Why do you not believe in God?

[Whateverist]

I likewise do not accept God of the gaps arguments. However, I don't believe that all arguments for God are like this, nor do I believe that people need arguments to know that God exists.

I'll grant you that you do not need arguments to believe something but don't you think you need evidence and arguments based on such if you wish to convince anyone else to give up what it is they believe?

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I am not throwing God into evolution. We can both affirm that evolution happened in the exact same manner. You seem to think from the data of evolution I infer God, and then conclude that this inference is unjustified. However, I infer God on other grounds, and from the properties of God and the data of science would conclude that God planned evolution to happen. I don't feel the need to say that God tinkered with evolution. I would say that he set up the dominoes so that the random mutations he wanted happened. This would be before evolution ever occurred, perhaps even at the big bang.

The personal experience aspect, I would be surprised if I hadn't mentioned in the first post because it is something important to me. I don't expect you to believe based on my personal experience. However, I do not think that you can likewise discount my testimony of personal experience as you have not experienced it. From my point of view, I would be more than happy if you went from being an atheist to an agnostic. I would consider it a step in the right direction.

I think you are moving in the correct direction by integrating evolution with Christianity. There is no reason to read the bible in such a literal way as to have a problem with evolution. People just have to give up reading the bible as a reference book of empirical facts.

But what about the place of God? So long as we still imagine Him setting up all the dominos (and blinking them into existence to begin with?) then we place the universe as we know it as secondary to God. Not very intuitively appealing to me. Why couldn't God have a natural beginning within the pre-existing substrate, whatever that was? As far as I can see, the alternative is to imagine God blinking shit into existence. That way the knowable, measurable world is given an arbitrary and conditional status that will always seem suspect to me at least. From our very finite position it is hard to see how we should know the limits to Gods boundlessness.