God Is Real

In a discussion about the existence of God, it is critical to keep in mind a principle of logic called the burden of proof principle. The burden of proof principle asserts that when someone claims to have knowledge, they have a burden to provide evidence or reasoning in favor of the purported item of knowledge. The reason for accepting the burden of proof principle should be clear. If anyone can assert anything as knowledge without providing proof, then anything goes. I can assert that I am the President of the United States without providing any proof, and you would have to accept the claim. Since that's absurd, it should be clear that the burden of proof principle is true. Moreover, the burden of proof principle is accepted everywhere in everyday life and in science. When a used car salesman says that a car drives well and has no mechanical problems, you don't just take his word for it, you want to take the car for a drive. Similarly, when a scientist asserts that a scientific theory is true, he has to provide evidence and reasoning sufficient to convince other scientists. So, the burden of proof principle holds. If there is no evidence or reasoning sufficient to establish the existence of God, then we must abandon the claim that God exists as arbitrary, no different from the claim that there are unicorns. That is the main reason to be an atheist: There is no evidence for the existence of God. You raise two arguments for the existence of God. First, you ask why people would go through the trouble of writing every word in the Bible if God didn't exist. Secondly, you ask why people witnessed Jesus rise from the dead if Christianity is false. With regard to your first argument, the reason people wrote every word in the Bible is simple: They were primitive people who didn't understand the world around them, so they wrote down an elaborate mythology that would explain puzzling natural features of the world, provide moral inspiration, and justify the existing social order. When you suggest that people would not have written all of the Bible if it were false, you are projecting the modern scientific concept of truth onto the ancient world. People living in primitive cultures don't have the idea that if you claim something, then it needs to correspond to reality and stand up to rigorous investigation. That concept is an achievement representing centuries of progress in science and philosophy. Primitive people just want stories to help them understand the world and console them, they don't care about having evidence in the scientific sense. With regard to your second argument, there is no evidence that anyone saw Jesus rise from the dead. All we have is the stories in the Bible, which are indistinguishable from hundreds of other ancient miracle stories from every time and place. Herodotus, for example, recorded that Persia had soldiers whose heads were like those of giant ants. A reasonable person will reject these stories out of hand, along with the miracle stories in the Bible. So, to sum up: 1. The burden of proof is on the theist to establish that God exists, and they haven't met their burden of proof. 2. The Bible is the product of primitive people who lacked the concept of science. 3. Therefore, atheism is the rational position. Thank you.