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I am looking for a short story I read in the mid to late '90s - part of an anthology.
The story is about scientists who are attempting to make contact with God - they eventually do, but the scientists wonder whether it was a good idea or not, and worry that they may possibly have drawn attention to themselves that they should not have.
I remember that the scientist who makes contact is in vat of some type.
There is a story called Gateway of the Mind on the Creepypasta web site that is close to your description. But it was written in 2009 so it's a decade out and not in an anthology. Still it is close enough that it's worth mentioning.
In 1983, a team of deeply pious scientists conducted a radical experiment in an undisclosed facility. The scientists had theorized that a human without access to any senses or ways to perceive stimuli would be able to perceive the presence of God. They believed that the five senses clouded our awareness of eternity, and without them, a human could actually establish contact with God by thought. An elderly man who claimed to have “nothing left to live for” was the only test subject to volunteer. To purge him of all his senses, the scientists performed a complex operation in which every sensory nerve connection to the brain was surgically severed. Although the test subject retained full muscular function, he could not see, hear, taste, smell, or feel. With no possible way to communicate with or even sense the outside world, he was alone with his thoughts.
