To Credis:  You have also "leaped" haven 't you?  You have concluded that millions of human beings past and present who say that they have experienced God's presence in their daily lives are, in fact, presenting you with data that you can justifiably re-interpret into your "Big Picture" of reality.  And, since you are unable to scientifically "test" most of this data, you are choosing to make a big leap of faith based on your "deep beliefs" about reality.  

Everybody "leaps" based on what they consider to be the most valid evidence when it comes to the most fundamental deep beliefs about reality.  Sometimes the evidence is fairly good evidence -- coherent, possible, maybe even probable -- but, it is never rationally conclusive when it comes to the most basic working beliefs about the Master Story of reality.  The deepest beliefs are always part of a working paradigm or master story that makes all other thinking and evaluating possible.  We can test, doubt, struggle with, and re-test these fundamental beliefs, but they are never really based on the conclusive and indubitable reasoning we like to think they are.  Thomas Kuhn illustrated this pretty vividly where basic scientific paradigms are concerned in his "Anatomy of a Scientific Revolution."  Since then, the issue of "Master Story" or "big paradigm" has become important in all testing of our reason and reasoning. -- Ron S