So, You Want Me To Believe In Your God?

Understand this: you must give me evidence and allow me to scrutinize it.

You are just a barker at a street market standing before a booth with no products in sight. When I ask to inspect what you are selling, you tell me that I must buy it before I can see. You make the choice seem so simple, but what do I know? You're just a salesman. I never trust salesmen. To make matters more complicated, you are just one of many salesmen, standing before equally empty booths, every one claiming that I must purchase the goods before I can see them.

You have no way of showing me WHY I should buy your goods over the others besides talk talk talk. You have no way of showing me why I should buy anything at all besides veiled threats that I will regret it if I don't.

You know that if you provide what I ask for (evidence of any kind), it will be insufficient in convincing me. You are caught in a logical loop: belief is a personal endeavor, which makes universal evidence insufficient in explaining what you're selling. As a result, you are forced to play the same game as everyone else; veiled threats and vague assertions of glory in exchange for servitude.

You say that because I am skeptical, I must not know love. The god you are selling doesn't have a monopoly on love. Others sell it, too. So, you can say that I don't know what love is, but you will have to define it so that I can be sure that I am comparing apples to apples when I look at other religions. You also know that you can't define love because that would make it easier to scrutinize. That's the game we're playing here. If what your religion requires is blind faith, you have to provide some FIRM way of convincing my blind ass to stumble in your direction instead of another.

And, you know, me demanding evidence of you is also for your benefit. Let me explain:

You are asking me to make two choices: 1) to believe and 2) to believe YOU. Even if you are sincere in what you are trying to convey to me, you have to be smart enough to understand that a fraud can play the same game as you, especially if all you have are words. You have to be pragmatic enough to understand that your mere urgency to save my soul is not sufficient. You have to know that you are using the same toolset as thieves and conmen. You have to set yourself apart from them. With evidence.

Now, where is this evidence that I have been asking for?