It's a cop out to claim there is no burden of proof because God is non-physical. There are lots of things which cannot be perceived by the senses, but we accept their reality because they manifest effects that we can perceive, for instance subatomic particles.
Indeed from the classical Christian viewpoint the Bible was one long catalog of ways in which God had manifested himself in this world. Unfortunately the stories were all written by nameless people in a superstitious era, and God seems to have stopped intervening in this world. Robert Ingersoll noted with amusement that the God who had once rained fire and brimstone on sinners in the 19th century confined himself to striking dead the occasional blasphemer by natural means.
Some sort of inner feeling or inner voice telling you there is a God is no evidence because there is no way to show how it is different from other inner voices which you would reject, for instance the fantasies of the Heaven's Gate sect.
@orangebox21 One thing I will concede about the Bible. I suspect that some parts were written with more sophistication than modern fundamentalists see. I think there is a good chance that the talking snake, the talking donkey and most especially the story of Jonah and the whale were deliberately written as fictional fables along the lines of Aesop. Other parts like the sun standing still, no, it was probably meant to be taken seriously and was written by people whose limited knowledge led them to believe that the sun traveled in the sky over a flat disc, so halting it in its path would have no effect on earth, other than lengthening the day.
Indeed from the classical Christian viewpoint the Bible was one long catalog of ways in which God had manifested himself in this world. Unfortunately the stories were all written by nameless people in a superstitious era, and God seems to have stopped intervening in this world. Robert Ingersoll noted with amusement that the God who had once rained fire and brimstone on sinners in the 19th century confined himself to striking dead the occasional blasphemer by natural means.
Some sort of inner feeling or inner voice telling you there is a God is no evidence because there is no way to show how it is different from other inner voices which you would reject, for instance the fantasies of the Heaven's Gate sect.
@orangebox21 One thing I will concede about the Bible. I suspect that some parts were written with more sophistication than modern fundamentalists see. I think there is a good chance that the talking snake, the talking donkey and most especially the story of Jonah and the whale were deliberately written as fictional fables along the lines of Aesop. Other parts like the sun standing still, no, it was probably meant to be taken seriously and was written by people whose limited knowledge led them to believe that the sun traveled in the sky over a flat disc, so halting it in its path would have no effect on earth, other than lengthening the day.
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people — House
