I posted a version of this in my response to Don Hughes the other day, but I think it needs a modified version that applies every time you talk to someone saying god speaks to them.

We’ve all heard this, usually as evidence for god’s existence. Consider the implications of it.

God didn’t speak to the followers of every other deity throughout history. How could he if the god of the bible is the only true god as the book claims? The people who heard the voices of those gods were either mistaken, deluded, or outright crazy, because they can’t have been right. For the Christian to be right, this must be the case.

God also doesn’t speak to every Muslim that lives today or to every Muslim that has lived since the 7th century. Whatever they were hearing (and telling us they heard), it wasn’t god. They were either mistaken, deluded, or outright crazy – every last one of them without exception. God didn’t speak to the pious men who believed in Jesus as well; men who were certain god commanded them to stoke the fires of the Inquisition.

Nor did god speak to Andrea Yates, the Christian woman who drowned her children because god told her to. God spoke to Abraham and commanded him to murder his son, but not to Andrea. And what Christian believes Daphne Spurlock, the deeply Christian woman who slit her son’s throat at the behest of god’s voice? So while god truly spoke to Jephthah, binding him to immolate his daughter, Daphne was just hearing voices. God also didn’t speak to the Neumanns, who watched their daughter die of a treatable illness rather than test god’s benevolence by taking her to the doctor. Truly, like literally every other follower of every other religions, even Christians can make the mistake of thinking they’re really hearing god’s voice.

Neither, we presume, does god speak to the other denominations of Christianity, who are hearing different things about god’s will. So it’s not just every believer of every god throughout history, each thinking they were sincerely in communion with their god or gods, who was genuinely mistaken, clearly most Christians are making the mistake of thinking they’re really hearing god’s voice.

All of these people were either confused or dishonest.

So who does god really speak to? Well, god speaks to whatever Christian is presently making that claim, that’s who. So many fakers, so many people fallaciously thinking they communicate with god, but this believer? They’re the real deal. They see almost everybody insisting they had the ear of god being sincerely mistaken, and haven’t thought for even a second that they might be in the same boat. No, god speaks to humankind through Moses, through Abraham, through Jephthah, through only particular filicidal people millennia ago, through Jesus…and through whatever Christian you are speaking to at the time.

It’s a pity god only seems to convey his will to these people, but never a good reason for anybody else to believe this person isn’t just like every other believer: either deluded, lying, or crazy.