True religion

[Sword of Christ]

Unfortunately it is the disagreements that are the real deal-breakers, isn't it?

When it comes to faith and what you can't know for certain there is quite a lot of room for disagreement. Atheists have decided to disagree with the whole entire thing in absolute totality which is a little bold of them. Ok so we don't have hard scientific factual data of Gods existence so it's possible he doesn't exist but that's just something you decide to take on belief like anyone else so I don't see what deal is meant to be broken.

The Jews don't follow Jesus, the Christians think he was the son of god, and the Muslims think he was just a prophet.

It's good to have the choice I guess, it's best not to give anyone a faith monopoly. So most people tend to stick with the what they were raised with though that's not always the case and those who don't tend at least understand the other points of view and consider them. Atheists are influenced by the common beliefs and views of the culture into which they were born as well in any case. Since the 17th century atheism/naturalism has become very well rooted into Western culture, for educated people it has now become the default worldview of choice and our culture/media has become saturated with it. Popularity and cultural transmission of ideas is not an indicator of truth though so there is nothing delusional about a belief in God, a God you can pray to who does interact with you.

If saying 'it's enough that we all believe in the same god', then please help me explain the thousands of years worth of interfaith violence, war, and death?

You would still have violence, war and death without religion or belief in the supernatural as Fascism and Communism demonstrated very well. The question is whether the positive changes religion brought to the world would have occurred if there had been no spiritual inspiration or belief in any power/authority beyond that of man.

Do you have evidence to support your position? No?

It depends what kind of evidence you mean. If you mean scientific evidence the best you can do is put what we know into the context of a purpose made creation as we can't study God directly only what he made. If you put our scientific understanding into the greater context with humanity as a integral part of the whole then then it makes a great deal of perfect sense. You will wonder why other people can't see it once you come to this understanding.

Then don't whine and bitch about it to us. If your position lacks evidence, change your position; simple as that.

Evidence of a certain kind with good solid arguments in support of it is what you have. No-ones saying that God is a scientific claim science studies the universe God created, the stuff we can physically see and/or detect and that's the limit of it. It doesn't necessarily mean we're limited to that kind of knowledge if there is another kind of knowledge out there we can attain.

Reminder: If you have facts and evidence, one doesn't need 'faith'.

Well yes that's why it's called faith. You see there is a chance whatever you believe is wrong but there's a chance atheists are wrong to not believe in God, not to pull a Pascals Wager on you. So You have to take the facts and arguments you have and decide what you want to believe. As long as you know the option is a real and valid one that's the best I can do. You can lead a horse to water and all that business.

Do you claim that your god affects the natural world?

Yes but what we scientifically observe of the natural world will just become part of science and we can't observe everything. God sustains the existence of the universe and I believe is manifested in life and consciousness, particularly in the grade of consciousness that mirrors his image, that would be humanity and anything equivalent should life exist elsewhere I would suggest it does.

If so, then your god can be tested.

I suppose not if God is beyond what we can observe and test. You can try to experience the presence of God for yourself through prayer though that is subjective to yourself. There is parapsychology and NDEs and that kind of thing which does come a little into what we can observe or obtain data from but I wouldn't base a faith on it. Though inconclusive scientifically I think there is something there of interest in terms of the nature of consciousness and it's interaction/relationship with physical matter.

If not, then your god is unfalsifiable

You can't demonstrate Gods existence through science so you will have to fall back on personal experience, rational deduction and external revelation from God.

; but conversely unable to affect the natural world.

God is the creator and sustainer of the natural world and every person, creature, star and planet within it, he does more than just affect it you're looking at the reason why it even exists at all the underlying context of everything. This is kind of a big deal here not something arbitrarily thrown in that we could don't particularly need.

So which is it? Do you have an interventionist deity that interacts with the world

The interaction is continual and you live within the interaction and you are the result the interaction so it's difficult to know what you would want to physically see that would satisfy you. There isn't anything of God you can physically see. There were real historical people people who say had an experience of the risen Christ whatever that experience entailed but we can't subject their experience to science, this is something is beyond what we can observe and is forever beyond our reach.

, and yet we have no evidence for?

Evidence of a certain kind if you're open minded and/or you are impressed by the rational and moral arguments for God.

Or can he do nothing to affect nature, and is in essence identical to a non-existent god?

Nature is the effect and life/consciousness and freewill is the interaction. If you mean miracles they would be built into the nature of reality and there would be some kind of context into which such events could operate they wouldn't just happen. But even you were to witness such an event yourself that wouldn't necessarily prove God exists to you seeing as for all we know it is possible for an advanced alien like the Q from Star Trek to replicate some kind of Biblical feat without the aid of God. So you will still require faith in God based on the same reasons.

Who in the hell are you to say what science can not explain?

It only covers what we can visibly observe and/or detect, there is a lot we can't normally see and detect that science has revealed and no doubt there is a great deal more. But God by definition is forever beyond what ever can be seen, observed and detected. You can observe the interaction but the interaction covers the whole of the universe 24 hours of the day, or whatever hours in a day a planet has. So that doesn't really help if you're trying to "prove God with science" you can't do that so don't worry about it.

Everytime anyone has every drawn that line in the sand, it has eventually been crossed by the unrelenting forward march of scientific progress.

But there isn't a line to draw when it comes to God and faith in a revelation from God and our relationship to God. You can't drag God into a laboratory for testing, you have nothing physically there and if there was that wouldn't be God.

All one can say with confidence is that science hasn't explained it yet.

It explains what we are able to physically study and observe we can't go beyond that.