Convince me

[robvalue]

(This is a very general statement, not aimed at anyone in particular.)

It's really presumptuous to tell a sceptic why God refuses to give proper evidence. This is assuming to have intimate knowledge of the motivations of a being whose merest existence, or even a decent definition of which, hasn't been demonstrated. To have to make excuses for a being of immense power, for a task as simple as demonstrating it exists at all, is frankly laughable.

It's just the same as a child saying that adults can't see Santa because they don't believe in him anymore.

If you have to believe in something already before you can "have evidence" of it, then whether or not the thing is actually real becomes irrelevant. Being a sceptic means caring about what is true, and a big part of that is independent confirmation and repeatability. Without either of these things, you are running a big risk of being wildly in error. I'd rather reserve judgement than believe loads of things on weak evidence in the hope that some of them are true.

I respect people's decisions to make whatever they want of their personal experiences. I think non-sceptics should give sceptics the same respect, and not tell them what they should and shouldn't accept as evidence. If God can't or won't provide proper evidence, then it's just too bad. He's feeble, or he's playing dumb games. If he shows up, cool, we can chat. If he wants to hide in a closet and send me garbled messages through unreliable channels of communication, then he can grow up or sod off.