General Discussion

"God" indeed is the exact reason you have a conscience, a soul, and empathy for your fellow man. You follow Jesus' 2nd Great Commandment -- Love your neighbor as yourself -- that offsets the Old Testament.

You're right about emotions. They're natural. Conditionable and controllable, too.

Turn away from the sky daddy if you want. I've made what you humanists call "Pascal's wager."
At death, if I'm right, all's well between me and God for eternity; but not good for you for eternity, where you will suffer with yourself who you loved more than anything.
If you're right, I've only lost a belief based on history, so, no more than you.

Pascal's wager allows one to find out about the following...

When biblical knowledge works for 2.4 BILLION people on the planet today, it's obvious that that knowledge wasn't limited by its original location. It's like saying that anything a scientist says is limited by the scientist who wrote it -- you know, like Einstein in that little town of Prague.
Both science and Christian knowledge are fact based. Why? Because Jesus was a real human, and was witnessed by at least 5 of whom saw him die, and 500+ people more, who touched, talked with, saw his wounds, and saw him after he had risen, and by 7 of his 12 apostles who wrote of these events after they witnessed his ascension. Why would 11 of his 12 apostles want to die for spreading lies? Yes, they were killed by various means. But not before they wrote their gospels and epistles and histories.

TEN non-Christian writers -- who range from neutral to decidedly anti-Christian -- mention Jesus within 150 years of his life and death. While archaeology has been catastrophic in verifying claims of other religions, over 20,000 archaeological digs continue to corroborate the evidence presented by the writers of the New Testament (the 6th final and eternal Covenant that fulfills & supersedes the 5 OT Covenants of Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, & David).

What establishes the historicity of the New Testament books
— Within 10 years of the ascension of Jesus that the apostles witnessed, the apostles had attracted followers of a new peak morality and God consciousness from Jerusalem to Antioch (the first church to call Jewish Jesus believers Christ-ian) Edessa, Ephesus, Corinth, Thessalonica, Cyprus, Crete, Alexandria and Rome.
— By 100 AD, 40+ churches were established by the apostles, most in Asia Minor and Upper Mesopotamia, such as the seven churches of Asia, and some in Greece and Italy.

— Within three generations after 1 AD, those whose knowledge was based on their witness to the life, teachings, death & resurrection of Jesus, then spread that knowledge this far in human history without the original eyewitnesses, because of the 27 documents that 9 apostles (out of the original 11 apostles) left behind about everything they witnessed wherever they were, since Jesus had told them before he left, that the Holy Ghost would come to them to inspire their memories of all they saw Jesus say and do. Compared to all other ancient historians, that's more than enough to establish historicity.

Historian & doctor, Luke, in The Gospel according to Luke, references 32 countries, 54 cities, and 9 islands that have all been verified by archaeologists. Luke made zero mistakes. Why? Because he wrote of things that historians can only know from eyewitnesses -- local slang, topographical features, specific weather patterns, small town politicians, etc. How would such a careful historian suddenly be careless in tracing the eyewitness accounts of the resurrection of Jesus. He wouldn't.
By the end of 1 AD, Christianity was spread far by Paul (a converted Jewish Pharisee known as the 13th apostle) to the Gentiles and his very few assistants. Paul traversed from Antioch to Spain.

The current 66 books of the Bible were established by the Christian church that changed its name to the Catholic Church at the Council of Trent. The timeline of their canonizing (below) was before the canonizing of the Hebrew Bible, now known as the Old Testament.
350 AD formally established by Bishop Cyril of Jerusalem
363 AD confirmed by the Council of Laodicea
367 AD further established by Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria
382 AD confirmed by the Council of Rome

After 2,000 years…
It goes from unreasonable to preposterous to claim that the original 13 apostles made some pact to be willing to be killed for their alleged hoax. And 11 of them were killed.
Only those who actually experienced such teachings, and witnessed such events, would commit to such travel, such hardship, jailing & longsuffering, and death, to spread their knowledge of Jesus' teachings.
No "hoax" lasts long in human history, nevermind 2 millennia before the existence of the historical Jesus, then another two thousand years after Jesus' actual life.

"Good" science is disproven all the time. That doesn't mean science is a hoax, or is some "religion" people believe in.
"Good" knowledge, older than science, knowledge of Laws, judges, eyewitness testimony, rules of evidence, drawn from a thousand years prior, are used today as the basis of Common Law and International Law — and they are not disproven as a hoax or religion, either. That knowledge has also been the basis of Western art, architecture, music, universities and libraries.
Christianity is all about one historical, eyewitnessed event -- the Bible that records all that, was never about 'religion' -- nor has it been ever since.