I appreciate everyone’s experiences but I’d like to say that faith is hearsay until it becomes personal and then the experience of God,
But it’s still not provable, so it remains hearsay.
like the experience of love, is no less real just because it can’t be weighed or quantified.
But love in its base form can be explained by science, evolution, natural selection and neuroscience is doing great wok to quantify these in terms of brain functions, electrical currents, etc. That is not to detract from the emotional experience, but there is a difference between emotions and faith….placing your whole life in the balance without proof.
Catholic faith is only indirectly related to the cultural phenomenon known as Catholicism. The Jews of Jesus day didn’t believe in the transcendent or supernatural any easier than we do in this age -they lived in a culture where such belief was expected but, by all accounts, the miracles and especially the resurrection were no less mind-blowing or paradigm shifting then they would be today.
But that’s just it…The belief is culturally expected and that how kids get raised. You were raised in this fashion and were taught to believe certain things. You may have refined your religion on your own, converted, etc, but not many Christians turn Muslim, or vice versa. It’s ingrained into you to believe this. And usually it’s taken at face value. Even the reason given to grownups are little more than, “because it’s the way it’s always been”, or “Because the Church teaches it to be so”.
We need to realize that it’s just another myth, like to Christians, Islam appears to be a myth, and to Muslims, Christianity appears to be a myth…they are all the same….no one is based on any proof, otherwiSe we’d all have to convert to that religion.
The transcendent is by definition unquantifiable-it’s supposed to be pointing us to something beyond-something “bigger” than ourselves and STEM. I can’t give anyone a desire to know such a thing but I can attest to the fact that God will prove it to anyone who gives Him enough benefit of the doubt to search a little diligently.
So, basically the only way to know that there is a God is purely subjective, unquantifiable experience.
Why are you basing your whole life, and how you live it on unprovable ideas? To define it as unquantifiable by definition still requires proof to back up its claims. You are dealing with a book written by people, teaching you how to live your life, telling you to believe in God and the devil, based on what? Nothing. Hearsay. It has to be quantifiable.
I was one of the people who diligently searched for God for pretty much 20 years. Praying and pleading and begging for him to prove it to me, just like you mentions that He will. He didn’t. I begged for more faith, to believe, and nothing.
This is not the reason I left, but it certainly contributed to it in the end.
It’s all empty, this chase.
And there’s no reason that any reality that might transcend the world we live in should in any way contradict or interfere with the realities we may find in our search for truth with science. They’re separate realities by nature.
So, you can be a astrophysicist during the week and on weekends pray to someone that you have no proof of, believing in a book that fly in the face of all that you know as fact about your profession, about the cosmos and about the earth?
They are not separate realities, the one is reality and the other is a myth….just like Thor or Aphrodite is a myth. You cannot call religion a reality without evidence about its claims.
Let’s pray for her redemption. 
I met the Franciscans of the Renewal and the Sisters of Life and experienced an internal conversion after the Eucharistic Procession (I touched the humeral veil). Ever since then, I’ve read everything I can about Catholicism and I’m in the process of becoming a religious!!! 
