[mrnoodle]

That's a rather cavalier handling of someone's opinion on deity and personal worth don't you think?

Maybe. As cavalier as "pfft. Anyone who believes in something that I haven't personally experienced is 'ignorant'"

So what you're saying is that the only reason you believe in Jesus is because it makes you feel warm and fuzzy inside?

I rarely, if ever, feel warm and fuzzy. You'll have to reread what I've said about why I believe, but what I get out of it is peace in the face of hard times. When something happens that I have no control over, I don't ask big bubba Jesus to come in and kick ass for me, I ask for the wisdom to react correctly and the peace to get me through it in as good a shape as possible.

The only problem with that is deciding how to differentiate an unsubstantiated aural hallucination from the Voice of God(tm).

I've never heard the Voice(tm). I've been strongly led by conscience to do certain things, even when they seem illogical at the time. That 'conscience' is what I believe to be the holy spirit. It's different than the normal conscience we think of that tells us "you shouldn't run that stop sign, that's against the law." It's more along the line of intuition, but with a deeper subtext - this so-called voice never tells you to do anything that's against the word of God, and your immediate instinct is to ignore it, because it almost always requires you to do something that you selfishly don't want to do.

It has nothing to do with self-validation or comfort, everything to do with doing what God wants. When a Christian does what God wants, they get peace. It's a good trade.