So, you guys reject any empirical evidence for God, only accept that kind of evidence to begin with, AND put the BoP on me to prove God's existence? That's basically saying that regardless of what I say there is no chance of you being wrong ever. I'm sad that this is the kind if shining logic accepted by the debate hall.
I never said that I'd only accept empirical evidence. Logic would work. But you seem to fail to realize the
inherent problem with supernatural claims.
Let's get the obvious out of the way: when you make a claim, you put the burden of proof upon yourself to demonstrate that this claim is in any way true to anyone else. What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. By claiming "god exists", you are
making a positive existence claim. You have to provide evidence, be it empirical or logical, to back this up.
Furthermore, it's pretty clear that using natural evidence on a phenomenon which does not take place
in natural reality fails straight from the start. Any supernatural event is excluded by occam's razor as it requires an additional assumption on our part (and even if that weren't the case, you'd still have a hell of a time attributing causation to a being whose existence you cannot justify)!
Then there's logic... And I welcome you to try to prove that god exists with that. But until you can, I will reject your claim. The problem is, it's very,
very hard to demonstrate anything with logic alone. Even attempting to demonstrate that the existence of something is logically necessary is nearly impossible; you can only really get as far as "I think, therefore I am" before you have to start making assumptions and logical leaps.
This is the problem with
all supernatural events. You are forced to back up your claim, empirical evidence is useless, and logic is a fiddly beast which is unlikely to get you anywhere. However, to cry foul and claim that
we're not being reasonable because you made a claim that you can't back up in any way and we're rejecting it for that exact same reason is ridiculous. Perhaps you should reassess your own claims before attempting to insult the value of the forum you're using to make the claim, no?
But hey, let's take this for example of what I'm talking about...
Not all of Jesus's miracles could be cheap magic tricks. Take him raising Lazarus from the dead 4 days after death. (in before BPC rage about the disciples lying.) If you accept the gospels as what the disciples really believed, Jesus being the Son of God is the conclusion that fits.
Let's compare the odds of someone actually rising from the dead with the odds of someone in the history of the bible's/gospel's creation exaggerating or lying about the event, or just flat-out making a mistake.
How many records of each do we have?
Well, let's tally up...
-People who have risen from the dead according to
viable sources: 0
-People who have made mistakes: more than I'm willing to count
-People who have lied to further an agenda: see mistakes
Hmm... Yeah.
Probably didn't happen.
But even if we accept that it did happen, what does that imply? That Jesus has some sort of bizarre power we've never seen before (or again)? It certainly doesn't imply that every word he says is true, nor that he's the son of god. You'd kind of have to take his word for it, and furthermore you'd have to believe that the god he's the son of is the god he describes, and not, say,
Satan. Because Satan is (according to the bible) infamously good at doing **** like that. Hell, it doesn't even imply the supernatural! It could've just as easily happened via some sort of natural explanation, without invoking the supernatural at all.
In any case, you can't test the results, you can't check anything, you can't make predictions with the results... You understand what I'm getting out? There's a reason I reject supernatural claims almost out of hand.
But hey, be my guest; go on believing a 2000-year-old book with sketchy history, political motivation, and several severe contradictions within it.
And yeah, I'm
talking about the new testament.