“Proof” of a deity is a pretty tall order, even a little verifiable evidence would be nice. Just something of substance, anything that we can look at and say, oh, yeah, that points convincingly toward a genuine, not-made-up superbeing.
However, that much is the second hurdle, the first bar is lower but a much harder challenge: why? What does a deity have of value to offer? In order to get us to believe in it, we need a reason to believe that it even matters.
eschereal: I’d have thought the reasons were obvious: having a super-powerful entity on your side! It’d be wonderful to be able to call upon Athena to help me out when I don’t know what to do, or to have Ares to come and help me if someone tries to start a fight with me. It would be nice to believe that Zeus is friendly to my country and hostile to my country’s enemies. It would be very comforting to know that my prayers and propitiations might lead Hades to move my parents’ shades to a nicer quarter of the underworld – and that the prayers of others might benefit my own shade some day.
The reasons are countless!
I suspect this isn’t exactly what you meant, but maybe you can help clarify where I went wrong?
Is it not the height of arrogance to imagine that any of the pantheon would have any inclination to help you?
No, I am not asking how belief might be appealing, I am asking how one might fit a deity into the ever-shrinking gaps in our understanding in a meaningful way. Explain why we should consider that deities might exist before trying to convince us that they do. What is their purpose? Do they feed the turtles?
Yes, but was it a double first? 
I guess it always struck me differently. I felt freed because I didn’t have to think any longer about some grand plan or to try to work my way around the problem of evil or to contemplate big questions at all. Life is life and when it’s done it’s done, and I’d better do the best I can with it for its own sake because there are no second chances. Something about that made me far more content than I was when I thought Hitler was frying in hell.
Of course, part of that was probably my mom telling me when I was a kid that she didn’t think anyone was actually in hell because people who did really bad things were unwell and no one else deserved that punishment.
Well, not necessarily. If I’m a good worshiper, and sacrifice properly, then Athena might hear my prayer when I’m in need. Sure, she has a lot of worshipers, but she’s a god, right? Answering prayers is a big part of what she does. Stomping on people who offend her is also a big part of her daily agenda, as well as her personal activities like getting into beauty contests that cause decade-long wars to break out…
Ah! Right, I was unclear. Sorry. I agree here: the idea of deities sort of addresses questions without actually answering them.
Why does the sun rise in the east?
The god of the sun chose it that way.
Why are there thunder and lightning storms?
The god of thunder and the god of lightning are exercising their powers.
Why do we live and die?
The god of life and the god of death are in an eternal struggle.
It was the best human minds could come up with, before we devised organized logical inquiry, and the philosophical and scientific methods.
Ha! whaddya think I am…a freak?
I think it is worse than that. Not only is there no evidence of any substance, often there is not even a coherent (or even contradictory) definition of the deity.
So realistically we should say “never mind the evidence, lets start with you saying what it is you believe in and we can decide what evidence is appropriate from that” Otherwise there is simply no reason to even begin the conversation.
You mean other than some vague feeling that the world we encounter today couldn’t have sprung into existence without involvement from a deity? Which is a silly notion, because then you have to account for the origin of said deity.
I’m 99% sure that if nobody had ever explained the notion of a god to me, I wouldn’t have thought of it myself.
The brain (and body) are of the material world, the immortal soul is not. The brainorgan, specifically, is the interface between the spiritual and the physical. Alter the interface and you alter the communication. Think of a bad connection between your computer and your monitor. As a bonus, does your monitor experience a meaningful physical change when you unplug it from the computer? If not, does that mean it never received a signal from the computer? You’re welcome.
As for the OP–None. Or perhaps all. What I perceive to be the glaring wrongness of every religious argument has pushed me toward resolving the matter on my own terms. I have come to believe in more than the physical world, but to discuss it in terms of “God” would be far too limiting. Religion remains a disgraceful violation of humanity, however.
Until you can come up with any evidence to the contrary, the base assumption is that all religions have an equal amount of verifiable evidence-none.
Sure you would have. When you were a baby and hungry a parent magically fed you. When you were a baby and dirty your parent magically changed your diaper and made it all better. Eventually you learned that if you smiled and made gurgly noises your parents would ooh and ahh and play with you. And you also might have learned that your parents might yell at you for no reason you understood.
What else is God anyway? Except non-abusive parents actually do stuff for us. With God when we are miserable it is for our own good.
I don’t think that, if the concept of a god had already been created, the idea of giving an invisible someone else credit for the hard work I go through to survive the day would ever occur to me. I may or may not assign supernatural aspects to that I can see and hear, which directly effects me, but the idea of The Unseen?..probably not.
There are aspects of Hinduism that suggest that a deity can be compelled to help you, if you say the right words or do the right things. Even evil beings can compel the gods to grant them favors.
I think this might also be true in Greek mythology, but I can’t recall for sure.
Except, by the time you can form ideas in your own head, you come to understand these things. Really, the only thing that carries forward from infancy is the impression that getting attention from other people is desirable. I mean, how much do you actually remember from infancy/toddlerhood? Religion and spirituality are effected linguistically, which is the foundation of reason. We learn abstract concepts through language, without which there can be no religious constructs, or scientific discovery, for that matter. Pre-rational notions may be extrapolated backwards toward religious concepts, but that still relies on the supertext of reason, otherwise dogs would believe in gods.
I certainly can’t defeat the God created the universe and then proceeded to do nothing and is completely undetectable argument, but while it isn’t defeat-able, it is also not terribly convincing, and also doesn’t get you to a specific religion.
Sometimes I like to think that when we die, there will be another great adventure. I think of Gandalf then:
"The grey rain-curtain of this world rolls back, and all turns to silver glass, and then you see it.
White shores, and beyond, a far green country under a swift sunrise."
It sounds lovely and marvelous. But most of the time I am painfully aware that this one life is probably all we get.
You know how everybody says that religionists feel like they have to preach, because it’s our eternal soul they fear for? I feel the other way. I feel, sometimes, when I am feeling particularly cynical or bitter, that they are doing us (and have done us) a huge disservice by preaching about the afterlife and not talking about how to make this world our Heaven. Instead they work hard to divide us. These people are going to Heaven, but these people suck.
So no, there is no compelling evidence for me. Nothing really speaks to a Creator. Sometimes I like to think like this, I guess: The Universe made us so that we could answer the question of its own creation. Why? We are the only creatures as far as we know to ask Why???
But that doesn’t mean I think the universe is sentient or anything. It just happened.
The one where God him/her -self comes down from the heavens, produces ID that’s beyond a reasonable doubt, then commences to do a shitload of explaining.
Well, yes, mine does, kind of an orgasmic release of sorts. But, it’s a really high-end monitor, so perhaps not typical. No welcome necessary.
My father has a belief that is similar. He believes that the physical body is akin to a lens that “focuses” spiritual energy, which then shines through our daily actions. Or, something like that. So, for him, people who are deranged have a physical problem which is causing the positive energy to be out of focus. I guess our brains are radio receivers.
Anyway, the point is that arguments like the computer monitor one or my father’s body lens one benefit two ways -
They can’t be disproven. We can’t use any other science to tune in to the spiritual energy broadcasts, so we’re done before we start.
They allow the belief in the supernatural for those people who just can’t be without it by giving a plausible-sounding mechanism while at the same time being unassailable (see #1).
But, there are also problems -
At this point, the sort of God we are discussing has strayed considerably from the God of the Bible. (above in this thread, MrDibble invites us to define God before engaging in arguments about Him/Her for exactly this sort of reason.)
This sort of mechanism for God adds nothing that was not already present, except for God. It’s like saying that a milkshake is really nice… But, an identical milkshake - with God - is so much better that I am forced to change my entire world view to accommodate it. I’m sorry, but I’m not impressed. Use God to change the situation in an interesting way. Make the milkshake last forever - then, hey, I’ll listen to whatever you have to say on the subject.