Evidence for God

I only read the first dozen posts before deciding to answer this. Someone said that typically it's simply what religion you are raised with that determines this. True enough, but there are a lot of exceptions to this. Millions of exceptions, in fact.I based my choice of Jesus Christ, made at age 21, on numerous pieces of evidence. I was moved by the fact that few prisoners of war lost their faith in God in prison. I took into account that the apostles were somehow so convinced of the divinity of a man they basically lived with that they gave their lives for that belief. I was impacted by the description of crucifixion in Psalm 22, hundreds of years before crucifixion, and how similar it was to a description I heard a priest repeat of Nazi tests on how people die on a cross. Finally, I had a very strange spiritual experience involving voices and shadows when a church I visited was praying.When I finally decided, in response to all these things, to acknowledge that Jesus was really the Son of God and change my life, the experience that followed was incredible. I promised myself that day, 26 years ago now, that I would always remember it as a miracle.To save time, I will simply say that the last 26 years have given me no reason to doubt that faith. Answers to prayer, transformations God has worked in people, and numerous "words in due time," where God provided guidance through some situation, have all left me convinced that my belief is accurate.

True enough. However, it's the emotion on the unbelief side of the equation often astounds me, including yours. Science is so good at being emotionless, yet on the subject of evidence that did not come from a lab, the extreme statements made by skeptics astound me. Thank God they don't run the justice system, or no criminal at all would ever go to jail. It's one thing to question evidence that didn't come from a clinical study, it's quite another to write it off as nothing.By the way, there's very little mention of anything that qualifies as "emotion" in my previous post.

I'm not astounded by skepticism. I've been astounded by the emotion in it. What it looks like to me is that this is exactly the issue, but it is avoided by what pretends to be rational skepticism. I have no problem with skepticism. I have rarely encountered it, however. Instead, I have encountered dogmatic assertions about things that are not possible.For example, almost anything is a more practical philosophy--though not necessarily infinitely more so--than being deluded by emotions. However, the existence of emotion doesn't equate with delusion. It only means you must be careful for it. There has been a lot of emotion, and a lot of "gut feelings" involved in major discoveries, even the "infinitely practical" ones. Emotion exists even where there's right thinking.The fact is, the faith I live is practical, and there's plenty of evidence for it. Some of that evidence is weak and inconclusive. Some of it causes real pause for thought. The fact is, though, that it works, it works well, and in comparing the results of "rational skepticism" with the faith I live...well, what I find is that there's not very many rational skeptics to compare with.Finally, your extreme statement that "this entire passage is pure emotional reactions" I don't believe to be true, and it represents exactly the problem. While claiming rational skepticism, you simply paint with a broad brush, make a sweeping generalization, and address nothing.The first time I really had to look at evolution I was moved, stunned, and had an extremely intense--and quite normal, considering my situation--emotional reaction to a description of how the eye could evolve from a simple light-sensing cell. Since I had an emotional reaction, and since there were no clinical studies conducted, should I ignore that fact that nature provides an amazing (emotion again) series of steps from light cells to a fully-functioning eye or say it's not evidence of evolution?