Are miracles evidence of the existence of God?

[The Grand Nudger]

Sure it is. Fairness, in Winters worldview, is an issue of a guy kicking the shit out of you if he says that's what he's going to do. The fact that he's kicking the shit out of you is not the item of concern. It's that he kept his word about it.

[Brian37]

How can it be wasted?

If there is an afterlife .... is it really a life wholly after this one or is it, rather, a continuation of this life in another form?

According to my faith, it's a continuation of this one, where people rise from the graves; then gets judged by God for their deeds in this life; then depending on each one's deeds they will either go to heaven or to hell.

The idea of "judgment" in the afterlife is NOT unique to the religions of Islam, Christianity, or Jews.  Prior polytheism has their own superstitions too.

The ancient Egyptians had their version, so did the religions of Asia and Japan.  So did the ancient Romans and Greeks. 

Arguing over the details between religions is like arguing over Coke Vs Pepsi when both are sugary sodas that really do more harm than good. 

The idea of "judgment" of any religion, isn't one of pragmatic correction, but tribalism. 

It comes from our species competition between groups. In antiquity the motif was about loyalty to the group. It had nothing to do with individual empathy or compassion.

"Judgment" in antiquity was about tribe loyalty and submitting to local social norms. 

Modern "justice" in the west is based on rule of law, independent of any one religion. Modern "justice" isn't based on revenge, but oversight and probable cause and jury of peers.

"Hell" isn't a corrective concept, it is an act of revenge.

[Sal]

It seems to me that if there really were an all-powerful Male creator God of the silly anthropomorphic kind ... it's less likely that such a God is any particular God in one of those religions---Yahweh, Jehovah, Allah---and more likely that those are just his different incarnations.

IOW, as silly as God is, if he did exist why would he stick to communicating through only one religion?

This even fails the smell test. When hacks like Jordan B. Peterson talk about metaphorical truth present in all religions, theists of the non-denominational kind extrapolate that to mean some nebulous creator god present in all religions and that all religions have got the gist of something. What I mean is even a cursory glance at the differences in religions main tenets you have to do some serious reductionism to make them match, also in a metaphorical sense.

To add to that, wouldn't a creator god know exactly how to write an unambiguous book that could only be interpreted in one way such that there would only be one religion? It would basically be an universal language, like maths and/or lojban.

[The Grand Nudger]

Why would a god write, at all. If we're checking assumptions, let's check the fundamentals. Maybe the creator god really is incompetent or malicious or a combination of both. Maybe it doesn't know how to convince you or anyone else, and in the event of some happy accident where a believer is made, they immediately fuck it all up. Then, the world would look very much like the world does today, with respect to religions.

God perpetually failing upward. A pattern of unsuccessful attempts at communication spanning tens of thousands of years.

[Porcupine]

To add to that, wouldn't a creator god know exactly how to write an unambiguous book that could only be interpreted in one way such that there would only be one religion?

Maybe. But even if that is so perhaps God wants to confuse people?

[The Grand Nudger]

Or, maybe god doesn't want much of anything in particular, it's just nuts. Completely lost it sitting alone for an eternity before it made us.

[Porcupine]

Or, maybe god doesn't want much of anything in particular, it's just nuts.  Completely lost it sitting alone for an eternity before it made us.

To me that would just be another way of saying that if God exists they're not only deeply confusing but also deeply confused.

[The Grand Nudger]

Probably is. It's new at this gig. No one's ever done anything like it before.

[Porcupine]

Probably is.  It's new at this gig.  No one's ever done anything like it before.

I recently learned about process theology, lol. In process theology God is omniscient, omnipresent and omnibenevolent but NOT omnipotent

[The Grand Nudger]

There are clearly things that gods just can't do. Some are explicit. The bronze age god in question told his followers that they were on their own against enemies with iron, for example. The others are apparent. That god fails to exert control over much, if anything, in our world is something that must be contended with by any genuine and well developed theology.

It shouldn't be confusing when someone suggests that god may not have the control required for omnipotence. That's a good example of people trying to figure out what kind of god that a god must be in this world, in this reality. Of making god match facts on the ground. God, in that conception, is a bit like Cassandra. It knows everything, it wants the best, but it simply can't effect those outcomes or forestall the worst in a world full of free agents who do not deign to do it's will or heed it's warnings.

We immediately think of ourselves as those agents, but in process theology, even the trees can be a rebel agent. A truly fallen world, lol.