I asked some deity, any deity at all, to relieve my compulsion to consume alcohol. I haven’t had or wanted a drink for more than 17 years now. That’s a miracle that I can’t explain. It’s all the evidence I need, but that’s just me.
There are things about the natural world which I do not understand, hence the only plausible explanation is that a supernatural deity magicked them into existence.
Until your precious science cult explains to me how a flagellum could evolve, how magnets work, and how Kleenex boxes pop up the next tissue, I’ll continue to believe in Flagaboo The Muddy One.
Now ask your deity to do something specific and improbable that you DON’T have control over personally, and get back to us. For example, have your deity reveal to you which word Trinopus has tagged in his dictionary.
No true Scotsman!
Aaaand moving the goalposts!
Who has a Logical Fallacies Bingo card? I think we’re going to have a winner here.
Add to that list non-dairy creamer (wtf?), fat-free sour cream (oxy-moron), and microwave ovens.
Nope. No matter whether Reform Judaism is a valid “Judaism” branch, the Orthodox Jews present an unbroken cultural, ethnic and religious thread for 4000 years.
My common sense is making me go write on the blackboard one thousand times, in blood, “I will not discuss religion”. I’ll be back before Jesus is. Oh, Hell…
Present “why you believe” is about all you are going to get as evidence.
All my evidence is subjective. While that makes it completely convincing to me, and possibly persuasive to people who know me well, I don’t expect it to convince very many other people, especially strangers on the internet.
This would all be fine and dandy to me (as an atheist), or at least getting down the road to the road to evidence, if it could be delivered with the specifics of why their particular “Brand X” of a god (or gods) is the correct inarguable selection and not the other scores of equally plausible religious doctrines.
The ongoing “Top Ten Evidence” thread is a perfect example, where a couple of vocal young-earth christians representing a minority fringe of christianity are denying the assertions of the more numerous collection of other christian posters from other mainstream christian branches.
Well, except for the couple thousand years or so where they didn’t speak their traditional language. (They still used it as a liturgical and literary language in that period, but didn’t use it as a vernacular. And if just retaining the language in liturgical and literary form counts as maintaining “an unbroken cultural thread”, then Brahmanical/Hindu use of Sanskrit arguably outlasts Jewish use of Hebrew.)
And what’s this “4000 years”, anyway? AFAIK, there’s no solid research evidence (as opposed to interpretations of ambiguous Biblical claims) from earlier than about 3500 years ago for the emergence of Jews or Hebrews as a distinct culture differentiated from their fellow Canaanite Semites by cultural or doctrinal attributes that are still central to modern Judaism. Are you just rounding up to the nearest millennium for the sake of tidiness, or what?
In any case, this sort of selective reasoning won’t count as “evidence” for the existence of any deity except for those who already believe it.
Frankly, this is the wrong question to ask and continuing to insist on an answer to this question will continue to leave anyone asking it either unsatisfied or trying to justify something that is irrational as rational. I definitely have faith, but I also belief that nothing that qualifies as evidence exists. I can get into the specifics of that if you really want, but I’m not sure my particular beliefs in that regard are really relevant.
Let’s put aside the idea of God for a moment and examine other irrational beliefs. Two people are looking at a painting or listening to a song or experiencing some other work of art. One person likes it, the other person doesn’t. Both of them will probably argue that beauty exists, possibly even have similar or identical definitions, but yet even applying that definition to the exact same piece, they come to different conclusions. Why? Underneath that intellectual definition is a whole series of essentially baseless preferences or beliefs from which that definition draws. Maybe one just has a natural liking for those colors or sounds, one doesn’t care so much for the genre.
If you try to scientifically define what beauty is, you can certainly get samples of how various people react to various pieces, maybe come up with certain trends, even very strong trends. But ultimately, you’ll probably still find some people that flies in the face of what that study says is beautiful and you’re likely to find plenty of people who loves it and can spend 15 minutes explaining why it’s so beautiful. The only sort of evidence that you can provide is towards some established standard for beauty. I can prove a particular piece fits some arbitrary standard for beauty, but there’s not “right” answer other than an honest assessment of one’s own reaction to the work.
This is very much how I think it goes to prove the existence of God. Belief in God is ultimately based on certain fundamental assumptions or axioms that we all have, and that shapes whether or not we believe in God. Some of those things we may have some conscious control over, some of them we don’t. But obviously, if one person is a materialist and another person is a deist, any argument one would present is also 100% in alignment with the other’s arguments. After all, we’re all more or less seeing the same evidence, the only difference is those assumptions. It’s no different than how two sports fans of opposing teams can see the same calls and one sees bias and the other does or, more interestingly, each one sees opposite bias.
So, yeah, the only “evidence” I can provide is that in my belief in God is that his existence is consistent with my understanding of the nature of the universe and that his non-existence isn’t consistent. Anything beyond that is like asking me why I like a song, rejecting every reason I give “I like the vocals” “the vocals are awful” “I like the melody” “the melody is boring”. Even if we agreed on any of it, none of that is proof.
Wow, what incredible special pleading (in order to refute a better appeal to tradition, no less). Jewish culture hasn’t changed since Deuteronomy 22, right? An atheistic Ashkenazi Jew is essentially the same as an Orthodox Sephardi Jew, but those guys that can track their matrilineal descent one hundred percent to Indians are a nebulous group?
This is the best evidence I can provide, by the way. Either that, or evolution being a fantastic blind watchmaker.
One man’s Mede is another man’s Persian.
Are you Shah?
Sultanly!
2004 ALCS turned that one around (tho Sept. 2011 kind of killed my “faith” in the Great Red Sox in the Sky for good).
The problem with this is that we would be horribly susceptible to deceit. It would be trivially easy for a very powerful entity to masquerade as an infinitely powerful entity.
For instance, the finite, yet very power, entity, moves the Andromeda Galaxy to a different point in space. That’s far short of an infinitely powerful act, but would be pretty darned persuasive!
(In the same vein, it would be possible for a pretty doggone powerful entity to fake moving the Andromeda Galaxy…)
Beyond a certain (finite!) point, we simply don’t have the tools to make a meaningful assessment of a proposed miracle.
I believe my standard answer as to what it would take to convince me is that an all-knowing and all-powerful deity would already know exactly what it would take to convince me.
This, in my opinion, is where religion has the “right of way,” and I will never condemn it or criticize it. If it works for you, if it comforts you, if it explains things to your satisfaction, then, yeah, it’s just chocolate and vanilla.
How could I ever possibly provide “evidence” that I like vanilla more than I like chocolate? Indeed, what kind of silly person would even ask for such evidence! Personal, individual, subjective faith is…personal, individual, and subjective! Well, of course!
At that level, I love discussing theology, because it is an intricate, thought-filled, challenging, and fascinating field. I don’t have to believe it to find it interesting. I’m interested in quantum physics, too, even though it’s something I can never really exercise knowledge of in any productive fashion.
It’s only when some nutjub tries to legislate public policy on the basis of their theology that I start getting cranky. If your faith says, “Don’t eat pork,” I’ll respect that; I would never be such a jerk as to try to force you or to trick you to eat pork. Meanwhile, if some other jerk tries to pass a law banning the sale of pork products…
Well, Groucho Marx said it best: “This means war!”
Please re-read the OP. It isn’t the first time, and I doubt that it will be the last, where someone has said words to the effect of “I’ve got evidence when it comes to the existence of God!”. Once that statement is made, asking to see this evidence is a proper followup, whether you like it or not. I don’t see you haranguing the people that make the initial claim. Do they get a free pass in your book?