Mine is also based on results and what has been seen throughout history.
I’m a student of history. What I’ve seen is not empirically verifiable evidence of God, but thousands of god-claims across cultures, mostly incompatible with one another, yet each asserted with certainty.
That makes the issue not just unfalsifiable in a scientific sense, but statistically implausible. With so many contradictory claims, the likelihood that any one is correct shrinks to near zero. Appealing to history doesn’t strengthen the case, it highlights the inconsistency.
God is not science, as I lay out below (in fact, He created science). Let's put it this way. Let's take God out of it for a moment and replace Him with an alien being that exists in higher dimensions that our brains are incapable of discerning (you can draw a 5-dimensional being, right?). That alien decides when, where, and how to insert himself into our dimensions, and what parts of him we will see. In that scenario, can man's science prove that the alien exists, or can it prove that he does not?
Science is a human framework for testing truth claims. Attributing it to God shifts it from epistemology into theology, which misses its purpose.
As for your alien analogy: you’re right that unfalsifiable claims can’t be proven or disproven by science. But that’s exactly why science sets them aside, they’re hypotheses without evidentiary value until a way to test them exists.
Faith says you don’t need falsifiability to consider something true. Science says you do. That’s the dividing line, and it’s why your analogy doesn’t rescue the claim, it just highlights the difference. A difference that you still try to deny by trying to attribute the process you reject as somehow created by God.
I actually like that phrase, justified conditional confidence, so I'll probably use it.
I too rely on tested facts as well. Had there not been millions upon millions of miraculous events throughout history and including today, I would be skeptical. There have, however, been those events, so I believe. I have also seen things in my own life that convince me, and they're not always miraculous. I see you demanding proof before you believe, but when you are convinced and believe, more proof is forthcoming, and again, not always miraculous.
You can use the phrase, but your use doesn’t meet its definition. ‘Justified conditional confidence’ requires tested evidence and conditional acceptance. The miraculous events you cite have never been empirically tested, so they’re not justified. And since you accept them as true without proof, they’re not conditional either.
As for your claim that belief brings more proof, what you’re describing is confirmation bias. Science looks for ways to disconfirm a claim; faith looks for ways to reinforce it. That’s the difference."*
What I find interesting, however, is that the standard of proof keeps shifting. I literally had a self-proclaimed atheist (there's really no true atheists because they can't disprove God's existence, they can only really be agnostic) admit to me that God appearing in front of him and doing whatever should be sufficient proof of His existence wouldn't be enough, because he doesn't even trust his own experience. He would have to have other people tell him they experienced something. I asked how that was different from groups of people all experiencing God's presence the same way telling others what happened and he had no answer. Sometimes the determination to disbelieve something is so strong that no amount of evidence is sufficient.
God is not a science experiment, His actions cannot be replicated in a lab, and He acts as HE chooses to act, not as we direct Him to act. His presence, therefore, cannot be proven or disproven by man's attempts to quantify Him and in essence, put Him in a box. It is folly, then, to demand He show up and do something miraculous to convince people of His existence. I call that, "Do a trick" theology, and here's what would happen:
My standard of proof doesn’t shift, it’s always testable, replicable, and falsifiable. If a claim doesn’t meet that, I don’t accept it as true. That doesn’t mean it’s disproven; it means I honestly say ‘I don’t know’ rather than claim certainty where none exists.
And yes, I can’t disprove God. But I can disprove specific god-claims when they make assertions that fall under the scientific method, claims about history, nature, or miracles that should leave evidence but don’t. Most religious claims I’ve encountered fall into that category.
That’s not shifting proof; that’s applying the same standard consistently.
Now, the question becomes, what would it take for YOU to admit God exists, and would that proof make a difference in how you live your life? Be careful, God has been known to show people exactly what they demanded He show them.
I don’t know, because no one has ever produced a testable, falsifiable way to verify the existence of a god. That’s why I don’t claim certainty either way.
What I do say is that specific god-claims fail when they make assertions that should leave evidence but don’t. And it’s not on me to prove or disprove them, the burden of proof always lies with the one making the claim.
That’s not evasion; it’s consistency. I apply the same evidentiary standard to every claim, whether religious or not.
Ask me to disprove Roman Catholic dogma or Islamic dogma and I can succeed, because those traditions make specific claims that can be tested against evidence. Ask me to disprove a vague ‘man in the sky’ concept, not so much, because vagueness is unfalsifiable by design. That’s the difference: concrete claims can be scrutinized, abstractions can’t.
