand no one follow me on faith. Because I advocate relying on reason no less today than I did when I was an atheist. Because I do not regard atheism as unreasonable if one has not been given a compelling personal experience necessitating one to reason one's own way away from it. Because I present my reasons why I regard God's existence as a real person as not violating Aristotle's and Rand's axioms, nor violating of a reasoned understanding of natural law.

Okay, so you don't "demand" that people follow you on faith, but what do you reasonably expect them to do upon learning of your experiences? Given your own reaction to the reported mystical experiences of others, the most you could possibly expect is for them to shrug and say, "Maybe Neil is a lunatic or maybe he is not. I don't know, and it is not my job to find out."

Ghs

[william.scherk]

Why not a third interpretation choice, or more?"

Like what? It's a simple either/or with a sharply excluded middle.

I disagree entirely. In the recorded conversations you lay out only two options for yourself: god's visitation is real or you were crazy.

Either someone objectively real who thinks he's God was in extraordinary communication with me and temporarily provided me with supercognition, or the experience was objectively not real -- a medically caused break with reality, a hallucination, a waking dream, a failure of my mind to distinguish between reality and the completely imaginary.

I see that now you depart from the two dramatic options. A "medically caused" break with reality is not psychotic. A hallucination is not necessarily psychotic. A failure to distinguish reality from imagination does not imply craziness . . .

You were in a paranoid state before the mind meld. You were starving yourself. You were dehydrated. You had always had 'psychic' beliefs. You had had a previous 'encounter' with god nine years previous.

And then, in the aftermath, "after this experience, I found myself in the Emergency Room, had to rehydrated again with an intravenous drip."

Aside from your position as a libertarian/Rand admirer, there doesn't seem to be much out of the ordinary in your reported experience, in terms of other reported 'mystical experience.' The hallmarks of a conversion experience are strong in your case.

Except that most everything about what I report on my experience is unreported in the accounts of others' claiming divine contact, and my experience prompted me to convert to nothing.

Not at all true. The hallmarks of a 'conversion experience' are found in your experience. From a state of agnosticism you experience ecstacy, and you became a believer in gods. You even refer to this experience as being 'born again.'

Now you told George that "There was nothing about my contact with God that was ineffable to me," yet in the dialogues you said "Because what I am able to do — and it’s hard to describe this even today because the words don’t really match any other experience that either I have had or you have had — presumably" and in a latter comment you say "Words are inadequate to describe what was going on. That’s something that I cannot emphasize enough. That the verbal forms that we use are entirely inadequate to describe what I was experiencing."

How is that not ineffable, Neil?

What is the problem with seeing your experience as similar (not identical) to that of other folks? I just don't understand why you feel that all the other experiences are unreal . . .

"I believe most such contacts are either entirely unreal, or are unreal by the point at which someone tries to explain them, inasmuch as a multi-dimensional cognitive experience does not translate easily into language presupposing singular body identities, three-dimensional perception, linear time, and other data challenging for the average human brain system software to interpret."

Edited December 21, 2010 by william.scherk

[J Neil Schulman]

Sorry, but I fail to see the relevance of any of this. Are you attributing your successes to God?

You were basing your judgment that Joan's revelations were more likely authentic than mine on the basis of the unlikeliness of a 14-year-old girl successfully leading an army into battle. Fine. What are the odds that a first novelist whose science-fiction novel after 18 rejections -- and originally scheduled to be published as a category science-fiction mass-market paperback, which will get no serious reviews -- ends up published in hardcover with endorsements on the dust-jacket not only from a Nobel laureate in economics but with a statement from the most-respected English novelist and literary critic at the time who writes that he wished he'd written it?

Again, are you attributing these successes to God? Many writers have been more successful than you. Did God favor them even more than he favored you? Did God help Ayn Rand, one of the most influential atheists of modern times, more than he has helped you?

If the U.S. were invaded by a foreign power, do you rule out a priori the possibility God would take an interest in this matter and possibly inspire someone to lead a fight against the invaders?. You said God is a libertarian. Is he also a pacifist?

God is not a pacifist. If another George Washington steps up I suspect God would back his play. But I don't expect that maintaining the current highly degraded institutional structure would be the end game of divine intervention. Bu that's just my personal opinion; I have no current info on the subject. I'll have a better sense once I know whether a movie production of Alongside Night appears to me to be one of God's chosen projects. I've been frustrated but it might be a matter of timing with me being a player in an overall strategy I can't see.

I sometimes don't know when to take you seriously. Do you seriously mean to say that your movie might be "one of God's chosen projects"? -- that God actually takes an interest in movies?

Frankly, Neil, it is highly presumptuous of you to claim to know what God would and would not tell someone to do. Joan's experiences were as vivid and dramatic as yours, and there can be little doubt that she was as sincere as you are. So I ask the question once again: On what grounds do you reject Joan's mystical experiences as inauthentic? What did she do wrong that you did right? She saw very graphic images and heard very audible voices, and she proved successful, in spite of tremendous odds, when she did what God told her to do -- yet you seem to dismiss her accounts out of hand, without giving them serious consideration.

I don't so presume -- not with Joan, not with Buddha, not even with the football coach who says his team's victory was based on plays he received in a divinely-inspired dream. I don't see it as part of my job to affirm or deny revelations claimed by others, except when such claims of revelation embrace doing obvious evil. I would deny that Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden or Fidel Castro were following divine instructions.

This is "not your job" unless you decide to advertise your experience and expect others to take you seriously. Then it is part of your job, philosophically speaking.

So, for the umpteenth time, why should we react any differently to your claims? If you do not grant credibility to Joan's reports, why should we grant credibility to yours? Will you say that Joan's experiences were not the same as yours? If so, how do you know that God communicates to people in exactly the same way on every occasion?

Because my lifelong adult cause is seeding greater individual liberty, justice, and decency rather than any religious doctrine or political agenda. Because I demand no one follow me on faith. Because I advocate relying on reason no less today than I did when I was an atheist. Because I do not regard atheism as unreasonable if one has not been given a compelling personal experience necessitating one to reason one's own way away from it. Because I present my reasons why I regard God's existence as a real person as not violating Aristotle's and Rand's axioms, nor violating of a reasoned understanding of natural law.

Okay, so you don't "demand" that people follow you on faith, but what do you reasonably expect them to do upon learning of your experiences? Given your own reaction to the reported mystical experiences of others, the most you could possibly expect is for them to shrug and say, "Maybe Neil is a lunatic or maybe he is not. I don't know, and it is not my job to find out."

Ghs

Again, are you attributing these successes to God? Many writers have been more successful than you. Did God favor them even more than he favored you? Did God help Ayn Rand, one of the most influential atheists of modern times, more than he has helped you?

Let me put it this way, George. I don't blame any of my failures on God. I don't have any insight on whether he's pulling any strings for me. I have joked in the past that I'd be surprised if God had much influence in Hollywood. And what would be success by God's standards -- 20 weeks on The New York Times best-sellers list and my depositing fat royalty checks, or Rich Paul being inspired by reading Alongside Night while in jail in Keene, New Hampshire? How many copies of Thoreau's Civil Disobedience needed to be sold to have more impact than the single copy read by Mohandas K. Gandhi?

I will say it wouldn't surprise me to discover that God had helped the careers of either Ayn Rand or George H. Smith. I can offer personal testimony to having found important values of both of your works. And I don't feel I have to win a pissing contest against the sales figures or ephemeral success of any other artist to consider doing my work worthwhile.

I sometimes don't know when to take you seriously. Do you seriously mean to say that your movie might be "one of God's chosen projects"? -- that God actually takes an interest in movies?

Jesus H. Christ, George H. Smith! Do you actually live on this planet? Who doesn't consider movies major vehicles for spreading what that famous atheist, Richard Dawkins, termed memes? Yes, I fucking well consider that a movie of Alongside Night might be important enough for God to have a preference as to whether J. Neil Schulman gets to spread libertarian memes on 4,000 movie screens followed by DVD/Blu-Ray and via Apple iPads, and possibly triggering the novel showing up in bookstores and libraries again, and a few more million downloads of the novel off the web, and a graphic novel and massively multiplayer online role-playing game and weekly TV series, and triggering massive interest in reading Human Action and the New Libertarian Manifesto and maybe even The Selfish Gene and ATCAG.

This is "not your job" unless you decide to advertise your experience and expect others to take you seriously. Then it is part of your job, philosophically speaking.

I disagree. It's up to others to evaluate the validity and utility of my work. And I have no control over what anyone else thinks of me, anyway.

Okay, so you don't "demand" that people follow you on faith, but what do you reasonably expect them to do upon learning of your experiences? Given your own reaction to the reported mystical experiences of others, the most you could possibly expect is for them to shrug and say, "Maybe Neil is a lunatic or maybe he is not. I don't know, and it is not my job to find out."

I reasonably expect most people won't take them seriously, because of being married to various dogmas and doctrines, or uninterested in anything other than their immediate interests, or cynical, or not intellectuals, or not readers, etc. How many of your readers were converted to atheism by reading you, George? Give me a minimum figure needed for you to consider your work successful.

I will say this, George. Given our shared history, if there's anyone on this planet whose job it is to make a thorough effort to discover whether I'm a lunatic or someone with new information impacting the question of whether God exists or even can exist, isn't it you?