There is no scientific evidence for God, just assertions.

This is worth taking seriously, because the demand behind it is usually honest: don't ask me to believe something on no grounds. The problem is that the demand, stated this way, is a philosophical thesis rather than a scientific result.

1. Concede what is obviously true. God is not an object in a laboratory, and "God did it" is not a scientific hypothesis that competes with a mechanism. Anyone who offers a Bible verse where a measurement belongs has confused two kinds of question. That is a real failure, and it is common.

2. The demand smuggles in a philosophy. "Only scientific evidence counts" is itself not a scientific claim; no experiment could establish it. It is a position in epistemology, adopted on grounds that are not experimental. That does not make it false, but it does mean the objection is doing philosophy while claiming to speak for science.

3. Science cannot ground its own foundations. Science assumes that nature is orderly, that the future resembles the past, and that human minds can grasp truth. None of those assumptions is proved by experiment; they are preconditions of experimenting. A worldview that can only count what it can measure cannot account for the measuring.

4. The beginning of the universe is evidence. The standard cosmological model describes a universe with a finite past. Whatever begins to exist has a cause; the universe began to exist; therefore the universe has a cause. "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth" (Genesis 1:1) is the conclusion of that argument stated as a sentence.

5. Fine-tuning is data, not decoration. The strength of gravity, the cosmological constant, and the ratio of the electromagnetic to gravitational force all fall inside narrow life-permitting windows. That is a fact about this universe, and the question is what explains it. "The heavens declare the glory of God" (Psalm 19:1) is a claim about what that fact means, not a substitute for the fact.

6. Information in DNA needs an explanation. Life runs on a coded sequence, and every code we know of originates in a mind. Stephen Meyer argues in Signature in the Cell that this inference is standard design reasoning rather than religious special pleading. The argument is contested, but it is an argument, and calling it an assertion is not an answer to it.

7. Turn it around: the objection undercuts reason itself. If your thoughts are simply chemistry arranged by natural selection for survival rather than truth, why trust them to deliver true conclusions, including this one? A view that reduces reasoning to neural mechanics has trouble licensing the very confidence with which it is stated. That is the sharpest problem for the objection, and it is the objection's own problem.

8. Moral knowledge is evidence of a different kind. Paul says the Gentiles "show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness" (Romans 2:14-15). We treat the torture of a child as genuinely wicked, not merely unfashionable. Explaining that as taste requires more than a lab report.

9. "No evidence" is the overstatement. Each argument above can be debated, and honest Christians admit they are inferences to the best explanation rather than proofs. But it is false that nothing is on the table. A skeptic has to defeat these arguments one at a time; he cannot declare the question closed by definition.

10. Where Christians honestly differ. Christians disagree about evolution, about the age of the earth, and about how strong the fine-tuning argument really is. Some think design arguments do more harm than good. That disagreement is real, and it is a sign of a tradition arguing rather than reciting.

Not every true thing is measurable, and the demand that only measurement counts is itself unmeasured. The case for God is a cumulative argument from beginnings, order, information, mind, and morality, and it asks to be answered rather than dismissed by category.

Sources: William Lane Craig; Reasonable Faith; Stephen C. Meyer; Signature in the Cell; Robin Collins.

Related challenges:
• IF God exists, He’s maniacal. If He WANTED to forgive sin, He’s 'all-powerful' and 'all-loving' – He could just, SHAZAM, forgive sin. Instead, He sends down His only Son to be slaughtered and murdered to take care of the sin problem. Now THAT’S evil!
• I hear a lot about “intelligent design.” Has this now proven God and falsified evolution?
• How would you respond to Victor Stenger’s stinging assertion that religious argument leads universally to dismal failure and untold suffering?