No reason justifies disbelief.

[possibletarian]

It's just the difference between a scientific demonstration and a metaphysical one. 

Science, as you know, very wisely limits itself to certain kinds of knowledge. Empirical, intersubjectively repeatable, quantifiable, etc. That's why it works so well. 

But that leaves a number of big questions. For example, the assertion that empirical evidence is the best or only way to know things is not itself demonstrable through empirical evidence. What experiment could be devised, using empirical evidence, that there is no other kind of evidence? 

Since Plato, serious arguments for God do not consider God to be a sensible object, knowable in the way that other sensible objects are. Sometimes people mistakenly treat God as if it were Bigfoot -- we'd get proof if we knew where to look. But God has always been considered as a non-material or even noetic thing. Actually, non-thing. Some theologians even happily agree that God doesn't exist, because God is itself existence. 

A standard although very limited analogy is to numbers. We say that the number 5 exists, though we've never seen it. Only examples of fiveness or symbols.

Evidence by it's very nature has to increase our knowledge of something, lets look at the definitions.

Evidence: the available body of facts or information indicating whether a belief or proposition is true or valid.
Fact: a thing that is known or proved to be true.
Information: facts provided or learned about something or someone.

*bold mine*  I think you are playing fast and loose with word definitions here, how can imagining something that is not testable in any way increase information, add facts or proof of any kind ?  So when you say 'other types of evidence' what are you talking about, and how does it fit the definition of evidence ?

As for numbers, they are completely meaningless without a something, so saying 5 is completely redundant, it adds no information whatsoever and is a way created by minds to describe 5 of something, not 5 of nothing.

I guess I should make clear that no theologian reads the Bible the way most atheists do -- literalist sola scriptura. 

Well no, taken as is it is clearly a story, it would have to be necessarily taken in a very different way even to the point of disagreement over which parts should be taken literally or not. A quick look at different sects of any religion will tell you this, This is where evidence and not belief comes in.

A long and involved metaphysical logical argument has to do with the fact that things existing are held in existence by things that are essentially (not temporally) prior, and it appears that the chain has to go back to one non-contingent thing that holds everything else in existence. I know I'm going to get into trouble for citing this one -- people really get worked up by Aristotle. But it's just an example of what I mean by a non-empirical demonstration.

I sincerely hope you don't get in trouble for mentioning any philosopher, my problem is again this just may be me being a little simplistic is that even when i was a theist I saw no merits in these arguments, I always thought of them simply as a way of avoiding saying 'I don't know'  It always looked to me as if they had just given in with the questions they could not answer and created an unaccountable deity that did not have to answer any question therefore closing the question. Though Gae answered this question more precisely than I ever could.

I prefer to go on asking the questions, how are you and I able to tell the difference between a real deity and made up in a logical argument ?  In my mind at least they are not arguments for a god so much as what a god would have to be like if he existed, they then go on to give it completely unprovable and untestable attributes.  Or even worse 'A thing that holds everything else in existence', what does that even mean as a way of knowing what god is?

I'm not philosophically trained, and never claim to be. I am however familiar with some of the arguments put down over the centuries  but to me at least it's simply human minds fighting against simply saying 'I don't know'. I admire them for trying to answer the questions of the day but don't believe they have answered a question, so much as avoided one.