And you misunderstand religion.
Religion is the science of "why." It is not designed to directly tell us
how things happen. It's designed to teach us why.
Meaning. Purpose. Love. Motivation. End.
Science is about as useless in these arenas as religion is from a scientific standpoint. But these are irrepressibly significant - even
central - elements of the human condition.
If you want to find evidence of God's existence before meeting Him after this life, those are the places to start looking. Those are the categories in which you find data which defines and refines religious models. There's nothing unrepeatable about the experiments it takes to learn for yourself that He exists. The results are just not things you can concretely show to other people any more than I can scientifically prove that my own mother loves me.
God could come down in power and kick our butts to prove His existence if He really wanted - which He's promised to do eventually. But by then we'll have to be ready to meet Him. And the only way to really prepare for that involves loving His principals in our heart of hearts - in other words, obeying them when He's not around. This is the only way we'll ever be comfortable around Him. If you want to know if He's there, live His principals and see for yourself if they produce the promised results.* As Christ put it, "If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself."
He's put the burden of proof on each of us individuals. Our character is on trial, not His existence. Do we WANT to believe in a loving God? Will we care enough to expend some effort to find Him? Will we love His principles enough on their own merit that we will seek to follow them? Will we have a sense of longing and meaning that we'll seek to explain with something larger than our tiny selves? Will we notice that something is missing without Him? None of these things can be adequately addressed if He's standing in recognizable power right in front of us.
There's plenty of things each of us believe in that cannot be proven or disproven.
~Brent
*On a side note, anyone who chooses to seek God will have to be careful to find a way to distinguish between the words of men and the words of God, as there are conflicting religious traditions that can't all be true, and following incorrect principals will lead to unsatisfactory results. I have my own convictions as to how this is done, but this post is more about the aim of religion in general than it is meant to promote my own tradition, and I don't want to go on a tangent that large at the moment.
