................how one can know if this "communication" is actually real and from this god, or if it concerns just hallucination, delusion or honest mistakes.
I asked several times now HOW you can know this, but you kinda dodged it every time. The closest you came is something like "i know because I know", by calling it "unmistakable" that this communication comes from the god you happen to believe in.
Actually, I have never said anything even remotely like "I know because I know,' and I certainly don't remember using the word 'unmistakable."
For one thing, nobody is more careful with the word 'know' than I am. I KNOW very little. For instance, while I may KNOW that the sun was shining about eight minutes ago, because, well, I can see the light of it out my window, I do not KNOW that it is shining right now. The odds are very, very good that it is, but there will come a time when some critter will look out and see the sunshine...not aware that the sun exploded four minutes previously.
I BELIEVE very strongly that God is, and what's more, I believe that what I think about Him is, for the most part, accurate. I believe this because I have personally read scriptures (from many different cultures, not just my own), studied, thought...and prayed. I believe that I have received answers to my prayers. My beliefs; very subjective. Very personal. I can't prove it to you, and I see no need to try. If you want to find out, then you need to do your own looking, reading, studying and praying. It's not science and was never meant to be so.
My own personal beliefs, not shared by many theists or even by many Christians (though it is shared by a whole bunch of Latter-day saints) is that we are, quite literally, the children of God. We are SUPPOSED to go find out stuff using the scientific method, or through science, however you want to put it. It's one of the reasons we are here. Nothing we can discover will prove that He is, OR prove that He isn't; that's not the point.
I'm not a theist because I believe that science proves His existence. It can't. That's not what science is for, and those who think that they can find scientific evidence of God are really missing the point.
Science is only one way of looking at the world. It's the best way to identify physical processes, but it doesn't even address spiritual, subjective, experiences. That's fine.
The problem only lies when people insist that if science doesn't address it, it cannot exist. The folks who insist that all things can be explained through subjective spiritual experiences are equally mistaken. They are two very different things, very different avenues of exploration, and the most important thing to remember is this:
One does not invalidate, or contradict, the other. If they seem to..THEN there is a problem, and the problem is that someone is trying to use one thing inappropriately, like the guy who wants to measure the depth of a lake with a teaspoon. Use the right tools for the right purpose.
Consider the difference between ice at the north pole and ice in a freezer.
Which is natural, and which was "done" by a conscious entity?
Does it matter? The composition of the ice is the same, either way. It formed the same way: water + cold = ice.
My grandfather used to go to Bear Lake (not Great Bear Lake, Bear Lake, which is much larger and deeper, just so you know) in the winter to harvest blocks of ice. He'd haul them back to his ice house and store it in sawdust. That ice would last through the end of August, most years. In fact, he kept doing that even after the town started providing frozen locker services for the hunters.
I never could tell the difference between the ice cream made with ice from his ice house and the ice from the freezer. Do you think you could have?
It's all ice.
Consider plastic.
Suppose Curiosity tomorrow finds plastic on Mars. What do you think would the reaction be and why?
Trust me on this one: the atheists would be all excited about extra terrestrials and nobody would be thinking God Did it. The Green Peace folks would be shouting about how SEE???? the MARTIANS KILLED THEIR PLANET WITH PLASTIC!!!
Again, if you're going to reduce this God's role to something that is utterly useless and meaningless, then sure it won't make a difference.
I didn't say it didn't make a difference, or that His role is useless and meaningless. Far from it. I believe that there is more to being us than the physical world around us, is all.
But realise that at that point, it's akin to saying that undetectable pink graviton pixies are responsible for gravity. No, it won't change anything about our understanding of mass, gravitational forces, relativity or our calculations to see at what speed a certain hammer will hit the ground when dropped from height X in a vacuum.
Because meaningless and useless unfalsifiable things, don't have any effect on anything at all. Or otherwise said: they have the same effect on reality as non-existant things.
Might make a difference to our moral and ethical codes, the way we treat each other, and what we believe about whether there is a reason for our being here.
So what is the religious methodology used to "figure out" that god did anything at all and why?
There isn't one. That's what science is for...except for the 'why' part. Science doesn't even attempt to address the 'why.'
So, you're a christian, right?
I think so...though plenty of other Christians disagree with me on that.
What's your stance on the supposed "miracles" in the bible attributed to the various characters therein?
If you believe some of these events happened, was god actually required for any of them? If yes, why?
Well, yes...I believe in most of 'em. I think that some of 'em are reported a bit, er, skewed, but ???
As for whether God was 'required,' If He was responsible for them, then He was responsible for them. I wasn't REQUIRED to breastfeed my children, but I am the one who did it.
I don't know if ONLY God could have, say, been responsible for the virgin birth of Jesus--after all, WE can do it ourselves. Quick outpatient procedure. There's even a stupid TV show about how it could happen now. The point is, I believe it happened and He's the One responsible.
I don't see the need to debunk all the miracles in the bible, quite frankly. Most of 'em are reported by people who didn't know what they were looking at, and don't make a difference to the point of their retelling, and given that finding out that one of 'em was actually possible is generally used by atheists who crow 'see? if WE could do it, that means God did NOT do it, and therefore, no God."
I don't care. I don't believe in God because of science, and I don't use science to debunk God. The two areas of study are completely different.