Evidence for God

What Evidence Would It Take To Believe?

If atheists say there is no evidence for God, what kind of evidence would actually convince you that God exists?

This is an honest question from someone who believes there is plenty of evidence, but what they call evidence is not accepted as such by scientifically literate people. What evidence would it take?

I can imagine dozens or hundreds of things that might convince me, but listing those is fruitless because they would just appear to be a list of impossible tasks which I put there just to make it impossible to accept god. The question can be addressed categorically with the following:

I don't really have to worry about what particularly it would take. If God is omniscient then he knows exactly what evidence would convince me. If he is all powerful, he can present that evidence to me. If he loves me, and it is important to know that God exists, then he would present such evidence.

Since I have seen no such convincing evidence, we must conclude that God does not want me to believe. Who am I to question the will of god?

The Christian then has to argue: well, yes, God knows exactly what you need, but has decided not to present that evidence. Why? It is not because he it too lazy, because being omnipotent there is no such thing as lazy; whatever God wants he gets without breaking a sweat. OK, so then it must be that he doesn't want to give me the evidence I need. Again, who am I to argue against God's will.

Usually the Christian argues: but there is enough evidence, you just refuse it. Once again, I have to point out that whatever was presented as evidence is not enough to convince me, and God knows it. I don't really have any control over how God made me. I can't just magically be a different person.

The final step is to insist that God only wants people who believe in things for which they do not have enough evidence. That is, knowing that there is no evidence, this person believes anyway as a power of will. This is of course nonsense because following that path would lead to absolutely any possible believe. There is no evidence for bunnies in outer space, so I should believe in that to prove my faith to God. There is no evidence for Zeus, so I should believe in Zeus. There simply can't be that God gave us the ability to perform elementary logic, only to require that we discard it to be considered one of the faithful.

The conclusion of all this is that clearly the believers believe that you must accept as evidence things that do not count as evidence. Therefor, the evidence they have accepted is probably not actually evidence. This rings true when I ask people what served as evidence for them. If have gotten the craziest of answers. Trivial things like "my house was saved from a tornado" or "my uncle recovered from cancer" and all sort of other things that are indistinguishable from the normal kinds of random variations that exist in the world.

My God is far more powerful than that. A real God creates a real universe which can really come to know God by real examination of the real evidence that exists. He does not have to get people to be fooled into belief by believing the unbelievable. My God does it the honest way.