Pavanne

Assertion: The existence of God can not be proven or disproven. Many have tried. But I think the more important question is Why does God need a space ship?

Yes, as a matter of fact I did read you post. I was tempted to write tl;dr but it wasn't true. And you took advantage of more than one logical fallacy in your arguments. First you appealed to an authority, yourself, that brainwashing could not be the reason for so many believers. Then you drew a false conclusion that because it wasn't brainwashing or deception that there must be something to it, some evidence. From there you took a leap and pronounced that we cannot choose what we believe, we have this evidence which forces us to believe something. That is the logical fallacy called false cause, presuming that a real or perceived relationship between things means that one is the cause of the other. From there you went on to argue that if one examines the evidence properly one cannot help but conclude as you did that there is a deity you call God and that it's real. That's called begging the question. And that is why I say to you - nice try.

To the OP: Nice try (that's the kinder way of saying FAIL). There's what you believe and what I believe, and there's what I would like to believe, and what I refuse to believe, and what I don't believe and there's one thing they all have in common. None of them is the same as what it true and proven. All religions deal with mystery, the unknown and the unprovable. There is no need for faith when there are facts. But there is a very strong, human need to seek answers to the mysteries of life. People know for a fact that life is a temporary state. They know that good and evil exist. And they try to make sense of this. They don't all come up with the same answer. Not everyone even agrees on the questions or their importance. But to try and conclude from this that there is no choice is not only erroneous, you just can't get there from here.