The objection is not that all thoughts are unreliable in every way (in which case your rebuttal may be valid), the objection is that thoughts in general, by themselves, have not proven to be a reliable means of gaining knowledge about physical (not even to mention spiritual) reality. If you want to argue that thoughts constituting the witness of the Holy Spirit is reliable, then you'd have to prove that.

As an example, if I think "there is a monkey in that tree", this in itself is not reliable. I would also need to see the monkey, or have some other evidence of the presence of the monkey (also note that the existence of monkeys in trees in general doesn't prove that there's a monkey in that tree at this very moment). Reasoning and abstract thinking (for which you're saying "is that thought reliable") are distinct from this, and these have proven to be reliable in their own right.

I'm sure I've also said something similar in the past (in addition to the objections I've raised to your exploration of the "hazard of skeptical arguments").

This is very different from Descartes' argument, because all Descartes concluded is that there's some non-descript entity responsible for generating your thoughts (it is "I think, therefore I am", without "... a human being living on Earth" added at the end).

You seem to be trying to conclude a whole lot more: seemingly that ALL thoughts are reliable - a view I'm sure you don't hold - see the monkey example above, but yet this is the only conclusion I can draw based on what you said. You didn't present any criteria or argument for why specific thoughts (that include the witness of the Holy Spirit) are reliable, but instead you just made an argument about thoughts in general.

You seem to be equivocating different definitions of "unreliable" (something I'm sure I've also pointed out in the past). The question at hand is about the reliability of evidence, as in how trustable is something to tell us about reality. But your language example is about reliability as in effectiveness: how effective are you at using Japanese. Those are fundamentally different.

You could, however, say something similar about vision: your vision starts off being unreliable, which is perhaps evidenced by e.g. children seeing monsters in their closet. Your vision becomes a more reliable means of evidence over time, not through practice, as language does, but as you compare it to other pieces of evidence to find out when it is reliable and when it isn't reliable.

This analogy may present a problem for many though, as these experiences often seem to be considered self-contained pieces of evidence that need no external verification (at least not beyond "monkeys exist", in the "monkey in a tree" analogy above).

It is indeed possible, if God exists, that he could "skip the middleman of our eyes & ears, and communicate directly with the mind", but the issue is whether we're justified in trusting the latter. An all-powerful and all-knowing god would certainly know a lot more than we ever could about standards of evidence and justified belief (and about what standards we ourselves hold), and should therefore easily be able to meet standards we consider to be reasonable.

Magnitude is irrelevant as to whether or not something classifies as a feeling (labour pains do, indeed, classify as feelings, as any other pain does... although the lines may get a bit blurry when touch or pain is concerned). A "feeling" is simply a classification of an experience which falls outside of sensory input and conscious thoughts.

And in the same breath that one might say that the witness of the Holy Spirit falls into a separate category, I would say there's no reliable evidence for the existence of such a category (and, in any case, this could be considered semantics, in that I just want a term to refer to experiences which fall outside of sensory input and conscious thoughts, whether you'd call that "feelings" or not).

Revelations/words of knowledge may provide an external means of verifying a spiritual experience, but then we'd be going beyond simply thoughts and feelings, and we can begin to judge the reliability of such thoughts and feelings. In such cases, as we should evaluate all evidence, we'd also need to consider what the simplest explanation for that revelation is, rather than treating it necessarily as proof of God.

@NotThatGuy this isn't the argument I'm making. The case for why we should trust our perceptions in the absence of a defeater would be another matter; I'm merely responding to the objection that thoughts are unreliable - as a blanket statement, it doesn't work.

Language does in fact inform our awareness of the reality in the outside world - in terms of qunatity it is our principal source of information

I'm touching my phone right now and I can definitely "feel" it...so yeah, "feeling" is a nebulous word, hence my comments on its inadequacy. The language analogy can be applied to both thoughts & feelings...which in everyday use definitely have some overlap in meaning

I recognize you have plenty of other objections (many of which we've discussed before); this post simply answers one common objection.

I've shared my rebuttals to justified true belief and verificationism previously; they are both self-refuting. I've also shared why a loving God could give us more evidence but doesn't overdo it, because He cares about us.

I prefer to level with people. I remain concerned with the way you concluded our prior debate, which at the moment limits my interest in debating again.

@HoldToTheRod "I'm merely responding to the objection that thoughts are unreliable - as a blanket statement, it doesn't work" - and that, in a nutshell, is perhaps the biggest problem with your arguments. Logically they're generally fine, but you're rebutting misrepresentations, and the weakest possible versions, of the arguments of others. In this particular case, the person you're referencing in your question is me, and I'd probably know what my own position is.

@HoldToTheRod Nor do I feel inclined to have another discussion where the other person keeps bringing up a point after I've told them probably well over half a dozen times to drop it.

(I should add that even "reasoning and abstract thinking" is far from fully reliable: we have developed systems that should make it a lot more reliable, but just pick just about any 2 people having a discussion about anything and you'll find 2 individuals each convinced that they're right and the other person is wrong. You need to go down to a very, very basic level in order for most people to agree on even those types of thoughts.)

@NotThatGuy I agree that the argument to which I responded was a weak argument. More nuanced arguments on unreliable thoughts exist, but they evaluate claims on their own merits rather than through sweeping generalizations.

@NotThatGuy For what it's worth--and I realize it might not be worth much--irritation was not the intent. Calling an opponents "drops" in each rebuttal is standard procedure in a debate.

@HoldToTheRod I imagine respecting what your debate opponent wants to and doesn't want to discuss is also standard procedure in a debate. But the rules of formal debate is less important to me than the general social norms of everyday conversation, where continuing to scratch at an issue after you've been asked to drop it half a dozen times certainly isn't acceptable behaviour.

@HoldToTheRod So... whose argument are you responding to then? Rebutting an argument that no-one is making, that sounds a lot like what people are actually saying, only serves as a cheap victory that creates a divide between disagreeing parties, by having side A feel like side B is a lot less reasonable than they actually are, while side B feels like side A either doesn't listen at all or is just intentionally deceptive.

"Rebutting an argument that no-one is making" ... or a weak version of the argument, instead of the strongest version ...