Dear T,
Whatever logical or rational arguments philosophers advance, or whatever emotional motivations support religious belief, a belief remains a belief and can never rise to the level of sensible experience. It will always be prey to doubt. First of all, we must properly define the object of belief. Asking whether God exists is not enough. We must also define the God whose existence or non-existence we are questioning.
In this regard, there are two conceptions: that of a personal and transcendent God on the one hand, and that of an impersonal and immanent God on the other. Those who hold the vision of a transcendent God think that God is outside themselves and that consequently they are separated from Him. Their relationship with Him can only be based on belief, because they can only think of or imagine Him, guided by the belief system they adopt and into which they were most often born and which they inherited.
While those who hold the vision of an immanent God consider that God is in His creation. He is the force that animates existence from within. He is its essence. Comparable to oil in the olive or butter in milk, he is invisible but omnipresent in the manifested world. He is the force that creates, sustains and destroys the forms it inhabits for a certain time. Someone saw in the word God the three initials of these three functions: Generator, Operator and Destroyer. This energy that can neither be created nor destroyed, creates a form when it invests it, maintains it as long as it inhabits it and destroys it when it leaves it. And this force also inhabits the human being.
Thus, those who have this vision of an impersonal and immanent God, rather than believing in it, seek to taste it by going within themselves. And this category of people comes from all spiritual paths. In each religion, there is the exoteric side (exterior made of beliefs and rituals) and the esoteric side (interior made of living experience). Belief belongs to the exoteric side, and knowledge to the esoteric side. Those who have never tasted honey can debate endlessly among themselves about what it tastes like. Those who have tasted it no longer need to debate, nor to adopt a belief about it; they know what it tastes like.
One day, a philosopher and a mystic met. At the end of their meeting, the mystic was asked how their conversation went, he replied: ”everything I live, he knows it”. To the same question, the philosopher replied: ”everything I know, he lives it“.