The fact is that god is not a scientific theory, hypothesis or anything, it's just religion. It's by definition something that you have to believe in based on faith, not evidence, which is what everyone does. Faith is not a good path to the truth, that's also a fact.
In my opinion, the experiences with God are not necessarily based on faith or belief. Some people have experienced true, personal, life changing miracles that prove to them God is real. To them, they don't need to believe in God, they know God exists.
''have experienced true, personal, life changing miracles that prove to them God is real.'' This is by definition faith. It's called delusion. How do they know it's true? They don't, there is no evidence, therefore it's faith.
When you get right into the reason why some medicine seems to heal people, you have the same thing. Here's what happens.
We get some medical testing that shows biochemically in the lab that a particular medicine works. Then in live testing, some people seem to be healed by the medicine in question. Some are not. The thing we don't understand enough, is the working of the psyche, to be able to say for a fact that it was the medicine that healed them.
Well, if it wasn't the medicine, then what was it? Maybe 90% of the healings are placebo effect... faith (even in animals). Maybe, when it comes right down to it, close to 100% are placebo-like effect.
Maybe being healed by medicine has to do with the treated person subconsciously recognizing, through his nervous system, that there is some biochemical activity going on from the medicine. And then he heals himself by what he feels through his nervous system. The medicine action doesn't really have anything to do with the actual healing in a biochemical way.
Some studies suggest that placebo effect heals in as many as 30+% or the cases. We simply don't know enough about the psyche of people in general to know if it is more or not. And the medical doesn't want to do these kinds of studies in a big way. Do enough of them to make it look like we are studying placebo effect. But don't do enough to take business away from Big Pharma.
