Why do you believe in a God?

[Vox]

I can tell you for a fact that it is because they think they feel God.

And the paranoid schizophrenic thinks that he's riding a unicorn.

I should go and add a fourth parameter to eliminate arguments from insanity.

I'm not quite sure, call it gut instinct or intuition or whatever you like. I may have lost a great deal of confidence in the faith I was born into but I've never really found myself questioning the existence of a deity per say.

I feel there have been several occasions in my life where my prayers were answered, and while I'm sure that could be attributed to sheer dumb luck I personally do not make that conclusion. Perhaps that might be superstition but I can't help sometimes but feel that everything happens for a reason, even the worst things that have happened in my life have (eventually) resulted in a positive of some form.

I also personally hold a belief in an afterlife, and I feel this belief has been empowered by my studies of world religions. No matter where you go in the world, men have formed some concept, no matter how strained or abstract of some sort of divine force and afterlife. Placed side by side, many of the ideas bear surprising similarities to one another; they believe in a realm of the dead, some sort of soul/presence and the unifying power of a divinity(s) or holy spirit(s).

I don't doubt humans have made many countless mistakes in the past, but when civilizations which can't possibly have had contact with one another for several thousands of years begin formulating concepts such as the soul entirely independent of one another yet remarkably similar in concept I cannot help but wonder if there is something in it. We know today that fish contains omega-3 which is good for the brain after extensive experimentation yett the ancient Egyptians knew little of chemistry but were aware of this more than six thousand years ago. I don't know how they worked that out, but they knew somehow.

I'm sure this all sounds like the ramblings of a madman, but they're just my first thoughts on the topic.