Not necessarily. If I were to find evidence of an evil God, for instance, that would not correspond to what I'd whant God to be, but if the evidence was good then I'd still be obliged to accept it.
My point is, you are deciding what the evidence should be.
Just like you think you believe in God now, you mean?
I do believe in God, naturally.
A lot of atheists say that the reason they left religion, and became atheist, was due to science.
They say things like, when they asked questions, most probably about origins, and the A+E account, they were left wanting. Then they heard about the theory of evolution, and Kazzam -allah-kaboo, it all became clear.
That is a clear indication that they didn’t believe in God, but thought religious life, was a good way to live. Having found the intellectual stability in Darwinism, they could now be themselves, and express their true position.
Come out of the closet. So to speak.
Atheists get caught up in religion. They think religion and theism are the same thing. So it follows that they were theists, because they were religious. But that is simply not the case.
Religion is basically a set of rules, laid out for its adherents to follow. Ultimately becoming fluent in their expression of that particular religion. These rules lay out the foundation of every aspect of their life. While it applies to theists, it also applies to a whole host of lifestyles, which are not based on theism?
Yes, it fits right in with your definition of God. But everything could be evidence of something else, instead.
That something else is also God.
The alternative ultimately ends up being illogical assertions.
The origin of everything has to be, by definition, distinct from everything. No different to a watchmaker must be distinct from the watch. It is absurd to conclude that the watch formed itself, or that the watch came together by natural processes, or that the watch evolved from a common ancestor.
The conclusion of that has to have come about by adding ideas that cannot be experienced. Like adding inordinate lengths of time, to complete the process. This is an outrageous violation of Occam’s Razor.
It is more honest to assume an intelligent cause.
The only thing your definition of God adds to "everything" is an unproven transcendental cause.
There are things that don’t have to be proven. They just logically follow on.
In other words, the existence of everything is indisputably consistent with your definition of God, but it does not justify your claim that you know your God exists.
I personally don’t use terms like “my God”, or “your God”. I just say God, because God just Is.
There is a difference in knowing the chemical properties of water, and knowing that water quenches your thirst.
Knowing God Is, is like the quenching of thirst, over knowing the chemical properties of everything.
The confusion doesn’t lie in whether or not God exists. It lies in what is the nature of God, and why it is called “God”.
God can just be a force, because “a force” is within God’s attributes. It just means that you don’t believe God has a personality, or is capable of being anything more than a force.
It doesn’t mean we believe in a different God.
You and I both agree that "everything" exists ("everything" here being the observed physical universe).
We also agree that with existence, there is also nonexistence. Meaning that if something exists, it can also not exist, and will eventually not exist.
Which is why the “does God exist” question is a loaded one.
Everything obviously exists, and will eventually not exist.
But defining God to be the transcendental cause of everything neither proves that everything has a cause, nor proves that the cause was transcendental.
It is a sound logical inference, that if some type of agency brought everything into existence, the agent must be distinct from the effect. That is why it is deemed transcendental.
The only other alternatives are that some aspect of everything is everlasting, or somehow it managed to bring itself in. Which basically defaults to being everlasting. Of the two, a transcendent cause is a more plausible account, IMO of course.
You regularly say you know your God (as defined) exists, but you can never explain how you know or deduce that.
Hopefully this response will explain.
I know something about how people define God. Some of them are able to point to what kinds of evidence they see for God. I assume that if I saw the kind of evidence that would prove their God, as defined, then I would accept that their God exists.
But those people do not rely on the evidences they cite, to aid their belief. They simply enter into the world of skeptics, to show that even in your world there are good reasons to believe in God.
I don't reject all definitions. Some definitions don't take us very far. Some of them are circular. Some are nonsensical. Some are logically inconsistent. Some are fine.
That’s not how we use definitions.
As a theist, I have an idea of the object of my belief. I can define it. I’m not say I’ve defined it, therefore it exists. What you are attempting to do, is change the way we use definitions, so that we think we can’t define God. If there is no definition of God, then we can insert anything.
In this way the theists explanatory power, is compromised, whereas the atheist explanatory powers appears to have increased. Especially as they can now add their definitions to the pot.
But the reality is, the definition of God has to be the transcendental origin of everything, which is why we believe, and not believe, in God.
You spend a lot of your time here telling people to "start with THE definition of God" (by which you mean your preferred definition), then you more or less say God must exist because you defined him in such a way that he must exist. But you haven't defined God in such a way that he/she/it must necessarily exist. You just assume that it exists as you define it.
While I do prefer it, I don’t use it because I prefer it.
What are we talking about, if not that definition of God?
Atheist cannot define God, but that does not mean that theists can’t. Essentially they want their cake and eat it too.
I do have an idea of what God is "supposed to" be.
I would like to hear that.