Now that doesn't make sense to me at all! In that post, you said:
I wondered for a long time how people like you could be so sure that God exists while people like me could see no reason whatsoever to believe. I think I finally figured it out, though: both sets of people's mental models work very well generally. You (probably) function quite well in the world assuming that God is behind everything and are rarely or never confronted wuth things that are incompatible with this assumption. But here's the thing - and you'll have to take my word for it - this is true for people who assume that no gods exist at all; they don't encounter things that are incompatible with THAT assumption either.
That's essentially what I was saying. We're both seeing the same evidence and interpreting it differently. You've used the phrase "mental models" and I agree that my set of mental models works very well for me, whereas yours (which is completely opposite from mine) works just as well for me. The thing is, neither of us can say with absolute certainty how that "mental model" came to be. I tend to think it's inborn and you don't.
While I agree that this is staggering and literally awesome, it doesn't so much as nudge me toward God as an explanation. I don't think that "God-of-the-gaps" arguments are reasonable in the first place, and I think the time to ask whether a particular mechanism might have been responsible for something is after the existence of the mechanism has been established.
So since it doesn't nudge you towards God as an explanation, what "particular mechanism" does it nudge you toward. It's easy for you to dismiss the existence of God, but that's all you've really done so far. You haven't offered any kind of an alternative. "A particular mechanism" might be one if you could explain what it was.
I'm careful not to use the term "prove" myself. Proof is for math. But I think that for a belief to be reasonable, it should be justified, so I don't think it's out of place to ask for that justification. I think this is especially true with religious beliefs, because when it comes to religion, we're not usually dealing with a level of certainty like "I lean slightly towards this being true"; we're dealing with a level of certainty like "I'm so convinced that this is true that I'm going to devote my life to it."
My husband and I had a conversation a while back. I said that we can't just "choose" to either believe or disbelieve something because of what someone else tells us. He kept insisting that he had made the conscious "choice" to believe Mormonism. I think that, in a way, we were both right. Certain things, things, concepts, etc. just resonate with certain people and don't with others. They feel right; they ring true. There's really no explanation as to why, any more than there is an explanation as to why I love emerald green and don't like teal in the slightest. But once you identify something as feeling right to you, there's still the problem of it being unprovable -- either to you or to anybody else. At that point, if it works with your "mental model," you take the next step and accept it as something you want to live with. Certain religions (Mormonism is definitely one of them) require that you devote your life to them. They aren't Sunday-only religions but a way of life you make a decision to accept and embrace. And if you can't do that, you don't become a Mormon. Inherent in the religion itself is the concept of sacrifice, and that concept definitely doesn't fit with some people's mental models of what life should be like.
I also think that there's an additional level of responsibility for justification that comes with evangelism. Anyone who goes up to another person and tells them that they should set aside their beliefs in favour of the belief system being evangelized to them ought to be able to answer the question "why should I?" Even if you weren't a missionary personally, considering the degree of evangelism that the LDS Church as a whole engages in, they ought to have justifications galore that you would have access to.
I don't know how you differentiate between a "proof" and a "justification," or what kinds of "justifications galore" you're thinking of. For the most part, Mormon missionaries are looking for people who are looking for something that a belief in the gospel of Jesus Christ will provide for them. If it works with their mental model, it seems to be a perfect fit and they end up being happier and more content with life than they ever have been. Questions that have been nagging at them for years are finally resolved with clarity. If, on the other hand, they try to force it to work for them when it doesn't naturally happen, they end up miserable.
Well, I think you know that I don't believe I can count on being able to investigate deep questions in any kind of afterlife, so I wouldn't find that approach to be satisfying.
I realize that, but you may just find that you're faced with those questions again after death. Sooner or later, you might just have to resolve them with some degree of conviction.
... and in the meantime, I think we can both agree that in whatever earthly life I have left, what I believe will affect my actions, and the more correct my beliefs are, the better my chances of acting in good ways and not in bad ones.
Yes, we can agree on that.