I was going to make a point, but Antonio (who recently went back to the original nickname, it seems ooh I hadn’t noticed!) already made it.
But here’s an example of what he says. So you have a partner, right? A girlfriend or a boyfriend or whatever. And you love them, dearly. You love being with them, talking to them, you’d let go of a bunch of things for them and not in the “make sacrifices” sense of letting go, as you’d be glad to do so. But still, they don’t seem to realize you love them. They keep asking: do you love me?, but is this for real?, you want to see other people, don’t you?, do you think I’m ugly? My question is: how do you feel? Well, whenever this happens to me, here’s how I feel: like an idiot. So I love a person, deeply, and try to show it to them, not as an effort, but because I love them so much I’ve come to live my life so as to show my love. And still they can’t see it? So all the things I doing, all I feel when I’m with that person— is it all worthless? How can they trash it so much?
Now lets say there is a god, and the god is somewhat like that “god of love” image you people have of your own gods, our creator and father or mother and whatnot. Right? Now, they probably feel just like the “you in a relationship” does: in dear love, an impulse to give without expecting anything in return; they made a whole world without a single evidence of their existence, performed the miracle of life and watches us without ever requiring anything from anyone, without ever demanding us to worship them in return for all they did to us. And we, in turn, say “we believe you,” and they smile because we acknowledge all they did to us. But we, in turn, say further: “but it would be like to be sure to know you’re there—you know, to be sure we’re not wasting our time with a figment of our imaginations, hehe” and start looking for evidence of their existence. Start to see a correlation between the god and the “you in a (tough) relationship” scenario? How do you think your god feels—if they indeed exist—when you say “alright, I’ll worship you, but only because I think this story I read on the internet is compelling enough an evidence that I’m not, you know, wasting my time.” Do we need evidence of their love? Otherwise we’d be doing something better with our lives? Don’t you think your god would feel a bit like an idiot when the best reason you have to believe them is reason itself?
That is the mystery of faith.
From your point of view, there’s more to it; I’m not going to get into that right now, as I frankly can’t be bothered, but belief should be, as far as I’m concerned, a one–to–one relation. One should never believe in god or whatever thing of sorts because of something someone else said; faith should come from you and you alone, and be directed not at other people—politicians, monks, scientists, the pope—but at god, and themselves alone.
So this is a note to all religious people in this topic (mainly the Christians): if you are going to join this discussion in order to force your views into others, and especially if you’re going to try to do so by means of rational argumentation, than this topic is worthless from where I stand. If you are to join the discussion, then don’t do it by means of borderline trollish “that’s a good idea, but if you were enlightened as I am, you’d see that’s not the truth,” especially if that truth you’re so sure about is based on someone else’s account of a near death experience. If you are to join this discussion, than please: join the discussion.