again most of these reasons are why i asked for a definition of evidence...if personal testimony of any given person is out....timing with prayer is out....news coincidence to prayer movements is out
Do not feel like we are singling your religion out with this. The reason personal testimony, prayer timing, and coincidences are out for your religion is the same reason it's out for every other religion in the world. Be honest here.. if someone came up to you with personal testimony of Zeus, what would you think of them? Why you would think your religion deserves to be treated otherwise is very much beyond me.
so i'm left with, as i understand it, the task of showing medical documentation that usually to me via privacy laws to begin with, if its even documented, on the effects of prayer....and not just there was a miraculous healing, but prayer also occurred and also was documented....though if i was in your shoes i would just argue, even if on film, all of this could have been forged, and ask for proof of that it actually happened....which comes down to someone saying it did, and we're back to personal testimony.....
Have you heard the term, 'correlation does not imply causation'? It applies here.
There has never been a 'miraculous' healing in the old sense of the word. To me, miraculous implies impossible without the aid of the supernatural. Highly improbable healings happen all the time. As do highly improbable deaths. Why is it that Christians never use highly improbable deaths as evidence for their God? Both of them happen regularly on a planet with 7 billion people.
so i'm still trying to figure out what you would accept as evidence...
A world that appears as if a supernatural entity exists and impacts it regularly. A world that could not be explained in any other way except the supernatural. A bible that had prophecies predictive of exact future events with names, dates, times, places, etc. A world where only one religion gained traction, and it was yours. Frequent, well documented arm and leg replacements, eye replacements, burned skin replacement ONLY on people who prayed to your specific God for them, and ONLY after the limb grew back with the words "Jesus was here" tattooed in a color none of us have ever seen before. People praying for their cancer to go away having a statistically beneficial chance at survival over those who do not. News reports that show frequent things that could ONLY have been done by a supernatural hand (such as "Captain Sully's landing on the Hudson river. Instead of landing safely in the water, the whole thing turned into a concrete landing strip). There are literally millions of things that COULD happen. But the fact is, there is nothing in this world that HAS happened that could reliably prove that God exists. And this is a really good starting point for not believing in God.
.i don't mind the demand for evidence as much as the lack of definition...
In terms of what sort of evidence I would ask for, the word I am thinking of is 'extraordinary'. You are proposing an invisible, all knowing, all powerful deity here, not informing us what you had for lunch. What we expect from you is exactly what we expect from every god claimant. The difference is that you think Christianity deserves some sort of free pass in that department. You may think that is not what you are doing, but yes, it is. If I am going to accept your personal testimony about God, then I MUST accept someone elses personal testimony about Zeus, else I am just using bias. If I am going to accept your notion of timing with prayer, then I MUST accept someone elses report of the same. Do you see where that is going? The same thing holds true for every facet of all religions.
.because as far as i can tell, anything i could present to you would just be dismissed on the argument that a God can't exist so that can't be valid.
This is untrue. You COULD present a multitude of things that would convince us, but the problem is that none of them happen or exist. You could pray to God to have my house turn completely upside down and balance on it's roof for 10 seconds, and if that worked, I might be inclined to hear more about this God fellow. You could ask God to come down and turn me into a house cat for an hour, and if that worked, I would probably ask you more about God. There are plenty of
possible things. Now, while you may sit behind your computer screen and roll your eyes, please note, that if there really WAS an all powerful being like God, these things WOULD be possible, right? You can form excuse after excuse as to why they don't happen, but what it all boils down to is the FACT that this world behaves as if such a being did not exist.
It is not that a god can't exist. It is just that, given the massive lack of extraordinary evidence, it is far more likely that it doesn't.
.because my God does a lot, and there is evidence, and i'm trying to figure out what specifically you're looking for, so when i come across it, i can give it to you
Extra... ordinary. Your God does nothing because He doesn't exist. Sorry. I am treating you exactly as I would someone who says Zeus exists and does things for him.
i've been ostracized, slandered, and spent most of the last year without consistent food, home, job, or money mostly because of some person i met while working that sent me through a few hospital visits and due to the incompetence of protection under world systems led me to flee my life
This here is evidence (not enough to formulate a conclusion on its own, but a fact leading in a specific direction) that a benevolent God does not exist. At any point in time, God could have reached down and changed all that for you. Or, at the very least, He could have prevented it all from happening.
...all of which was provided for by the Lord,
What was? The lack of a consistent home or food source? If God exists, yes, this is correct. He did nothing while you were homeless. Again I ask you... If you think good fortune is evidence of God, why should bad fortune not be evidence that He doesn't exist? I guess to turn the tables on you... Assuming the earth and the universe exists just as you see it now, what evidence would lead you to think that the God you've believed in is all in your head? Because while we can not prove that God does not exist (as basically nothing can be proven NOT to exist) we can probably provide you with a hell of a lot of reasonable doubt if you were open minded enough to hear it.
i don't claim to know starvation as it is in somalia but have done my share of suffering just like everyone else, and still praise the lord
This is the part about religion that makes me feel ill. You praise a deity that allows suffering on massive scales.
In a world with both widespread suffering and widespread joy, what sort of deity would you most likely expect to find? For me, the most likely one would be a completely neutral deity, a deity that is completely hands off, or one that is just in people's heads but not actually real. The only ones that would need a crap load of mental gymnastic explanations would be a benevolent deity, or a malicious one.