Hell

[Matthew]

You assume that:

• there is no evidence for God or the afterlife
  
• hypotheses not supported by evidence should be modified or discarded
  

Why should I grant these assumptions?

If you don't share these assumptions, how come? Can you present evidence for the former? Do you really believe we should hold onto unsupported hypotheses?

Regarding the first assumption, I would have to know what you consider constitutes "evidence" before I could answer that. Depending on your definition, I may or may not be able to present evidence.

Regarding the second, I am challenging your assumption that evidence is necessary in order to hold onto a hypothesis.

(It would be helpful if you could explain exactly what you mean by 'evidence' according to your epistemology for the sake of clarity.)

I will admit right here that I am much more scientifically-minded than philosophically-minded. Contemplating ideas and issues has its own merit, but when questioning whether something actually objectively exists or not, I look for observable scientific evidence that can theoretically be tested by anyone, if they went out and did the research and collected data.

Things like intuition, or a personal feeling or sense of meaning, or one's personal interpretation of a holy book, I would not consider evidence. It is easy enough for a person to convince themselves that something exists based on these things, but much harder to convince anyone else.

If it is observable scientific evidence you are looking for, then I'm afraid you rule out the possibility of evidence for God, since God is not a part of the physical world and thus can not be subject to the scientific method by definition. If you only allow for observable scientific evidence full stop, and you require such evidence for any truth claim, then your position becomes self-defeating (since it is impossible to provide observable scientific evidence for all the non-scientific claims you have made - including those regarding the necessity of such evidence!).