I can wrap it up in a Christian-Judeo-Islamic tradition but that doesn't make the evidence stronger. — EugeneW

You just called it evidence. What more needs to be said? I can see why you call the evidence weak, but weak evidence is still evidence. Evaluating the quality of the evidence is part of a reasonable discussion of the issue. Rejecting the evidence out of hand is not.

You just called it evidence — T Clark

I don't. But they do. I speak for those saying that personal evidence is proof. It's too easy. If they had better evidence than personal experience. Is the very fact that I think about God evidence? Is the very existence of the universe evidence? Does their existence even need evidence? Nuff said...

Nuff said... — EugeneW

Hey!! "Nuff said" is my catchphrase! Me and J. Jonah Jameson.

Time relates to motion, motion relates to matter. 'Before' is a word, a convention we use, prior to but not part of in this instance. There is no reason why God could not exist before the first matter was created, before the concept of time began.

Experiences of God are no evidence of God. Then I could say my dream last night was evidence of God. Which it isn't. It was just a dream. I can wrap it up in a Christian-Judeo-Islamic tradition but that doesn't make the evidence stronger. Anyone can say every experience is evidence of God. — EugeneW

You seem to be arguing something like this:

1. If we permit experiences of God to count as evidence, then we would be able to say that dreams about God would count as evidence.
2. Dreams about God clearly do not count as evidence.
3. Therefore, we should not permit experiences of God to count as evidence.

I think that the second premise is clearly true. It is totally possible that I can have a dream about something which is false. In fact, all of our dreams seem to incorporate some fictions. They might include some true elements, but the overall dream is not evidence of the existence of something.

Premise 1 seems to be false. Even if we permit experiences of God to count as evidence for the existence of God, this does not entail that we would have to permit dreams to count as evidence. This would seem to be because dreams are not genuine experiences of something, but fabrications of our minds. Thus, we can say that experiences of God count as evidence for God's existence and exclude dreams, as they are not actual experiences. Further, does it not seem that experience does provide evidence for things? It seems that my experience of having hands provides some justification for believing that I have hands in the absence of defeaters. Perhaps your claims should be revised to state that religious experiences do not provide much evidence, given the numerous defeaters that one can encounter against theism, such as the problem of evil. I think this is a more promising claim. You also might object regarding how one ought to determine whether an experience of God is a "genuine" experience. After all, dreams certainly feel genuine when you are in them. I would reply that determining what "feels" real is not a good indicator of what actually is real. Thus, I think you can tell whether something is a genuine experiences if you have good independent evidence that the experience is true and there are not threatening defeaters lurking around the corner. For example, I think an experience of God could rationally raise someone's credence in theism if they have good independent evidence that theism is true, such as a sound argument for the existence of God.