Well, like I said, Bill, it's an excercise in futility to try to prove something that is an inner experience (meaning that it is something you subjectively "feel"), but we all have such experiences and we know that for us they are real.

Do you get the distinction between someone who believes in "God" merely because they were brought up to by their social group, and told to by their parents, priest, etc...and someone who has an actual religious experience that happens inside them quite spontaneously?

This would be comparable to, in the first case, someone who has simply been told about "love" by other people and, in the second case, someone who actually falls in love with another real person and experiences the feelings that ensue. The former is a hollow experience. The latter is not.

To trivialize a real, powerful subjective experience of another human being merely because YOU have not had that experience yourself is a bit high-handed.

- LH