> When they believe that they have "evidence" the answer to the question tends to be something along the lines of "I _know_ that god exists because...". Whethe

> When they believe that they have "evidence" the answer to the question tends to be something along the lines of "I _know_ that god exists because...". Whether that's valid depends on what's in the ellipsis. Yes, it does, but I've never heard any filling-in of the ellipsis that suggests even the most remotely possible evidence for a virgin birth, resurrection, or the fact that some fatherly figure is watching over us at all times and has given us the Christian Bible as his True Word. A bible, I might add, that presents a lot of seriously morally questionable beliefs as mandatory laws. However, I have noticed that sometimes expecting Christians to pay attention to the bible is a foolish assumption... Most of the horrible things that even the worst Christians think, say, and believe are directly justified based on statements from the bible. Similar is the faith of a scientist that weird behavior will eventually be explainable by rational means, like that neutrinos going FTL will have some mundane explanation. Sometimes it seems like there's contradictory evidence, but if you stick it out it turns out ok. That would be a fine comparison if it was ever the case that any phenomenon in the observable universe had an explanation that required God as described in the Christian Bible, and couldn't be explained by mundane rational facts. IMO, this is not proven or even suggested by the evidence at hand. If you feel that personal experiences fit that bill, then you're of course allowed to think that, but realize that it's completely rational for anyone that doesn't place such a high prior probability on Christianity's truths to assume that you're merely delusional.