Because of personal experience of the ineffable, of the transcendent.
There's the problem right there. You're looking for a cognitive reason to logically "believe" God exists. As I said before God is far more subtle, but very much discernible. One knows God by simply opening oneself and allowing, not by dissecting and analyzing. I say this because you qualified, "reason to think".
There is an interesting point though in what you ask, which is in essence "Give me a sign that I may believe". Or put another way, "I need something tangible that it may inspire faith". That to me does sum the desire for a miracle requests by people. You're hardly alone. The first thing I would say is that its kind of getting off on the wrong foot. It would seem the person is wowed their way into following a path of belief, but it can well turn a person's attention away from their own deep internal desire to touch and to know the ineffable, to a constant looking outside themselves to find validation for their beliefs as their faith ebbs and tides. "Where are you God? Give me a sign!". Never quite looking in the right place. And never as a result growing spiritually and knowing God in all things present.
All one needs to do is look at these churches which are miracle shows. People come to the feeding trough to have their weekly infusion of faith from witnessing things perceived as outside themselves being brought into the world by miracle. So much of that too of course is staged or manufactured, and to me keeps someone from really knowing the nature of faith in themselves. It began looking outside "from on high", rather than looking within. And as a result they are ungrounded. There are no deep roots of faith through self-knowledge, which is a knowledge of God.
I would say if someone says they would believe if they could only see a sign from on-high, that what they should do is stop and in silence look within to what that seed of desire is within themselves is. What is it reaching toward? What is it that deep within is going on that the reasoning and rational mind is trying to find some sort of an illusion of validation for this wholly non-rational desire that appears to the mind to violate reason? (There is a marked difference between the non-rational and the irrational). In simply existing with an awareness of that 'seed' of desire of the transcendent, which I'll call it, not judging it with the mind, not trying to explain it rationally but simply existing with it an allowing it to be, that as we relax ourselves with ourselves rather than being at odds, what opens to us becomes the answer we were looking for. "Where is God?"
If you define where you think God is, or should be, you will not see God. But yet that seed desire will continue to be, regardless of how deeply we cover it and try to smother it out, or even avoid it by being super-religious. Yes, religion can very much be a way to avoid opening ourselves to God. Worse actually because it disguises that avoidance.
I did not state nor claim they did.
Yes of course they had pragmatic concerns, and yes they used rational thought. But you are mistaken to believe that they were attempting to be modern historians in the sense of recording facts solely for facts sake. Have you never heard the axiom that history is written by those who win the day? It's "their" history, through their eyes, their perceptions of themselves. Everyone does this actually. We rewrite our own histories. Historians today are well aware of this fact of history. You are mistaken that people were dispassionate recorders of data. And even if they made such a rare attempt, what would come out would never be freed from their won influences through cultural lens. This is a all part of that myth of a "pregiven" world, that the facts are out there and if we can just get to it with the right tools, then we can know the truth. It simply does not, and cannot work that way.
Again, I never stated that. And you missed my point that was within what I said. It's not that they were "trying" to create stories. They did view these as factual. But what was "factual" to them is within a mythological framework of reality. What is "factual" to us is within a rational framework of reality. There's the difference. To give a great modern example, take a look at childhood development. Do you think a five year old's worldview, the model of reality through which he interprets events, is identical with that of a 50 year old? No! Of course not. The 50 year old's worldview is radically different than the child's. There was a major shift that happened in his development. And as a result, nearly everything he sees and experiences in the world is modeled differently and interpreted, understood, and spoken about differently - even if he uses the same words a five-year-old does.
Do you accept that evolution really happens? Do you believe nothing changed for us a species, no major shifts in conscious awareness as the whole of culture and civilzations influenced and facilitated these shifts? Do you believe the cave man was a modern rationalist? Even if they had the brain capacity, they still had to evolve
mentally. So yes, people had practical concerns and yes they had rational minds, but they still as a whole saw the world governed by external forces, gods, spirits, etc. That is the framework through which they would speak about the world as they understood it, and so that understanding permeates their stories with that image of reality as it appeared to them.
They weren't "wrong", they were simply seeing and speaking of the world through that particular lens, just as we today see and speak of the world through our particular lens, and just as the world of tomorrow when the next major shift happens will see and speak of the world through that new, more evolved lens and our world will appear quaint and primitive to them. And I'm not speaking of scientific knowledge, but how we understand the whole of reality which will include, but not be defined by science as Modernity attempts to make it.
Make more sense now? They were not Modernists. There was a shift in how we as a whole began to see the world around the time of the Enlightenment. We see the world, largely, in rationalist terms. That's the modern framework of reality. We reason and analyze and dissect. The gods are side matter, not the set of eyes we look at reality through anymore. Just as when little five-year-old Bobby doesn't uses those eyes anymore when he became 13.
I see no issues with understanding them. They were seeing through the set of eyes they had in their historical development. To insist on that be the reality of things in speaking about God, is like trying to force-fit the views of the ancients who were beginning to understand science as the authorities over science today! Think about it.
