17/8/2010

On Evidence

Filed under: — Bravus @ 6:45 am

The ‘no evidence would convince you’ argument – usually bolstered with the relevant texts – from Christians wears a bit thin, particularly when those making it claim that no evidence would convince them to change their views.

Those of us compelled to follow the evidence are deluged in it every day… but it’s evidence that, if God exists at all, He does not fit the advertising. It’s not a case of waiting around for the once-in-a-lifetime miracle, it’s a case of seeing the world around us, day in and day out, as a cascade of evidence. If God was there and acting as advertised, it could not help but show… but it doesn’t, so either He’s not there or He’s not acting as advertised.

One Response to “On Evidence”

  1. Bravus says:
    17/8/2010 at 8:49 am

    Posted this on a forum, too. Comments start here: http://clubadventist.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/386818/Re_not_really_a_Christian.html#Post386818

    Some response from me (I didn’t feel it was ethical to bring others’ comments from the forum here, hence the link, but you can probably gather what they said from what I said):

    But that’s exactly the problem, and a problem that is never acknowledged. Many of us have tried for years. Done everything prescribed, believed everything, accepted everything. Have argued for faith and against its detractors. And yet, nothing. It’s not a matter of insufficient or limited evidence, it’s a matter of no evidence at all. Of promises made but never kept. Of claims presented but unfulfilled.

    It comes back to the notion that opened this thread. Those of us who have been real Christians – as real as its possible to be – but whom God has let down are then called mockers and ‘not real Christians’ and accused of blindness and wilfulness and made the targets of all kinds of abuse.

    I could have added that I, personally, am still clinging desperately to ‘God is real, but not as advertised – there is a lot of human interpolation into the view of God given in the Bible and the Church’, rather than accepting the idea that God isn’t there at all. But I can definitely understand where someone like cardw is coming from.

    I’ve asked the question here before – who has seen a real, supernatural miracle such as is continuously claimed God can do. And *no-one* has been able to produce a single one that is clear and objective. Lots of matters of interpretation that naturalistic explanations explain fully as well.

    If God did it, even once, it would be visible. Until then, claiming that he does just makes no sense. And the logical twist above – that he can’t because that would get rid of the requirement for faith – also makes no sense. If that’s true, then it’s his will that a majority of all people die… and that’s not what the Bible says. If he could prove his existence and let us live, and chooses not to, then ‘not willing that any should perish’ is a lie.

    Rather, what I see are a whole mass of interlinked rationalisations for Christians to try to make the fact that miracles are claimed but never seen make sense. I’m sorry, but I just can’t get my head around the pretzel logic any more.

    If God exists, then he’s not as advertised.

    Reply

Leave a Reply