Regurgitating A Religious Experience

[MySockSmell]

If somone visits a restaurant then throws up in their mouth, they never think of it as tasting the taste of someone else's food.  Likewise, if someone visits a church then mentally regurgitates memories of what they heard, there is no reason to believe they are thinking the thoughts of someone else's God. 

[MySockSmell]

Believers always end up appealing to experience and testimony when trying to convert others.  It boils down to, "Just believe my testimony and you can experience the same God I do."  That's no different from saying, "I have a headache.  Just believe in my headache and you can experience the same headache too."  "I sense my own presence.  Just believe in my sense of presence and you can experience my sense of presence too."  "I believe in the reality of my mind.  Believe in the reality of my mind and you can experience the reality of my mind too." 

 

When believers testify to each other that they have the same Jesus or converts believe in Jesus from someone else's testimony, it is no more plausible than sharing anything related to the unique first person perspective that can't be shared.  Nobody has ever taken their headaches out of their heads for comparison.  Same with the sense of God's presence.  Also, the question remains; when God is manifesting his presence in a believer's life, just whose life is the believer manifesting his/her presence in?  It's an identity/difference paradox without a satisfactory answer. 

 

So, what makes believers pretend they are playing "show and tell" by testifying about religious experience, when all they are actually doing is "telling"?  It seems to me the mechanism of attributing a single shared religious experience to minds in more than one location at the same time is similar to that used to suspend disbelief in the act of ventriloquism.  Lots of talking hand puppets all claiming to be hearing the same puppet master's voice and reading the same puppet master's mind.