I'll get your discussion going.
I was raised Catholic, then I read Spire Christian comics and Jack Chick tracts at 13 and I tried really hard to ask Jesus into my heart. I laid in bed probably every night for a month trying to figure out how to ask right or believe right or something, but nothing happened. The next day I wouldn't think about God at all, and by the time I did, I was frustrated with myself. So I gave up.
I read New Age stuff until I was about 20 (although it wasn't officially called New Age in the 70's). I believed in spiritual things, but I quit believing in God.
Then at 20 I got a Pentecostal boss who preached to me every day. I argued with him a lot, and I won almost all the arguments. When he had no answer to what I said, he'd laugh and tell me what a good Christian I'd be.
I set out at that point to document all the Bible's contradictions. After reading through the Gospels, however, I really liked Jesus. It was sort of traumatic, though, because he was nothing like the happy-go-lucky, everyone's-a-son-of-God kind of guy that Richard Bach had made him out to be.
I decided at that point that I really couldn't buy the "molecules to man" theory (totally on my own, no creationism influence). I also decided that the apostles (the Gospel writers) weren't lying. They saw something, in my 20-year-old opinion. Even if what they wrote wasn't accurate, they had at least seen something unusual.
(I'm aware that the thoughts in that paragraph could easily be demolished in an argument, even by me, but that was my 20-year-old opinion.)
Then, visiting an Assembly of God church, I was accosted by a Christian being a "good witness." I agreed to talk with him further, and we argued for two hours about whether God would send someone to hell and whether the Bible was the Word of God. I won the arguments so clearly, even he knew it.
After two hours, he said, "It's not hell and the Bible that matter, it's Jesus. Do you believe he's the Son of God."
There was a lot to influence me, including my Catholic upbringing. Reading the Gospels had won me over, and I said yes.
It's hard to describe the intensity of what happened when I said yes. I felt like I walked into a different world. In fact, it felt a whole lot like a very, very good high on pot. I felt that way for about two days, and with a little prayer I could bring that feeling back (less intense) for months afterward.
The next day, still feeling like I was floating, I promised myself I would never forget what happened when I said Jesus was the Son of God. I still haven't. The Christians got me to become a Christian and to adopt all their silly views and doctrines, which wiped out the great joy I had and the closeness I had felt to God. It took over ten years to be delivered from Christianity and to get back to that wonderful experience with Christ I had had.
My experiences have mostly been like what I described, and I'm sure many would classify them as psychological, but they've been consistent. I picked up certain things along that Christian path that "resonated" with what I felt inside, and I clung to those as true. Eventually, back in 1995, I finally ran into people who felt the same way I did. They didn't always (or even often) think the same way I did, but they "felt" like I did, and so we have always been able to work things out together.
I live with 35 families and about 10 single people who all live somewhat like I've described above. Our life works, and it works incredibly well. It's hard enough to say what I mean by that, that our method of "evangelism" is usually to say, "You have to come and see." When people ask how to join us, we tell them, "When you absolutely can't live away from us, then come live with us."
Anyway, I guess I believe because following that "Spirit" that I received way back in 1982 has been consistent (with the experience of others who have the same "Spirit") and effective.
™ Version 4.2