for religious folk: do you believe in divine intervention?

[Don Corleone]

I believe in God, and I don't think its vain at all to think He's interested in our daily lives. In fact, He says in scripture that He wants to know, and He wants a better relationship with us. If you look at it that way, prayer becomes a conversation, which is how I think its supposed to work.

I do think He intervenes in our lives, but not over every tiny little detail. He may not be happy that you humiliated your friend, but your hard drive crashing sounds like coincidence. Not that it wasn't divine intervention, I'm just saying I think the Almighty keeps His powder dry for the big stuff....

As with all matters of faith, well, its based on faith. If somebody is agnostic or atheistic, the idea of divine intervention probably seems laughable, and hence all the flying spaghetti monster jokes:
(though I thought the FSM was originally supposed to just deride creationists, didn't realize that FSM had 'evolved' into a satire on any belief whatsoever). Go ahead and keep laughing, I'm sure it seems ridiculous from that perspective, and I'll keep praying for you, as your position appears hopeless and sad from my perspective.

I don't mean this as criticism, I'm seriously curious... if you close your mind to anything but that which can be detected empirically, how do you avoid devolving into a state of cynicism? A belief in God is no more, no less tenable than a belief in the inherent goodness of mankind or a belief in a better world. At the end of the day, are all intelligent people required to abandon all hope and cling to nihilism?