Evidence for a god. Do you have any ?

[vulcanlogician]

Other people do offer identical but competing assertions regarding what they consider to be God. Although if you were talking about Judaists or Muslims, that is all the same God (the God of Abraham). If it were say a Hindu or a Jainist or sikhist, I would not criticize their right to believe in what I would call simply a different version of the same God. I would encourage them to embrace the teachings of Jesus and I would share my own experiences with them.

I'm getting tripped up on the phrase "different version of the same God."

God is supposed to be real, right? If you had a friend named Ted, and coworker described a relationship with someone who sounded very similar, you wouldn't call this new person "a different version of the same Ted," would you? You wouldn't do that if it was some other individual (who is not Ted). And you wouldn't do it if your coworker knew the same Ted as you knew, but related to him differently. Hence "different version of the same God" sounds odd to me. Which is it? Is it the same God or not?

I'm not trying to be contentious. It just seems to me that believers have faith in a great deal more than God's existence: namely, a tradition (that was at times spread through violence and monied interests) and/or a set of texts (which accumulated largely due to historical happenstance). A creationist is not merely resolute in his belief that God created the world in six days. He is convinced that the authors of Genesis delivered an unblemished account of the proceedings. Faith in this is not just faith in God. It is faith in people... like those who wrote the Bible... and those who followed thereafter, believed it to be true, and impressed the idea of Biblical authority upon their children.

Religion spreads like languages spread-- through conquer, migration, etc. People are generally raised with a given religion. It is not the case that people generally encourage agnosticism in their children and then allow them to chose --or not choose-- religion whenever they wish (which is a good way, I think). But this isn't the way religion is given to people. It is culturally instilled.

So to return to the "different version of the same God" thing: you could say that Sikh or Jain religions are rooted in contact with the same God described in the Bible, but that would open a whole new can of worms, wouldn't it? It would be considered a heresy by most religious adherents across the globe. Not because it denies their God... but because it would undermine their faith in particular people (say, the authors of the Bible) whom they believe are the only ones to have accurate information about God.