Seemingly basic yet difficult question

[DoKo (Dominik Kowalski)]

@Truth_Seeker

How would you respond if I told you that I despise the idea of faith?

That I´m with you in the sense that pure faith with no rationality is intellectually unsatisfying and I´m not believing this way.

@Truth_Seeker

That it has been nothing but a never-ending source of pain and frustration for me since day one? That I NEED some kind of revelation based on FACT in order to accept the possibility of miracles, which Christianity is solely based upon? Jesus is useless to me if I cannot believe in Him. Faith is useless to me if I cannot have it. If God cannot provide me with SOMETHING I can hang my hat on and say ‘yep, wow, no way some stupid cave-dweller 5000 years ago could have known that! Must have been a God involved!’ then I’ll go nowhere with it and neither, as far as I can understand, will anyone else.

Correct me if I´m wrong but you seem to be open/attracted by the ID movement and their arguments. One problem I see is, that you seem to value natural theology and believe that revelation theology can only stand on the ground prepared by the former. However although I view natural theology in a high regard, it can only bring you so far, to Deism at best I´d say. I don´t believe that we can approach to the miracles of Jesus with natural science. History is our best shot at getting there and I see the evidences are strong enough to be the ground of a reasonable faith in Christ.

@Truth_Seeker

Humans that, for all I know, were stoned in the desert one night and had a sudden existential crisis, resulting in a story where a God helps the scary world make sense? (Forgive my crass language, I am frustrated).

I´m not quite sure what you´re saying here.

@Truth_Seeker

To have the chance Thomas got… That would be a gift greater than all the treasure in the Universe. Yet here I am, writhing in frustration and doubt. Spending night after night scouring whatever I can in order to hopefully become satisfied enough to get through this fragile existence with some semblance of real meaning and purpose…
Imagine if tomorrow, you found out there was no God. You would suddenly be struck with the realisation that all possible point to existence was nothing but a delusion… You would be forced to react accordingly. Your only peace would be to immediately become nothing. What a nightmare!
I’m not expecting Jesus to appear to me and tell me to stick my fingers in His side, of course. But you have to admit, Thomas was the most privileged person in all of Human history… To immediately have all his doubts dissipated…

That is how important the Judeo/Christian God is to me. It is how important He should be to us all.

Okay, this is important to remember for the further direction of this discussion. I have to admit, that the last twenty posts here made it seem like this would be a dead end, but I see you have serious concerns. I think you will stick longer with us and soon you will realize that several people have already brught up very similar topics. In this and in the quality sense I´d say this site is pretty much unique. I can only tell you what helped me tremendously. One of the most interesting threads on this board, maybe usefull here: Pevaquark Doesn't Like Fine Tuning Apologetics and Neither Should You
Of course, when faced with doubt one tries to find proof and obviously the first thought goes to the natural science. But after a time I came to two important conclusions: 1. Finding proof about the supernatural in natural science is an oxymoron and 2. natural theology is most usefull for those already believing, since it makes yet another perspective on new findings possible. Of course there are exceptions, most notably Anthony Flew, but for me the hints of the other realm which I could see in nature aren´t so strong like the historical evidences to the events in the NT in overwhelming ones doubts.

E: Writing all of these reminded me of one important thing Joshua Swamidass said (I paraphrase here):" The evidences you find in nature (natural theology) will only lead you to a generic God. The Christian God is revealed in Jesus."