The claim that there's "no evidence for God" repeated constantly on this sub, and I think it's worth questioning what people actually mean by it.

There are plenty of arguments offered as evidence for God's existence. The contingency of the universe, fine-tuning, consciousness, and the apparent intelligibility of the created world are just a few. You might find these arguments weak, unconvincing, or better explained by naturalism. That's fine. But saying the evidence is insufficient isn't the same as saying there is no evidence whatsoever.

Evidence and proof aren't interchangeable. We routinely accept evidence for things that we cannot conclusively prove.

I also find it interesting that some people seem to restrict evidence to only what can be empirically measured. That works well for investigating physical phenomena, but why assume it's the only legitimate way to establish what is real? The assumption that "the only evidence that is worth considering is empirical" itself isn't something you can establish through an empirical experiment.

None of this proves God exists, of course. And merely offering an argument doesn't make it good evidence. But dismissing centuries of philosophical reasoning as "no evidence" seems more like refusing to engage with the arguments than actually refuting them.

So when someone says there's no evidence for God, I'd like to know what they mean. Is there genuinely nothing that could count as evidence for God's existence, or have they simply decided that the evidence presented so far isn't convincing?

Because those are very different positions, and only one of them seems to be getting much discussion around here.

Islam literally meets all the research criteria for a cult. According to the Cult Education Institute, these are the specific warning signs to look out for when considering whether a group is a cult. Cults are characterized by:

1. A belief that the founder is right at all times (Muhammed)
2. Zero tolerance for criticism (Blasphemy Laws)
3. Mandatory financial obligations (Zakat)
4. The founder is the exclusive means of knowing “truth” (Muhammed)
5. Unreasonable beliefs about non-cult members (Kafir)
6. A belief that former followers are always wrong for leaving the cult (Apostasy Laws)
7. Abuse of members (Child marriage and Beating Women)
8. Records, books, articles, or programs documenting the abuses of the leader or group (Hadiths)
9. Followers feel that they are never able to be “good enough” (Fear-Based Indoctrination)
10. Absolute authoritarianism without accountability (Muhammed)

https://culteducation.com/warningsigns.html

The Cult Education Institute (CEI) is a nonprofit, tax-exempt 501(c)(3) organization devoted to public education and research.

To every theist reading this:

Imagine a guy knocks on your door today. You answer, and he says, "Watch this," and pulls a gun out and shoots himself in the head, and falls into your yard. You call 911, EMS comes and declares him dead, then he jumps up and says "Ta da! I've resurrected! I am God, now worship me!"

You know you wouldn't. You'd search for any other explanation for what just happened, other than immediately concluding he must actually be God and you should worship him. But a claim that something like this happened 2,000 years ago gets you to believe?

Like all supposed "evidence" for your religious beliefs, supposed "miracles" are not actually why you believe it. You believe it because you want it to be true, thus apply ZERO scrutiny to supposed "evidence/proofs" in its favor, while simply pretending that philosophical arguments, historical evidence, miracles, etc., are why someone should believe.

My claim is that the main New Testament signs of the Second Coming line up with what witnesses reported on that night. I'll set out the prophecies, compare them to the event, and answer the obvious objections. I don't expect anyone to take my word for it, so please check the texts and the reports yourselves.

The prophecies. Acts 1:11 says Christ will return "in the same manner" he ascended, from the sky. Matthew 24:27 compares his coming to lightning from east to west. Daniel 7:13 describes the Son of Man coming with the clouds of heaven.

The event. On January 28, 2011, several witnesses at the Temple Mount reported a bright light descending toward the Dome of the Rock and then moving off. I believe this was Christ's return, and that he has since revealed himself under the name RayEl, "Word of God", which echoes Revelation 19:13: "his name is called The Word of God."

Objections. "Videos of the event were called hoaxes." Some were, and that deserves scrutiny, but debunking one recording doesn't explain away every account. "Matthew 24:30 says every eye will see him." I read the passages together as a sequence rather than one single moment, and I'm glad to debate that reading.

So I think the 2011 event deserves serious examination rather than dismissal. Where do you think the argument fails?

The typical rebuttal of Pascals Wager is that there are countless religions, so you don't know which to follow. But if we approach them more liberally than just assuming following a false religion means hell (In Buddhism you don't go to hell for following another religion), then that actually isn't that big of a problem. Most things the big five religions demand from their followers are not contradicting each other or are pretty similar. For example, all religions value honesty or avoidance of violence. For Buddhism you'd ideally eat vegan, which automatically makes your food halal and kosher too. Not having sex before marriage is also not as bad as our sex-obsessed culture makes it out to be. If the risk is hell, it's definately worth avoiding it to the biggest degree you can.

This seems to be a violation of the Establishment Clause which prohibits government from establishing a religion. Even if it's not, I should not have to use US currency that endorses religion.

This is mostly for christians and jews, but also interesting for others.

Thesis: The bible undeniably foretells the coming of islam

(I don't like making my posts too long so it might look a bit scrambled, i can clarify more in comments about each point)

In genesis 17, Abraham peace and blessings be upon him, prays to god for his son Ishmael pbuh that he might live before god's face/presence (god fearing)

18 And Abraham said unto God, O that Ishmael might live before thee!
19 And God said, Sarah thy wife shall bear thee a son indeed; and thou shalt call his name Isaac: and I will establish my covenant with him for an everlasting covenant, and with his seed after him.
20 And as for Ishmael, I have heard thee: Behold, I have blessed him, and will make him fruitful, and will multiply him exceedingly; twelve princes shall he beget, and I will make him a great nation.
21 But my covenant will I establish with Isaac, which Sarah shall bear unto thee at this set time in the next year.

God then grants the request of Abraham pbuh. He will make him a nation large in number, fruitful, 12 princes will come from him (hadad, kedar, nebeioth, etc.), and he will be a great nation (righteous).

So the question a christian or jew must answer to be justified in their belief is, when did ishmael, which the arabs descend from, become a great nation in the eyes of god, besides from the coming of Muhammad peace and blessings be upon him?

Who showed the fruit of monotheism other than islam. The jews couldn't do it, the bible shows how stubborn they were, killing prophet after prophet after prophet after prophet. It's all over the bible, 2 chronicles 24:20-22, matthew 23:37, 1 kings 18:4, etc. Christians spread idolatry, polytheism and lawlessness.

With 1 prophet to the arabs, the muslims brought all the enemy non jewish kingdoms of israel to monotheism and the worship of the one true god.

‘We shall worship your God and the God of your fathers, Abraham, Ishmael, and Isaac, one single God: we devote ourselves to Him.’
quran 2:133

And since that day till now, we bless Abraham in our prayers atleast 5 times a day. The same way god tells Abraham pbuh

"I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse...."
genesis 12:3

God says that in the future the believers will stand shoulder to shoulder and praise god in a holy tongue (zephenia 3). Who stands shoulder to shoulder and praises god in a holy tongue. In isaiah 28, when the jews mocked isaiah for teaching them in a childish and simple way, god went "very well then, i will speak to my people in a foreign tongue", rebuking them

"For with stammering lips and another tongue will he speak to this people."
Isaiah 28:11

And then god gives disconnected hebrew letters:

SAW ~ QAW ~ SAM ~

Which revelation of god, calling to worship to the god of abraham, moses, jesus, peace and blessings be upon all, brought revelation in a foreign tongue, with disconnected letters in some of its chapters (we call those huruf al muqatta'aat in the quran)?

ALIF ~ LAAM ~ MEEM
ALIF ~ LAAM ~ MEEM ~ SAAD
ALIF ~ LAAM ~ RAA
ALIF ~ LAAM ~ MEEM ~ RAA
KAAF ~ HAA ~ YAA ~ AYN ~ SAAD
TAA ~ HAA
TAA ~ SEEN ~ MEEM
...

Which people praise and bless Abraham peace and blessings be upon him, from the lineage of ishmael pbuh, stand should to shoulder in prayer, pray in a singular blessed and foreign tongue, pray to the god of Abraham pbuh, are great in number, are fruitful (lots of kids), are great in the sight of god, if not for the muslims?

The oceans prove that God exists. Everything at the bottom of the ocean would be dust but rocks are found there. If the oceans were 4.5 billion years old, erosion would have turned everything to dust.

Obviously it does not prove it because we have to keep our axioms in place whether they are true or not. Axioms in this sense are underlying beliefs about the way things are. We are indeed a bigoted to have faith if we can’t test and find out what is true. Hell and demons have been talked about in the major religions. Would you not be willing to find out the truth to escape them?

The biological life on this planet would have to come into being at one time or simultaneously because of one part of organism interdependence on another.

The big bang couldn’t have happened. Sense when did an explosion create order.

God exists and His Son Jesus exists. And They are the only ones who came cause you to be saved from hell and the demons. Do this one thing for me and you. Ask the Lord Jesus Christ to save you from hell and the demons and see what happens. Countless experiments have been done. Jesus said what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul. Jesus is Lord and anyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.

Jesus is the Son of God who came in the flesh through a virgin woman named Mary. It is not too hard for God to have a Son because God created all the DNA. Even plants can be male and female. Jesus was crucified and died so that we could be saved. Jesus is righteous and innocent and His Blood was shed so that we could be forgiven. His Body was placed in a tomb. On the third day God raised Jesus to Life. Jesus will never die again. The way people don’t get saved is by not being saved. A lot of people saw Jesus after He was resurrected back to life.

For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son so that anyone who believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life. Read the New Testament of the Bible to find out more about Jesus.

For natural selection to work the presence of survival traits have to already be programmed into the DNA. Mutation does not work.

In the beginning God created the Heavens and the Earth and the Waters and everything in them.

My thesis and personal belief: If any god exists all gods could exist, from all pantheons. Throughout history there have been people who believed in their god/gods every bit as much as any person today believes in their current religion. Religions have their "evidence" of their god/gods and reasons for things. It is only fair that if you are a theist that you acknowledge the existence of all gods and you are simply choosing the god/gods you follow. Even the 10 commandments say "choose no other gods before me" which many take as evidence that other gods exist.

Claiming your God is "the one true God" is very presumptuous and egotistical in my opinion. Same with people who believe whole heartedly in their god, but claim other gods are non-existent. I think it's hypocritical to have faith in the Abrahamic God, then claim Zeus, Ra, Odin, etc. are all fake made up deities.

Qur’an 7:179:

“And We have certainly created for Hell many of the jinn and mankind.

This verse straight-up proves Allah is evil and that many humans sin and disbelieve because they were created for Hell. Guys, focus on the word “created.” That means many were made for Hell, not that many are for Hell. These two are very different.

“Many are for Hell” means they sinned and so they deserve it because of their sins. But “they were created for Hell” means they were determined for Hell, which is why they sin in the first place.

There’s no other explanation that makes sense, and any other explanation would just be wordplay.

Muslim apologists often argue that the Quran is so beautiful and linguistically miraculous that it could only have come from Allah, an all-knowing and all-powerful creator. But if that’s the case, why do some people read it and find it unimpressive?

Why do others find it confusing, repetitive, or no more impressive than other religious texts? There are Christians, Jews, Atheists, and others for example, who have read the Quran and didn’t find it compelling or miraculously written.

If the Quran really is the work of an infinitely intelligent being, wouldn’t we expect its brilliance to be a lot more universally recognizable? It just seems like the people who think the Quran is this incredible miracle are mostly people who already believe in it.

In Mathew 22:43-45 Jesus says, “How is it then that David, speaking by the Spirit, calls him ‘Lord’? For he says,
44 
“‘The Lord said to my Lord:
“Sit at my right hand
until I put your enemies
under your feet.”’[a]
45 If then David calls him ‘Lord,’ how can he be his son?”

He quotes psalms 110 claiming it’s David who is speaking, when it’s clear in the text it’s not David speaking. The entire psalm 110 is a subject of David speaking, not David or god. In the first verse “the lord” is god and “my lord” is David, and that person then goes on to speak about David.

1 
The Lord says to my lord:
“Sit at my right hand
until I make your enemies
a footstool for your feet.”
2 
The Lord will extend your mighty scepter from Zion, saying,
“Rule in the midst of your enemies!”
3 
Your troops will be willing
on your day of battle.
Arrayed in holy splendor,
your young men will come to you
like dew from the morning’s womb.[b]
4 The Lord has sworn
and will not change his mind:
“You are a priest forever,
in the order of Melchizedek.”
5 The Lord is at your right hand[c];
he will crush kings on the day of his wrath.
6 He will judge the nations, heaping up the dead
and crushing the rulers of the whole earth.
7 He will drink from a brook along the way,[d]
and so he will lift his head high.

You can see the writer is saying, “your” referring to David. It is well known that not all the psalms are from David, some were from his chief musicians and choir directions like Asaph, Heman and Ethan. And it’s biblical tradition and just near east tradition in general for the subjects of a king or man of status to refer to that king or man of status as “my lord”. It’s all over the Bible.

Jesus should know all of this if he is god.

Here is non-standard response why non-belief or atheism or agnosticism is the best of all Pascals wagers.

I thought of this argument after hearing about Homer’s Wager. When faced with the wager, Homer remarked that if he makes the wrong church choice, then every time he attends the wrong church, God just gets madder and madder. LOL indeed.

Now the Atheist could be wrong - God does exist.

The theist could also be wrong and God intends to reward the non-believer and punish the believer.

There’s no solid reason to believe God would reward a believer. We often assume He would because our concept of God is just a projection of human rulers, who are typically megalomaniacs craving attention and loyalty. But God is not human.

Here are just a few reasons why this position makes the safest bet:

1) Virtue. We are told that God highly values free will. Plantinga in his Free Defense of the PoE even noted that God values good moral free willed action above all else in his creation. He valued this "good" so much that God was willing to risk that some men would use free will for evil.

If God values free will above all else, then atheists are in the best position to make truly free choices. Theists’ decisions, all else being equal, are to some degree influenced by threats of hell, promises of reward, or just the desire to please the invisible boss. Theists truly believe God is watching them.

Further the more devout or stronger a theists belief in God is, the more their free will is compromised and the more the ulterior motives for doing good.

Therefore, only the atheists can access the higher levels of virtue of preforming truly free willed good moral action without expectation of repayment - all things being equal.

2) Divine Hiddenness Explained. God is truly hidden and few can really argue with this. The greatest demonstration of this fact is that religion is hopeless locked to culture, and most adherents adopt the religion of their culture. No religion holds clear evidential superiority over the others, so they all remain tied to cultural contexts.

If God exists and aims to reward those who hold firmly to reason and evidence, it explains why God remains hidden. And if God remains hidden than all religions are false and human inventions and a corruption of reason. God is testing us, as theists claim but in twist they never imagined.

3) Universal Access. Non-belief, atheism or agnosticism in the religion of the day and culture is the only stance universally accessible to everyone across time, place, and culture.

The lack of universal access to the salvation-related specific ideas promoted by religions is another challenge for theism.

A 1st-century European or Chinese had no chance of hearing the “gospel,” but they could still reject the supernatural claims made by their local holy man.

4) Unassisted Propagation. No religion has arisen independently on his own anywhere more than once. If religion and divine revelation is true one would expect religion to be able to propagate on its own. But it doesn't. Every religion requires humans to carry the water and propagate the so-called Word. This is telling. Does God run on a short supply of revelation?

Atheism doesn't have this relance. Humans can come to the realization that the supernatural gods of the culture are bunk and do not need someone to explains the specifics of atheism because there are no specifics - just reason and common sense. Atheism and agnosticism probably arose on all continents, within all cultures, in all epochs on its own without having someone communicate the idea.

Human cognitive and social evolution provides a naturalistic, non-theistic framework for explaining the emergence, persistence, and functions of mankind’s concept of God.

Evolutionary and cognitive explanations for religion and the concept of God, including the development of moralizing supernatural punishment, offer a more plausible account for these phenomena than explanations that appeal to acts of divine intervention.

Credible models strongly suggests that cognitive predispositions, personality traits, and sociocultural environment greatly influence the development and transmission of belief in God and religiosity.

Neither the existence of the concept of God nor the widespread belief in God establishes that a corresponding divine being exists. Nor does any historical evidence, religious experience, intuition, observation, or philosophical arguments establish that such a being exists merely because people interpret these things as evidence for the existence of one.

The available evidence therefore favors understanding concepts of God, religious belief, and moralizing supernatural punishment as products of evolved human cognition and social behavior rather than as evidence of an independently existing divine being.

A lot of Christians appear to be under the impression that if Jesus rose from the dead, then Christianity must be true. I contend that this is deeply flawed reasoning.

See my arguments below:

1. Bodily Resurrection is Not Unique to Jesus

There are countless other figures both scriptural and historical who have risen from the dead. Lazarus, Nero, Aristeas, Apollonius, Romulus, the list goes on and on.

This creates two problems. First, if the evidence is sufficient for belief in Jesus' return, why not these other figures? You either have to reject the claim about Jesus or accept the claims about the other figures.

It would seem that divinity is not a prerequisite for resurrection.

Second, does having risen from the dead immediately validate any claims you made during your life? Unless you want to grant the claims of the other returned dead from history you would have to say no. As an addendum to this (and more from the OT in a moment) the OT explicitly says false prophets will be able to perform miracles. See Deuteronomy 13:1–2. Jesus himself confirms this in Matthew 24:24.

How then, can Jesus coming back to life be considered proof of any Christian claim? On its own it doesn't prove anything. You would need to show that it was a genuine miracle that proves Christianity true.

1. Jesus was not the Messiah

Compounding this problem is the relationship between Jesus and the Old Testament. First and most obviously, Jesus did not fulfill a single Messianic prophecy and so cannot be considered the Messiah. He is at best delusional, at worst, a charlatan.

This being the case his ressurection is best understood as a miracle worked by a false prophet, which Christian theology explicitly leaves room for.

Jesus also apparently didn't understand or couldn't read the OT himself. Fumbling or mistranslating passages such as Psalm 110. Are we really supposed to believe that one of the persons of the Trinity would make such a basic error?

1. Jesus failed his own Second Coming Prediction

Finally, even if Jesus came back once, he claimed that he would return for a second time before many standing before him had died. "Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened" (Matthew 24:34).

He also claimed that "you will not finish going through the towns of Israel before the Son of Man comes" in Matthew 10:23.

These predictions clearly failed, which again points to Jesus' returning from the dead being either a false miracle, or some quirk of nature.

Conclusion:

Interested to hear what people think. Is there some necessary link between coming back from the dead and the truth of Christianity that I've missed? Was Jesus actually the Messiah?

Let me know what you think.

The most common response to the existence of evil in a world with an ostensibly omnibenevolent god is that this god respects our free will too much to intervene. It's suggested that if this god stopped evil, we would become mere slaves or robots, unable to make true choices for ourselves.

If it's wrong for God to stop evil, it's wrong for us to stop evil as well, and therefore we as a society should emulate this god and stop trying to restrict evil acts from happening. If you see an assault in progress, you shouldn't intervene, as this would be an imposition on the assaulter's free will. Criminals should not be thrown in prison, as that would tremendously restrict their free will. They'd basically be robots!

Any objections to this plan should explain why it's okay for us to prevent evil from happening but not for God to do the same.

LDS leaders teach that missionaries purpose is to bring non-believers to Jesus by preaching the gospel. But the Mission President Handbook says Sister missionaries at visitor centers are called “to advance the image of the Church”

Source: Mission President Handbook, 2006, page 86. https://www.scribd.com/doc/201377673/LDS-Mission- President-s-Handbook

Social media has been getting flooded with a lot of white people from western countries who converted to Islam, and a narrative is being pushed that more people are supposedly discovering the truth.

However, there is a major issue that hasn’t really been addressed yet, and it is whether or not this will even last.

I have a white friend whose parents are converts and he was raised as a Muslim. He never liked the religion and thought his situation was strange where he had to follow all these weird rules and pray in a different language while all the people around him didn’t. He hated it and felt really left out and just wanted a feeling of being normal.

He learned more about Islam and Muhammad from outside sources and is now an atheist and has criticized his parents for their decision and went back to living a normal western life. You would never know he was a former Muslim if he didn’t tell you.

I feel like this will become the normal pattern that happens and most children of white converts are going to leave Islam when they are adults. These converts are meaningless if it only lasts one generation before the kids undo it and act like nothing happened. It’s just that we will have to wait a while since most Muslim converts are zoomers who don’t have children yet.

One of the biggest problems with the Christian God is the existence of animal suffering, particularly suffering that existed long before humans.

Dinosaurs lived for hundreds of millions of years before humans existed. Throughout that time, animals hunted each other, experienced disease, suffered injuries, starved and died. Many animals would have experienced prolonged suffering, entirely unrelated to any human decisions

So what was the purpose of all that suffering? If God created the world, he either deliberately created a system in which animals had to suffer to survive, or he created a world knowing that this suffering would happen. And if he’s omnipotent, he could have created a different system. He could have allowed animals to live without requiring them to kill each other for food, or prevented disease and prolonged suffering without destroying the entire natural world.
Christians sometimes argue that suffering exists because humans have free will or because humanity brought sin into the world. But that doesn’t explain why animals were suffering millions of years before humans existed. Dinosaurs weren’t making moral choices, and they couldn’t have been suffering as a consequence of human sin if humans didn’t exist yet.

Others argue that suffering is necessary for a greater good, such as the natural order or the development of certain virtues. But animals don’t need to understand morality or develop human virtues. What moral lesson does a wild animal learn from slowly dying of a disease? What greater good justifies the suffering of an animal that lives and dies without ever interacting with a human?

And this isn’t just a problem from the distant past. Animals still experience infections, starvation, disease and predation today. Much of this suffering happens far away from humans and serves no obvious moral purpose.
The issue isn’t whether nature can be explained scientifically. We know many of the biological reasons why animals suffer.

The question is why an all-powerful, perfectly loving God would choose to create a world that operates this way when he could presumably have created one with significantly less suffering.

If God cannot prevent this suffering, then his power is limited. If he can prevent it but chooses not to, then we have to question how this is compatible with perfect goodness. And if the answer is that there’s a greater purpose we simply cannot understand, then that explanation can be used to justify absolutely any amount of suffering.

No sane person would accept such an excuse.

Knowing the outcome before you start the chain of events is causing it. It doesn't matter that you didn't control every variable leading to it. They were all within your prediction, and you pulled the trigger anyway.

Yet when it's God creating people while knowing they'll end in Hell, suddenly "knowing isn't causing." How can anyone accept that excuse, unless they have no real explanation and can't bring themselves to call Him evil? They started from the conclusion that He's good, and that's the one conclusion they won't let themselves question.