When God speaks to people

I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires.
- Susan B Anthony, reformer and suffragist (1820-1906)


When someone reasons something through consciously, we call it thinking. When someone does the same thing, only unconsciously, where one part of the brain works on it while other parts think about something else, some ascribe mystic powers to that person.

The brain has two distinct halves, each of which may think about something different at times. When such an event occurs, we should be careful about believing those who claim that God has spoken to the quieter half of the brain.

Everyone has these experiences. It's how our sophisticated brain functions. It's physiology.

Just because we don't understand it does not mean that we have the right to claim that God has spoken to us, that God has intervened. God has no reason to sneak uninvited and unexpectedly into the quiet half of someone's brain.

We don't need to believe anyone who makes mystical claims based on his own ignorance of how his own brain functions.

Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems
www.billallin.com