Your Evidence For God

Great Debates
21

Well, actually, I really think I can’t believe anything without evidence. I can accept things without evidence, and trust that they’re probably true… but only if I’ve had evidence that trusting this individual/source/whatever is reliable. I honestly don’t think I can believe anything without evidence.

I could be wrong. I’ll try to pay attention over the next week or so and see if there’s anything I believe without evidence.

BTW, for the smartasses out there (I’m one of you at heart, so I can see how it could come up)… I consider “I believe nothing without evidence” to be the default position; I’m now searching for evidence to disprove it :slight_smile:

BTW2: I call myself an atheist because I don’t believe in any gods. I don’t believe (as in know for certain) that there isn’t a god, I just don’t believe there is.

22

I have to admit, I’ve never been head-over-heels in love (and I hope my unbeliever gene doesn’t make that impossible, but I don’t think it does). However, the times I’ve been kinda close, I had no problem accepting the evidence that the person I was seeing had strong feelings from me, mixing in some hormones, and stirring. I had a physical being there giving me evidence, not just a feeling that something must be true. I’m not saying I scientifically tested whether the emotions were there; I had some evidence, so that was enough for me to jump right to belief. I have nothing that I see as evidence of a god or gods.

23

At sixteen, I was miserably depressed and suicidal. I was brought up Christian, but hadn’t really thought much about it, beside vaguely accepting that there was a God. My Mom’s manic-depressive, and and she had episodes all through my childhood, so I think I lacked any real sense of security- I expected my world to fall apart all the time, and to be hurt over and over. Typical unpopular shy-kid as well.

So one night I told God that I didn’t believe in Him, and that life wasn’t worth living. I told Him I was going to kill myself, and that if He was real, he’d stop me. Suddenly the pain all drained away, and I felt really peaceful, and loved.

I think that’s when I became a Christian. I didn’t become a serious Christian until some years after, but that’s when I started the process, I guess. A few other things like that have happened- I felt shoved into going to college, for instance, even though I was terrified. I’ve done healing prayer and stuff and felt what I’d describe as the Holy Spirit moving through me.

It could have been some kind of inner emotional trigger protection thingy- got too close to the edge or something. It could have been psychosomatic. All of it could be coincidence. Group delusion in some cases. I don’t think it is, obviously.

24

The fact that I can perceive and appreciate the glory of a beautiful sunset.

25

I have several reasons for believing in God, none of them decisive perhaps, but taken together I find them pretty compelling. Here are at least some of them:

I have heard enough accounts of miracles, divine communications, and such (like a few that have been reported in this thread), some at least of them from reliable enough sources, to make me more inclined to believe that at least some of them were actual glimpses of God in action than that they were all hallucinations, hoaxes, coincidences, or other natural phenomena.

There have been times when I have prayed and felt like I was getting through to Somebody, and that my prayers were being heard and answered or at least considered. (There have also been plenty of times when I have prayed but felt like I was praying to a brick wall.) And there has been at least one instance when either God spoke to me directly or else my mind tricked me into thinking he did. (Or both: maybe that’s how God spoke.)

The universe: it’s so intricate and beautiful, I find it easier to believe that it was designed by a Creator than that it Just Randomly Happened.

The Bible, especially the Gospel accounts of Jesus: when I read the accounts of what he said and did, there’s something very compelling there that demands to be taken seriously.

Other believers. When I consider the very wisest and goodest people I know, both in person and by reputation (writers, historical figures, etc.), the vast majority of them are believers, particularly Christians. Sure, there are a lot of nit-wit religious people, and a lot of smart, admirable atheists, but in my experience the very upper end of the scale is mostly believers. I see this as, at least, conclusive proof that it is not foolish to believe.

I believe the universe has a moral dimension. I believe that certain actions are evil, and that saying so is saying something objective beyond just “I don’t like them.” Likewise, some actions are good. Since I believe in good and evil, I have to believe in something beyond just the natural, physical world.

26

Fair enough; I suspect you draw a clearer distinction between ‘believe’ and ‘accept’ than most people, which is interesting; sounds like you’re saying Believe=“investment of conscious, deliberate acceptance” and Accept=“suspension or omission of decision to dismiss”, or something like that. Interesting and thought-provoking…

27

I’m in the same camp as the OP. My ex says I have trust issues …

28

I think that’s just beautiful. I consider myself agnostic, but as such I think I can appreciate the heart and feeling in spirituality. Conversely, I think I am spiritual in a sense, but not in a strictly religious sense. I don’t even know if this makes sense! :wink:

Whatever it happens to be for you, I think your spirituality is healthier than the religion of someone who sticks to rigid structure and/or feels the need to prove the existence of a higher being. To me, religion boils down to faith. You either got or you don’t. If you don’t, ain’t no one gonna give it to you. It truly comes from within.

I don’t mean to offend anyone here by that statement, but it’s probably inevitable.

29

Sorry to digress here, but I thought maybe you’re trying to hard and haven’t fully considered that you’re not going to find what you’re apparently looking for. I don’t mean to offend because I have been where you are too (and I may go back again, who knows!)

I do believe that this would make you an agnostic, as I consider myself in the same boat philosophically. I’m a logical person at heart (hehe), but accept that emotions sometimes do take over and it is times like those when I wonder… I’m just not sure I could commit to it though because, without evidence, I’m nothing more than a doubting thomas.

BTW: Here’s the definitions of agnostic and agnosticism as found Webster’s Third New International Dictionary:

agnostic: (from Greek agnostos, "unknown, unknowable, not knowing) one who professes agnosticism; broadly: one who maintains a continuing doubt about the existence or knowability of a god or any ultimates <~… came into my head as suggestively antithetic to the gnostic of church history who professed to know so much - T. H. Huxley>

agnosticism: 1a: the doctrine that the existence or nature of any ultimate reality is unknown and probbly unknowable or that any knowledge about matters of ultimate concern is impossible or improbable; specifically: the doctrine that God or any first cause is unknown and probably unknowable. b: a doctrine affirming that the existence of a god is possible but denying that there are any sufficient reasons for holding either that he does or does not exist.

I’ve become much more comfortable with my views since finding that these definitions clearly apply to what I actually feel. Specifically, that the existence of a god might be possible but that I inherently understand that I may never know with any certainty.

I also find interesting a previous Webster’s definition that goes into why I may never know. It makes a lot of sense to me:
In theology, the doctrine that God is unknown and unknowable; because God has not revealed himself to man; because finite mind cannot comprehend God; because Absolute God cannot come into intimacy nor make himself known to finite mind. In philosophy, the doctrine that First Cause and the essential nature of things are unknowable to man; that it is impossible to know the existence of the human soul and Ultimate Cause, or to prove or disprove it.

I’m sure this is clearly a hijack, but I hope you figure out what you’re trying to accomplish here, because ultimately I think you’re going to be disappointed and realize that you just won’t understand. Only speaking from my own experience…

I am enjoying, however, enjoying the responses…

30

I’m replying, but please start a new thread if you want more. I’m not at all convinced by any of the things listed so far in this thread (a genuine miracle like the leg thing MIGHT do it for me if I saw it, but I think there are easier explanations than the hand of god, such as, say, the woman stretching her leg out a bit)… but I find the stories interesting, even if to me they’re more a peak into human psychology than into the divine.

Nope, I’m an atheist. I’ve had this debate before (when I called myself an agnostic), and now finally concede that I’m not really an agnostic. Agnostics believe the existance/non-existance of God is unknowable. I believe it is knowable, I just don’t personally know. Note that I don’t think any human currently alive knows, either, but it’s possible (and I could be wrong, although nothing in this thread counts as proof in my eyes). All God would have to do to be known is, well, do something Old Testament.

I’m an atheist because I don’t believe in a god or gods, just as I don’t believe in faeries, leprechauns, or invisble pink unicorns. I don’t actively disbelieve them, but my default position is to not believe. It now feels that calling myself agnostic would be giving religion too much credit; why should I be so uncertain about this one piece of mythology, while dismissing the rest?

I’m quite comfortable with my views. Much more now that I call myself an atheist than I ever was when I was calling myself agnostic.

I’m really not trying to accomplish anything here. I didn’t have any expectations at all that anyone would change my views. I just wondered what others took as “evidence” of God… and so far haven’t been at all surprised by what I’ve read.

31

I don’t intend to offer this observation as an ace that cinches my case, but only as background for my story. In my late teens and early 20s, I wanted to be an atheist. I was raised in a very revivalist, evangelistic, emotional tradition and hated its inconsistencies and stubborn refusal to entertain independent thought. Ideas simply weren’t challenged and I wanted them to be. Although I appreciate to some degree all the ideas about faith transcending reason, my heart cannot accept what my mind rejects.

Unfortunately for me and my desire at the time to dispense of a feeling of accountability to a higher power my head, and not my heart, was a problem. I was hung up on the theorem that some philosopher once proposed - ex nihilo, nihilo est (I apologize if my Latin is off. I specialize in Slavic not ancient Languages). I couldn’t get past the idea that everything has a source, nothing simply appears without logical explanation. So somewhere there had to be an initial source, energy, or something self-existant that provided the energy for the rest of the processes that continue around us.

Additionally I had issues with the idea already mentioned by some others. If I see the intricate workings of a watch, the farthest thing from my mind is that it simply evolved. Someone designed it. The complexity and precision of the universe, the human body, etc. left me fairly sure that something or someone (a higher intelligence) designed it.

Assuming that this power - whatever it may be called - is the source of all, I surmised that things such as the innate human distaste for injustice must be programmed response in accordance with the nature of that universe-driving power. I do not feel balanced and well when I live in violation of such principles. Even when I don’t wish to do what might be termed “good”, if I do it anyway, there is a balance and harmony that I conclude comes from being in tune with the cosmic order that I choose to call God.

I am still a sceptic and, according to the bunch I grew up with, I am blazing a path to hell. Along with Plato, I feel that an unexamined life is not livable for man. I have rejected most of the ideas of my youth, but can’t reject this one. I still turn over every rock to see what’s under it and it seems that under every rock there is some kind of evidence of the same cosmic order.

I don’t believe that my faith rests on irrefutable evidence that makes an idiot of anyone who denies it. It rests on preponderance of the evidence from my perspective.

32

Aren’t you just moving this back a step? I say something about the universe allows it to not have a “source”, you say something about God allows him to not have a “source”. Either way you have the same problem, so I don’t see how a god helps this situation. I still don’t pretend to grok how it all began, though, so this one is getting closer to an argument that could convince me (I don’t think it will succeed, mind you, but it’s a lot better than the Watchmaker “It just all looks planned” argument, IMO).

Then what’s with all the imprecision? Why is our DNA full of junk that doesn’t do anything? Why can so much of the universe be explained by science without the need of a creator (I say “so much of” because we don’t quite have it all figured out yet)? You look at something amazing and say, “Isn’t it amazing that God designed that?” I look at something amazing and say, “Isn’t it amazing that the rules of science caused that to come into being.” It’s amazing either way, but I think the God route is far more boring.

33

I’d suggest you read William James’s The Varieties of Religious Experience, online at http://www.psywww.com/psyrelig/james/toc.htm. It’s the classic on the topic.

34

If they are looking for the believer gene they need to concentrate in the locales of the low intelligence gene and the poor critical resoning gene.

:smiley:

35

Your honesty is refreshing on this board. I felt the same as you until I had a near death experience. You may want to read about them, there are many sites and many views, but the answer is in there. If you want to discuss it email me.

Love

36

I look at it this way:
If you want to claim that there is a literal God, then you are stuck with providing literal evidence.
Or as Carl Sagan put it: An extraordinary claim requires extraordinary evidence.

And to use the good ol’ Santa analogy: Let me know when you find his village up at the North Pole. I won’t waste time keeping the hot chocolate warm for you, though.

But if you want to make claims about the patterns of God that you use to explain the universe to yourself, then you are stuck in Anecdote Land, where everyone has a different pattern that appeals to them most. Most of these patterns are lovely and comforting, but they don’t prove the existence of anything but patterns.
Anecdote land is nice, but I wouldn’t want to live there. (That was the message of the movie Pleasantville.)

37

Can you PROVE that “junk DNA” doesn’t do anything? No, of course not. So, lacking this proof, you can’t assume that it doesn’t do anything, right? Or is this just another example of your invisible pink unicorn? *Not being able to prove * that X equals Y does not prove that X does not equal Y. Pretty basic.

(Emphasis mine.) Incidently, I’m curious about where you learned of this particular gene.

Bingo!

I don’t think you are capable of understanding any of this as evidence, by your definition, since you’ve acknowledged that it’s personal evidence. Anyone’s personal evidence is, obviously, going to look like bunk to you because you have no personal investment in their experiences.

So, if a plague of locusts suddenly occurred, you would consider this a miracle and proof of God? Of course, you wouldn’t, you would consider this a freak of nature and explain it away scientifically. But those who have faith (which you acknowledge you lack) might consider this an example of God’s work. Maybe raining for 40 days and 40 nights might convince you. Umm, nope probably the effects of global warming and El Nino. Would you run off to church without delay if you were suddenly afflicted with boils knowing full well your doctor couldn’t possibly explain the affliction in medical terms. IOW, what “Old Testament miracle” would convince you?

Ok, so maybe I’m picking on you, but I still fail to see the point of calling out the theists and begging them to convince you. If that’s not what you’re trying to do here, what’s the meaning of this comment?

It appears to me that this thread is nothing more than a fishing expedition for more weapons in your atheist arsenal.

38

Actually, I’m sorry that I oversimplified. “Junk DNA” includes genes that are inactive in the organism of interest (have lost their promoter through mutation, for example) plus “garbage” between exons, which makes rearrangement of genes easier. It isn’t that it does NOTHING; it makes evolution work. Also, it isn’t that it’s unexplainable; it’s there because of evolution. It doesn’t rule out the type of Creator who sets the rules then sits back and watches, but it’s not necessary if human beings were created as is.

About the “unbeliever gene”:

We’ve been using it throughout this discussion as shorthand for “the thing that seems to make it impossible for atheists like me to believe.” No, I don’t think it’s necessarily a real gene. I’m sorry I didn’t put it in quotes.

I said “yet”. I don’t see why the gaps would necessitate a creator, since I believe we’ll eventually fill them in (just as we’ve progressively filled in the gaps throughout the history of science).

What I mean is that the exact same things happened to me, I don’t think I’d take them as evidence of a god.

A pillar of fire leading a group through the desert might do it for me, but I’ll admit that I probably oversimplified. Let me rephrase: All a god would need to do to prove that he exists is do something that is completely impossible to explain through physics. Stopping the sun in the sky would be another good one.

Well, since I’ve never shown my “atheist arsenal” to contain anything but defensive weapons, I don’t see why I’m the target of such vitriol. People said in other threads that they had evidence of God. I always wondered what that meant. I now know it’s not that I’m an atheist because I missed some pieces of evidence; I’m an atheist because I am unable to take such things as evidence.

To be clear:

  • I think the universe is amazing, but I don’t personally take that as evidence of a god.
  • I have prayed and felt a calm come over me, but I attribute that to my brain, not to a god.
  • I have thought I heard a voice or felt a presence before, only to find out nobody was there. Again, I attribute it to a trick of my brain, not to a god.
  • I’ve had good things happen to me, sometimes a series of them after I did something nice. I attribute that to random chance, not to a god.
39

But would such things really convince you, or would you just consider them part of the “gaps” that science hasn’t explained yet? You know that if something like this happened today, people would be looking for physical explanations rather than all saying, “Oh, so that’s God.” I know I would, and I’m a believer; I believe God could do something like that today, but I’d hesitate to believe he would.

And even if something happened that defied physics, it still wouldn’t prove the existence of God-with-a-capital-G; how would you know it wasn’t the work of a devil, or a superpowerful entity like Q from Star Trek?

And even if God did work pillar-of-fire-type miracles and got you to believe in him, what would be the point? In the Old Testament, the people who saw such miracles did believe in God, but they didn’t have such a great record of obeying, trusting, or remaining faithful to him.

For what it’s worth, I don’t agree with Cinnamon Girl’s analysis: I never saw you as hostile or this thread as a fishing expedition. I think it’s a good thread. It does happen in GD that someone will ask believers a question just so they can shoot them down, but I didn’t see that happening here.

40

I don’t think science will ever know “everything.” For many people, “god” is shorthand for a variable in the equation that is existence. Science alone doesn’t make things balance out right, so there is something unknown. In science, that is a variable. You don’t know for sure what the essence of the variable is, but you can figure it out based on what you do know.

Some people just don’t like admitting that they simply have no understanding of something, and scientists are no exception. For instance, you can ask a scientist where the matter to form the universe came from, or you can ask a priest where god came from. Neither really has an answer - the scientist may simply admit that and go on with life. The priest would replace it with faith. It is kinda hard to wrap your head around the concept of nothingness and the beginning of time. :wink: There is just so much that we don’t know, and is perhaps unknowable.

I’m kinda stuck in the middle. But, I have observed and felt enough to “know” that there is some supernatural force active (though not necessarily an interventionist force), and I can’t shake that off and dismiss it as nothing. In the meantime, it makes my life much better, more joyous, and more filled with love.