Evidence for God

 

The Evidence for God’s Existence

In a previous post (see What Constitutes “Evidence” of God) I discussed the different standards that atheists and theists use when determining what actually constitutes evidence when it comes to the existence of the particular god that the theists believes in. In that post, I described what standards atheists use to determine whether evidence is “good” or not (and, I should point out, the standards most theists actually use when it comes to anything apart from the particular god they happen to believe in), but the point of that post was primarily to point out that it’s not necessarily accurate to say that theists believe in their god without any evidence, since theists simply are wiling to consider some things as valid evidence that atheists would not, which is why many theists bristle when atheists claim that there is no evidence for the existence of the particular god they happen to believe in.

Anyway, in that post I focused primarily on what atheists consider to be good or valid evidence for anything (including the existence of any gods). In this post, however, I want to go a little deeper into the sorts of things that many theists consider to be good or valid evidence for the particular god they happen to believe in (along with why that evidence really isn’t actually good or valid).

Inevitably, whenever a theist of any stripe claims that there is abundant evidence for the existence of the particular god they happen to believe in, this evidence turns out to be one or more of the following:

• The result of being told from birth by their parents and members of their cultural group that one particular god is the One True God™ and that one particular religion worshiping that One True God™ is the One True Faith™. Which, of course, means absolutely nothing as far as evidence goes, else every single believer of every single faith would be equally justified in claiming that they had evidence that their god and their faith were true while everybody else’s god and faith were wrong, which is a logical impossibility.
• Stories written hundreds and even thousands of years ago for which there is little (if any) supporting evidence (archaeological or otherwise) and plenty of contradictory evidence.
• A belief that if a prophecy written in one part of a book is said to have come true in another part of the same book, that this somehow means it actually came true instead of just meaning that somebody claimed that it did.
• A post hoc reinterpretation of passages contained in their holy book done after a particular scientific discovery is made that lets them claim that, despite the fact that plain language of that passage either has nothing whatsoever to do with the scientific discovery or else is just plain wrong, this passage somehow miraculously matches that scientific discovery exactly (if you interpret the language just right, ignore the bits that clearly don’t agree, and squint really hard). Strangely enough, however, there never seem to be any instances where somebody figured out the “correct” interpretation before science made the discovery.
• Lots and lots of anecdotal stories from people, both ancient and modern, who claimed to have had “miraculous” experiences, ranging from direct encounters with divine beings to inexplicable healings (never the restoration of a severed limb for some reason, though) to things as mundane as finding their lost car keys after praying for help. Aside from the fact that many of these stories might be outright fabrications, and aside from the fact that “inexplicable” is not the same as “miraculous,” and aside from the fact that these events never seem to be repeatable in any consistent manner, and aside from the fact that accepting these stories as “evidence” of the divine means ignoring all the instances where prayers were not answered, once again we are faced with the fact that if such stories were actually considered evidence of the divine, then it would mean that there would be simultaneous evidence for the gods worshiped by completely different religions, since they all tell miraculous stories to support a belief in the existence of their particular god. And, once again, that would be a logical impossibility. Either these types of stories are reliable evidence, in which case all gods and all religions are simultaneously true (despite the fact that many claim that they are the One True Faith™), or else this evidence isn’t reliable after all. And since the first option leads to a logical impossibility, the second option must be true.
• Personal spiritual witness. Sadly, the same exact logic applies here. People of different faiths worshiping different gods all claim to have the same sorts of personal spiritual witnesses, and if the same evidence can be used to prove completely conflicting results, it’s not good evidence. Besides, personal spiritual witnesses are wholly subjective to the person having them, which means that there’s nothing clear and obvious for atheists to “deny” since they aren’t the ones who had the experience. To an atheist, it’s just another anecdotal story.
• A conviction that if “science” cannot currently explain one or more aspects of observed reality, whether it be how the universe came to be, the origin of human consciousness, the complexity of DNA, etc., the only possible explanation is that the particular god worshiped by that particular theist (and not the gods worshiped by other theists, of course) is responsible for it. And it doesn’t matter how many things science eventually is able to explain — there will always be something that theists can point to and say, “Well, what about that? Huh? Huh? Huh?” Again, however, this is not actually evidence of any particular god. It’s just one big “Argument from Ignorance” that doesn’t even demonstrate that the particular god the theist worships could even possibly exist, let alone actually does. You can’t argue that your god is a “more probable” explanation for something until you can first demonstrate just how probable the existence of your god is in the first place. And, I’m sorry, but once you start talking about gods that supposedly exist “outside of time and space” (whatever the heck that means) and that are composed of “pure spirit” (whatever the heck that means) and are simultaneously all-powerful, all-knowing and all-loving (despite the inherent contradictions of such a being given all the suffering in the natural world), I’m afraid you’ve already lost that battle.
• Flawed pseudo-logical arguments that attempt to prove some general concept of some sort of supreme being (not the actual specific god worshiped by anybody, mind you) by relying on carefully crafted definitions and unwarranted assumptions. Even if it were true, for example, that the universe had a “cause” of some sort to exist, that doesn’t mean that this “cause” is necessarily a god and certainly not the particular god you happen to worship. And just defining the particular god you happen to worship as “the most perfect being imaginable” and then claiming that a god that exists is more perfect than one that doesn’t, doesn’t mean that this definition actually reflects reality, any more than defining god as a chair means that the god actually worshiped by anybody must exist.

Again, though, it’s important to keep in mind that most theists would never dream of accepting any of the preceding as valid evidence for anything else in their lives (or, for that matter, for the claims of other gods or the spiritual experiences of people who belong to different religions). It’s just that they make a special exception when it comes to the particular god they were most likely indoctrinated from a young age to believe in and their particular spiritual experiences and are generally incapable of understanding why that’s a problem.