No, actually you don’t. You can keep repeating yourself, if you like, but the empirical began at the big bang.
I would agree that no evidence is very likely all the evidence we will ever have.
It is also quite obvious that a great many people require no evidence for absolute certainty in their belief in the most insane things.
Perhaps the real question we should be asking is what purpose does the belief serve?
For even though I can produce no objective evidence for the existence of God, the reasons I have given for believing shows that this belief definitely serves a purpose in each case.
That is evidenced here in spades. In denying the multiverse.
Correct. And rational, not absurd like a lone universe. Look him up. K . O . L . M . O . G . O . R . O . V
Nuance eh? The empirical is the rock from which one steps into the rational stream. So yes, I actually do.
K . I . E . R . K . E . G . A . A . R . D
Whatever is true for you is true for you. Right. Then why are you trying to make what is true for you true for us. Why bother.
For twelve years I’ve worked with homeless and vulnerably housed people. Early on I decided to believe that everything they said was true, but it wasn’t the truth. It was true for them. Self deceit is second nature to human nature after all. Today was a surprisingly heavy day for that, I’m not on duty due to shielding, but encountered three very vulnerable people, two I’ve know for most of that period, 100 feet from my front door, which was a tad disconcerting because of my wife. She knows them too. That’s how we met. One of them is a convicted no-doubt-about-it ay-tall blunt force murderer. We trust him completely. Especially not to act in his own best interests. I’d encountered him a mile away a week ago and was glad. It was provisional, if you get my drift. He’s on my Facebook feed anyway, but I stay low. His suffering is unbearable. I’d have gone postal. Even the police like him. We’ve liaised. On his feed he was down on all the bureaucratic ruthlessness he encounters. In an inspired… moment I said ‘What about fishing?’. I didn’t know, but he has the profile. He jumped with despairing longing at the memory of it. The rod is on its way. At least he’ll be distracted from his awful life a little.
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Speaking as a devoted Christian, I personally find the argument from evil to be the most challenging. I of course do not finding convincing, and know if many heard good answers, but aid of i dot perhaps the most significant argument, both rationally and emotionally.
Formally, it is asked, “If God is all good he would not wish for the existence of evil or suffering, and if God is all powerful, he would be able to prevent the existence of evil and suffering. Therefore the God as understood by Christians can exist.”
I think it a powerful argument at its face, even if ultimately unsuccessful. To answer it Christians point out that there are various reasons an all good God may well desire the existence of suffering or evil, particularly that it would accomplish certain good things that would be impossible in a world devoid of evil (e.g., mercy, forgiveness, compassion), and/or that his desire for certain vital things logically must entail the real possibility of evil or suffering (e.g., free will of creatures).
Emotionally, this argument is powerful also… even if it can be answered logically, it still has a powerful emotional component when we consider the very real suffering in the world, so much of which seems pointless.
Again, this is not ultimately convincing to me, but it is beyond question that such real suffering was a point where even the writers of the bible wrestled with their doubts about God’s goodness and kindness.
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I can’t make out what you find challenging but unconvincing, unsuccessful Daniel?
No theodicy works, like no apologetic does. God desires evil so that we can be compassionate? No. God desires others, and the only justification for physical existence prior to transcendence is that nothing can breed in the transcendent. And if transcendent creatures can be made, why not leave it at that? Just keep making them. Angels. Because a large proportion irreversibly go to the bad anyway? Either way God certainly isn’t omnipotent, it’s meaningless.
Do you mean can NOT?
Mind stretching article (for me) in BBC:
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I like the article but always wonder how a God so busy tending to a cosmos has so much time -let alone interest- in tending to my moral deliberations and state of faith. If I were a Christian I’d sooner give up the notion of a God that tends to cosmos than one that tends to me. The former is only relevant to our rational deliberations about the world in which we live. But the latter is essential for making sense of our lived experience in that world. Apparently Christians are obliged to insist on both but my imagination isn’t up to the challenge.
Edited to add that I am inspired to share this article on a Facebook group I was introduced to here. Thanks!
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Hmmm. ‘Has this essay come close to answering the questions posed? I suspect not: if you believe in God (as I do), then the idea of God being bound by the laws of physics is nonsense, because God can do everything, even travel faster than light’ Monica Grady, professor of planetary and space science at The Open University
The professor hasn’t thought it through. I want to believe in God, I invoke Him, but he’s obviously bound by the prevenient laws of physics. He cannot travel at all, it’s meaningless. He doesn’t need to. Can He perform synchronized miracles outside the same light cone? Of course He can. He certainly doesn’t have to ‘go’ anywhere to do that, He has no extent. All that infinitely has, from eternity, is sustained, willed, ommed panentheistically in Him. Immanently @MarkD, from transcendence. He can’t not know, see, feel all from every level of granularity, at all scales. He can’t not tend to the infinite multiverse and you and Planck scale events. And Heaven above. Which He is yet ‘above’.
If only by definition.
Since God is timeless, or ‘timeful’ – omnitemporal, any questions putting him within the constraints of time, including ‘traveling’ with respect to the speed of light, are really non sequiturs.¹ That also includes anything involving tensed verbs² like predestination, foreordained, foreknew, chosen, etc.
Of course he can violate ‘the prevenient laws of physics’ and he is obviously not bound by them – hence we have the existence of the word miracle (deniers deny, believers enjoy 
).
¹ ‘Traveling’ is a non sequitor in itself, since God is omnipresent and immanent everywhere (or is that redundant? ).
² Is there any other kind? But we have no language that can encompass the totality of what God is.
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I think your conclusion is backwards here. What people need is a firm moral base which doesn’t change in order to deal with people, cultures and situations which change constantly. Subjective morality or ethics will be wrong the majority of the time because there is no single standard. Doing the right thing for the wrong reasons may be an accidental result, but when morality is subjective, you’re more likely to do the wrong thing for the wrong reason, because it feels right.
So say the people who want to keep beating their wives and slaves.
Well, well. Now I know where your mind is. Tell me more about beating your wife and how many slaves you think we should own.
He obviously is bound by them if He wants to create anything. That He can perform statistically insignificant overrides is a given. That cannot be denied of God.