1. What is your process for evaluating evidence for God?
I use the same process as everything else: An evaluation of empirical evidence. In addition, it must be internally consistent, as well as consistent with (or at least plausibly compatible with) everything else we know based on empirical standards.
2. Do you even have a process for evaluating such evidence?
lol... Of course. Examine the evidence. Determine if it is empirical or fantastical. If it is empirical, then look at the quality of the evidence.
In addition, we can easily run checks for internal consistency (which, for example, a concept like "omnipotence" fails) as well as consistency with what we already know (e.g. the concept of a "soul" violates numerous conservation laws of physics).
3. Are you willing to tell me, to describe this process?
lol... I just did. This thread also shows many people willing to do so.
5. How can you claim you've never seen evidence for God when you do not have any way to evaluate evidence for God?
lol
Well, I do have a way to evaluate it.
In addition, the onus is not on me to prove a negative, it is on you to prove your case. The obvious rejoinder here is best articulated by Bertrand Russel:
If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes.
But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is an intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense.
If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time.
Moreover, your evidence sucks. You have a handful of people, around 2000 years ago, who wrote up and distributed stories that were transmitted orally for a few decades, and were heavily biased by their own agenda. Further, they were making fantastical claims that were routine in that day and age.
Yes, that's right, talk of miracle workers was downright
common at that time. In fact, Apollonius of Tyana was a contemporary of Jesus who was a wandering philosopher and miracle-worker, who defied the Roman Emperor Domitian, was executed for his defiance, and was said to have ascended to heaven upon his death. Why be a Christian instead of an Appolonian?
Similarly, and as already pointed out in this thread, ultimately there is no justification to believe in the New Testament rather than the Lotus Sutra, or Koran, or the Upanishads, or any other claims based not on fact but on faith.
6 . Can you reassure me that you don't intend to reject anything and everything that I might show to you as evidence?
No, because this is not my first rodeo. I've had people present "evidence" for a long time, and none of it has passed muster.
I also have to add that prominent atheists, notably the "usual suspects" (Dennett, Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris) most certainly provided their answers to these questions.
What does it reveal to us when the atheist refuses to answer these? what can we infer from their stubborn refusals?
lol
What can we infer from your refusal to actually listen to what atheists and materialists say?
