Evidence for Believing

[Simon Moon]

That sounds like a pretty weak ass god, then.

You're proposing a god, with supposedly immense power and knowledge, who can't even give a consistent image of his existence to his far less powerful creation?

Is he unable or unwilling to do this? If he is unable, then like I said, he's pretty weak. If he is unable, then he can't blame some of his creation for disbelieving he exists.

And the best you can come up with in defense of this, is 'god works in mysterious ways'.

Hopefully you are able to see why we are unimpressed with your 'evidence' and reasoning. Please, at least tell us you are able to see, we are being rational in our disbelief. This is a test of your intellectual honesty.

In your little world, you seem very rational.  To those who know God, you're not.

Yes, my 'little world' of understanding what are the best epistemological tools, that have been proven to be the best at discerning fact from fiction.

Funny thing is, you believe in a god that gave me the knowledge and understanding of the very tools, that, if used correctly, lead to the conclusion, that there are no rational reasons to believe he exists.

Instead of looking for evidence God wants to give you, you're demanding he give you evidence that you've decided he should give you.  But of course, it's God's fault because he made you that way - even though he didn't make others that way.

How am I able to recognise the evidence 'god' gave me, as being evidence for his existence, without first having the presupposition that he exist beforehand? To use John Loftas' "outsider test for belief", if an alien civilization with no god beliefs landed on earth, would they recognise the evidence you are referring to as evidence for a god?

Yes.  I do believe that God purposely draws people with many different images and ideas of him to come to him.  And he does this even though you think he should do it differently.

So, he purposely is setting up a situation, where he appears and provides evidence for his existence to geographically disparate populations, in such different ways, that it causes them to create religions with mutually exclusive beliefs. And you think this is evidence for his existence?

If he wants to have his existence stand up to basic scrutiny, good standards of evidence, valid and sound logic, he should do it differently. If he wanted to prevent a bloody history of warring religions, he should have done it differently. If he wanted to prevent persecution and slavery of much of humanity based on religious beliefs in various ancient books, he should have done it differently.