New poster here.
A friend of mine has challenged me to explore Christianity. He is someone I admire for his calm demeanor and cheerfulness. He's always willing and looks out for ways to help me and others. I asked him why he had such an attitude. He told me that he had a personal relationship with Jesus and that had freed him from being concerned about the future or many of the day-to-day problems that arise in life. He said that the Jesus' central message was to see Him in all humans. He says that the only thing he prays for is guidance in how to "see Jesus" in all the humans he meets.
So, as an atheist in good standing, I asked him for evidence that God exists, that there is an afterlife, that there is such a thing as a soul.
Your friend's personal relationship with God
is the evidence! ALL evidence is personal experience: what we see, hear, touch, taste, smell, or feel emotionally. BTW, an atheist named David Hume discovered that. Your friend's personal relationship with God is personal experience. Thus, it is evidence.
BUT, it is evidence you don't share. What your friend advised you to do is seek such a personal relationship. He has you do that by reading the Bible to learn a bit about the personal relationships of some other people with God. After all, that is what the Bible is: different people (authors) relating their personal relationships with God. Your friend is asking you to seek God and giving you a starting point.
I don't say, "There is no God" rather, I don't see any evidence that the various claims made by Christians (or other deists) are true. I am intrigued by the idea that a faith, like my friend's, could be revealed to me.
You "don't see any evidence" because you don't have the personal experience. So far, your personal experience has been different: no experience of God.
Read below for how other people have found God. Please notice that they didn't find God in a flash. It was a more subtle process over time:
"Therefore, before proceeding further, we shall give the floor temporarily to those who claim they have experiential evidence of God, and allow them to clarify what they mean by such evidence. ... However, when it comes to the nature of experience of the presence of God, there is an astounding degree of consensus. The following statements, in order to keep us as close to the source as possible, come not from the past but from our contemporaries, from persons with whom I have spoken directly. They are, however, echoed throughout the history and literature of religion.
"The experience is usually not 'spooky'. It sometimes, though definitely not always, might be termed 'mystical'. It doesn't for the most part consist of events which by their nature overturn or challenge the laws of science. (I've heard only one first-hand account of an event which, if it really happened, would be very difficult to explain by any process presently known to science.) The experience doesn't establish a hot-line to God, by which all questions are answered, all doubts set aside, and complete understanding is reached. ... People are quick to point out that, though they think their experience really is of God, it is, even at its clearest and best, only a partial, human, inadequate view of what God really is and what God is really doing. Experiential evidence sometimes comes in a flash, but it's more often the accumulation of more subtle experiences over a period of time.
"John S. Spong .... 'I do not mean to suggest that I have arrived at some mystical plateau where my search has ended, where doubts are no more, or that I now possess some unearthly peace of mind. Nothing could be further from the truth. I have only arrived at a point where the search has a validity because I have tasted the reality of this presence, if ever so slightly.'
"As to finding God initially, some say they came rather gradually to a realization that the God they'd learned about in books, songs, and from other people, is real. Others on the contrary battered the gates of heaven .. with very sceptical demands for answers, IF such a heaven existed. Their uncompromising intellectuality led them to try to pin God to the wall in ways that might be expected to elicit a lightning bolt rather than blessing. Their requirements for evidence and proofs were seldom met exactly as specified, but there was a moment in the process when they realized to their astonishment that they were wrestling with a real being who couldn't be contained in human descriptions or standards, not a concept or an abstraction. This God was something out of their control, something not fashioned in the image they had formed in their mind ...
"The testimony is of God's leadership being requested and and received at turning points where human foresight and knowledge were inadequate, and of God's leadership turning out to be exactly on target, though perhaps not in the direction one would have preferred. ... God has stopped some persons dead, when they did not want to be stopped, on the brink of serious mistakes. God has changes some in ways human beings can't change themselves even with allthe help of psychotherapy. God has made it possible for them to love the unlovable, forgive the unforgiveable. ... Has all this been 'spritual' help? Not according to these witnesses. God is a powerful and active God, interveining wherever, whenever, and through whatever avenue he pleases. The phrase 'the insidiousness of God' comes from a woman Episcopal priest. God's intervention is not always kind, gentle, or pleasurable. He refuses to play by human rules or indulge our desire to plan ahead. ... God does not always come at our calling, give us what we want, or even shield us from terrible pain or grief ... but God's forgiveness and love know no limits whatsoever.
"Some direct quotes: 'My relationship with God has been by far and away the most demanding relationship in my life." "The Lord has been my strongest support, but also my most frustrating opponent." 'If I didn't absolutely know this is the only game in town, I'd sure as hell get out of it!' "The best evidence isn't some 'wonder' or 'miracle', and it certainly isn't success, happiness, or the peace of having my prayers answered in ways which suit me. It's the extraordinary, topsy-turvy, interesting course my life has taken since I've engaged in this -- once begun, virtually inescapable -- dialogue with God." Kitty Ferguson's The Fire in the Equations, pp 248- 251