So using your logic Gravity waves didn't exist until they were discovered!
If there is smoke then that warrants more analysis and when science catches up we can ascertain if there is a fire--God--- or not.
But I don't understand how someone can say I'm an atheist because there is insufficient evidence. IMO there is plenty of evidence documented through history. The smoke is the sensation and impressions individuals have felt that has been called numinosity.
An experience that occurs independent of the person’s will. It is caused by the awareness of a visible objector the influence of an invisible presence, resulting in an alteration of consciousness.
It is a paradox,containing both positive and negative qualities that we may experience simultaneously.
Some positive qualities of the numinosum include: sublimity, awe, excitement, bliss, rapture, exaltation, entrancement, fascination,attraction, allure and what Otto called an “impelling motive power.”
Negatives include: overwhelment, fear,trembling, weirdness, eeriness, humility, urgency, stupor, bewilderment,horror, mental agitation, repulsion, and haunting, daunting, monstrous feelings that “overbrim the heart.”Numinosity is that quality that gives religious ideas their thrilling power. A variety of historical figures have tried to put into words their experience of the numinous.
St. Paul spoke of it as the peace which passes all understanding.
In the 14th century, Meister Eckhart described it as the “primal bottom” grounding the soul.
Two centuries later Martin Luther referred to the numinous as the deus absconditus etincomprehensibilis, the hidden and incomprehensible God.
In the 18th century Friedrich Schleiermacher suggested the numinous was the intuition and feeling of the infinite.
The 19th century cultural historian John Ruskin described the instinctive awe, mixed with delight;an indefinable thrill that he got inthe presence of the numinous.
The American psychologist William James, studied the varieties of religious experience and referred to the numinous as a sense of reality, a feeling of objective presence, a perception of … something there.
The numinous can feed the hunger of the soul and provide feelings of liberation and relief.As much as it is ineffable, the numinous is also ineluctable, it cannot be ignored. It controls our fate and can work a major transformation in us, e.g. in conversion experiences, in situations that produce emotional shocks, or, more pleasantly, in moments of illumination.
