Quote from ARogueTrader:
"Better, if there is a creator, start from a position of skepticism and prove it scientifically. Give the data, piece together the argument, and prove the case."
It may be equally true that if there is a creator that He would prefer we start from a basis of faith in order to find Him.
You presuppose the nature of God is such that a scientific approach is the best way to overcome skepticism of His existence, when in fact skepticism is a function of a preconceived approach. Skepticims may be in fact something to be overcome in order to come to know about and learn about God.
The main problem with this approach is that one could use it equally to believe in Little Green Men, giant sentient chocolate cakes orbiting Alpha Centurai, or other wild claims. I would question why a faith-based approach is superior to a sceptical one, given that the former seems to have no way of screening out beliefs in Little Green Men and other such outlandish claims. Why have faith in God, and not in lucky charms or astrology?
Scepticism is not adopted as a default position just for the sake of it. I personally am sceptical because I have observed many cases of humans having faith that is utterly misguided and wrong. Faith has a very poor track record in finding out what is true and what is false. Rather, it seems in most cases to be a convenient way for people to rationalise their emotional and psychological needs and desires (e.g. for a sense of meaning in their life, or a hope that justice will be achieved, or that good will triumph over evil, or that they will find happiness etc). Indeed, the *only* faith-based opinions which survive are those that are, for various reasons, not subject to refutation. For example, extremely broad-based and vague predictions of astrologers cannot be refuted, because of their catch-all nature; metaphysicians and moralists can pontificate to their hearts content, safe in the knowledge that their views are completely unfalsifiable. Whereas an astrologer who made precise predictions would be refuted immediately; a Platonist who said "I can scientifically prove that classical music is superior to gangsta rap" would be laughed out of court. In a similar way, more simplistic religions such as cargo cults or animism have been refuted because they can be. The only surviving religions amongst intelligent people are ones that are unfalsifiable. It is therefore my contention that the reason why people still believe in these unfalsifiable beliefs is most likely to be the result of their unfalsifiability.
The faith based approach, if judged on the track record of all faith-based approaches, has been a dismal failure in achieving knowledge that presents a reasonably accurate picture of the world. Instead it has given us countless beliefs that appeal to certain emotional and psychological needs present in many human beings, but which turn out to be completely false (e.g. alchemy, cargo cults, witch trials, astrology, numerology etc). I therefore, based on the clear and undisputable evidence of faith's poor track record, reject it as a system of attaining knowledge of any accuracy or usefulness in describing the world.
In contrast, sceptical approaches have proven to be very good at discovering truths - often truths that were extremely counter-intuitive and almost impossible to find via other methods. Science is a good example. Logical reasoning is another, as is empiricism. They have often had false beliefs, but because of the relentless testing and need for proof, they have gotten rid of those false beliefs faster than any other system of knowledge.
I therefore conclude that, if attaining accurate knowledge about reality is your goal, then you should look at the track records of faith-based systems versus sceptical systems based on logical reasoning and empirical proof. Any examination of their track records will show scepticism to be far superior. It is therefore questionable at best, and irrational at worst, to formulate one's beliefs about the world using faith to the exclusion of scepticism.
