Check out Maher's diatribe against religion - typical liberal atheistic hatred of God. Confirms what we've been discussing.
Thomas Hardy once wrote a poem called Hap in which he talked about how he wished God would reveal just enough of himself so that he could believe that things weren't just happening by chance.
But I have long suspected that God could have come to him in clouds of glory, showing him the wounded hands and side, with lightning flashes and choirs of Angels, and Hardy would have thought he just had a hallucination.
Many people believe this way because they want to believe this way, and are pathetic in their desire to make the world fit their conception of it being a dark and dismal place...and usually they see themselves as heroically standing up for something in the darkness, like a character in a Wagnerian opera, who at his peak is so noble to look at, but in the end will die a tragic death.
Or else they have bought into "Life's a B**** and then you die" and they want you to be as miserable as them.
Whatever is motivating them, be sure they have an agenda - and they are out to strip you of your faith.
They need our prayers. They don't know how pathetic it is to ask people to trade happiness knowing God for misery.