Asking for Proof of God's Existence is Wrongheaded

My arguments for God are not offered as proof. There are times that I get carried away by statments atheists make and assert that they are proof. I think a couple of them might be, but not of the time--when I'm rational--I argue them as "rational warrant for belief" only.

I really think the idea of demanding proof of the existence of God is silly, wrong headed and would require a sacrifice of the intellect. The Atheist dictum "you can't believe something without evidence" is not only wrong, it's asking one to abandon a deeper view of reality in favor of a shallow "quick fix" which would automatically bias the observer against understanding.

This is so because religion is not failed privative science. It is not watered down ethics, nor is it an off brand of epistemology with pointed hats and tasteless cookies. Religion is an attempt to resolve the human problematic. It is its own thing. It's not unreduced to other forms of discourse, it's a priori it's own.

religion doesn't necessarily require a god, but for those that have a view of God it is not a matter of proving an empirical bit of knowledge about the world. God is not a "thing" or a person or a man. God is not another thing alongside things in creation.

The whole point of calling God "being itself" is to get across the idea that Gos is on another level, set apart from "things" not to be counted as "just another bit of info." God is not given in sense data, thus is not an empirical question.

God is an existential question and is not a matter of proof. ordinary attempts at validation don't apply. God is a matter of personal conviction, that's all nothing more nothing less. to treat God as a thing to be proven like something one can study through sense data is to degrade the concept of God and to accept a view dinegrated and reduced from the full philosophical framework.

The framework necessary for understanding the Christian view of god is vast, it could be an academic subject in it's own right (we could call it ..."theology!")

The real question is not "prove there's a God" but "why do you believe?" Answering that question does not require proof.

which god is it? is not an intelligent question. But which tradition best mediates transformative power, that's the question!