BEGIN RANT.
"And I say fine, pray for anything you want. Pray for anything. But...what about the divine plan? Remember that? The divine plan. Long time ago god made a divine plan. Gave it a lot of thought. Decided it was a good plan. Put it into practice. And for billion and billions of years the divine plan has been doing just fine. Now you come along and pray for something. Well, suppose the thing you want isn't in god's divine plan. What do you want him to do? Change his plan? Just for you? Doesn't it seem a little arrogant? It's a divine plan. What's the use of being god if every run-down schmuck with a two dollar prayer book can come along and fuck up your plan? And here's something else, another problem you might have; suppose your prayers aren't answered. What do you say? 'Well it's god's will. God's will be done.' Fine, but if it gods will and he's going to do whatever he wants to anyway; why the fuck bother praying in the first place? Seems like a big waste of time to me. Couldn't you just skip the praying part and get right to his will?" [George Carlin, from "You Are All Diseased".]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficacy_of_prayer
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Studies_on_intercessory_prayer
"I prayed to God for a bike, but I know God doesn't work like that so I stole a bike and asked God for forgiveness."
We are told that prayer does not work like that, to not test the Lord thy God, fine. However, if one cannot test, verify, observe and affirm a God's power, potency, efficacy, efficiency, physicality or presence in general, an absence of evidence could in this case be construed as evidence of absence.
Before I get into whether or not God exists, however, I'd like to assert a logical point into the discussion. The burden of proof in any logical discussion lies with the contender, that is, the one presenting or affirming his case, the one asserting that which is new or in existence. It is not on the atheist to assert that God is not real, it is up to the Christian, Muslim, Jew, Zoroastrian, Hindu, or any of the ones that I missed (https://en.wikipedia.org/.../List_of_religions_and...) to prove that their God, god, Gods, gods, Goddess,... pantheon, or theological tradition is true, correct, verifiably existent, or real. I do not have the burden of proof to tell a person that they can't fly, it is up to that person to prove that they can.
On that note, I take the burden of proof. I will prove that there is not enough evidence for the existence of God. First, the evidences for God would be something akin to the powers and properties ascribed to him. Omnipotence, Omnipresence, Omniscience and Omnibenevolence, answers prayer, sends plagues are verifiably attributed to the NKJ Old Testament God, verified as the New Testament God as well by Jesus Christ in the Gospels. This source is often the only one people accept as proof of God, which is problematic considering that it's full of contradictions.
http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/contra/by_name.html
Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?
Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing?
Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing?
Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing?
Then why call him God?
-Epicurus, attr.
“The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”
-Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion.
Therefore we can assume that if the God of the Old Testament does exist, he either does not care about you, is so incompetent, malevolent or idiotic that we should not worship him/her/it, or, in this reporter's case, conclude that there exists too little evidence to support the claim of existence at all. Once God is demoted to a conscience, then he is not the Lord of Lords whom Southern Baptists worship on Sunday.
However, it is safe to say that God does not exist due to lack of evidence. No empirical, testable or verifiable evidence can be produced or reproduced that would satisfy a peer-review, or in Josh Feuerstein's case, a court of law.
Absence of Evidence does not mean evidence of absence except in the case where the evidence of presence is clear, well-understood and verifiable and the testing authority for presence is trustworthy, as unbiased as possible, and true. If you do not trust the Bible (other than the contradictions already pointed out) or my methods, (Other than my obvious bias, research this material on your own and develop your own opinion) please tell me why.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidence_of_absence
I assert that it is up to you now to question my authority and methods for gathering evidence. If you can counter all of my claims, then I will rethink my position on Atheism, not that it will do me much good now seeing as I've committed the Unforgivable Sin multiple times (Fuck the Holy Spirit.) Plus one. (Matthew 12:31-32)
Contact me if you have any argument against my methods. If not, Josh owes me 100,000 American dollars.
I personally believe that there is absolute truth only in numbers and mathematics, everything else is, like these arguments, conjecture.
Wikipedia Evolution. It does not work how you think it works. "Natural selection is the only known cause of adaptation, but not the only known cause of evolution. Other, nonadaptive causes of evolution include mutation and genetic drift."
-https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution
Survival of the fittest is not the only means by which the new generation survive.
I am an Atheist, and I condemn the Holocaust and the killing of million and millions of people. I can do this because Hitler was clearly not the fittest, he died.
