Hi FNB3. Glad to see your post. Tried to PM you, but was unable to.
This topic is an issue I also have difficulty with. I was raised by a Catholic mother in an era and town when all the masses were spoken in Latin, nothing was really explained to me, and I understood nothing. I fled the church when I was 18.
I have spent the rest of my life seeking and not finding. Hoping to hear or see God, but hearing and seeing nothing. It's an empty feeling, and I can't force the issue into my perhaps overly analytical brain. My Gods seem to be people like Einstein, Hawking, and other theoretical physicists. Though I certainly do NOT "worship" them.
It would help me immensely if there weren't so many religious extremists out there, from all religions, claiming their path to God is the right path. Like this recent nut who claims he knows when the apocalypse will occur and that only Christians will be "saved." Please. Going by just the numbers, Christianity would not be the most believed religion in the world. I have studied world religions, and they all share commonalities from which I take as perhaps the best of the best.
But God still eludes me. I, too, see the vastness of the Universe, the immensity and complexity and totality of it all, and I really don't think human beings are capable of conceptualizing what all this means. Unless you are a theoretical physicist.
I simply can't go on "blind faith." I am not an atheist, and I really wish I could be a believer.
FT