God, Energy and Matter

[polymath257]

If someone hits me with a baseball bat, I don't need to look for scientific proof before I realize it.  You might tell me I could have imagined it, but that wouldn't change the fact that I got hit by a baseball bat.  Someone visiting from another country, who also got hit by a baseball bat, might think he got hit by some other kind of club, but he still got hit by a baseball bat.

If you want to have some other evidence before you would believe then go ahead and wait for it.  I've got no good reason to spend my life looking for other ways to prove it's real.

But if you claimed an invisible gnome hit you on the head with his magic scimitar, we would be well justified in being skeptical of your claim.

Why? Well, there is no evidence that invisible gnomes exist and there is no evidence that magic scimitars exist. So, we may well ask for further evidence than your claim.

And even more, if we didn't find a gash in your head and you kept talking about invisible gnomes, we might well suspect you to be delusional.

That is what God claims look like to atheists: claims about invisible gnomes. The more you talk about them without some *other* evidence to show they even exist, the less we see you as a reasonable person.