Q: do you, Christian, claim that God exists, rather than you believe that he exists?

[Rampant.A.I.]

The only thing being sacrificed to conclude that Jesus is real is intellectual integrity.

That is your opinion and you are entitled to it and I respect that.

And your question is merely trying to shy away from the burden of proof by insinuating that anyone else somehow shares the responsibility of accepting the evidence that you have.

Evidence has no power in and of itself. Evidence does not force or coerce you to accept it. Accepting or rejecting evidence is something that you as a person decide to do. It is an act of the will. So yes you have a responsibility to accept it. If you reject it then that is an act of the will.

To prove my point, lets assume that there exits evidence for the divinity of Christ. We will label this evidence (E1). This evidence is empirical proof for the existence of God and the scientific community has just released a press conference about the discovery of this evidence. You have just watched the press conference.

What follows?

Does the fact that this evidence exists force you to accept it? Does it Coerce you to accept it? Or do you decide/choose to accept it?

Clearly the latter is the case, not the former. Just because the evidence exists it does not therefore follow that you will accept it. To reason so would be to commit a logical fallacy of the non-sequitur type. If one were unwilling to accept the findings of the scientific community all they would have to do was say that they were wrong or that it was a conspiracy orchestrated by Christians or whatever.

You may object and say well if scientists said God existed then I would believe it. You very well may. Many might. Many might not. Those who did not want to believe it would simply find a reason not to. It is just that simple.

The point remains. If a person does not want to believe God exists then nothing will force them to believe God exists. It has often times been said that the human will is the strongest force in the universe. I do not quite agree with this, but I agree with what it hints at.

People walk around in denial all the time, denying things that they know very well are true. It has been recorded, how some who have been diagnosed with a terminal illness, never accept the diagnosis because they are so horrified at the prospect of an immanent death, that they literally convince themselves that the diagnosis was incorrect and they live in denial until their death. There have been instances when people have been convicted in clear cut cases of murder or rape or some other heinous crime and the parents or loved ones of the convicted adamantly swear that their child or loved one could not have committed the crime. This denial is so strong that the parent or loved one refuses to accept that their child or loved one could be guilty even when the evidence is indisputable.

In these instances it is clear that a person can be so opposed to the clear cut truth that they deny this truth in the face of indisputable evidence.

But some atheists would have me believe that things like this never happen at all. This is simply incorrect.

How many times have we heard of women who continue to stay in abusive relationships despite their being beaten daily. What do they usually say? Oh....he loves me! I know he really loves me!

Is this not denial in the face of indisputable evidence? The evidence is indisputable because it is in the form of busted lips, blackened eyes, and other physical, visible, undeniable injuries. Yet the woman lives in denial of what so many around her see so clearly.

To recap, evidence itself does not force or coerce a person to believe. You as a person are responsible for accepting evidence or rejecting it.

It's a smokescreen to try to cover up that your evidence is shoddy and you don't want to speak for itself. You have to first give your argument a little psychological primer to sugarcoat its legitimacy.

I think I do have to speak of a person's psychology when speaking of these matters. Why is it recorded that some people refused to believe Christ was who He said He was even after they saw Him raise people bodily from the dead with but a Word?

Why did some deny He was the Christ even after they saw Him feed thousands with a basket full of food?

People denying the undeniable is recorded several times in scripture. They denied the undeniable because they were UNWILLING to believe.

And yet the only people unwilling to believe undeniable evidence today are Christians.

They're unwilling to believe in anything science has to offer, unless it benefits them personally. E.g., spreading the gospel, yet rejecting any part of science that might be contradictory to their belief in scripture.

"Show me evidence!" Christians cry. And yet, when you show them evidence, they quote scripture, and demand MORE evidence!

Or in the case of the post above, one could paraphrase a bunch or scripture about evidence, completely ignore the request for evidence, make a bunch of unsubstantiated claims about evidence, and then proclaim:

"See? So evidence amounts to nothing!" Without actually having provided so much as a shred of evidence to support their claims.