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[Ethan Igloo]

I became and atheist in middle school when my friends asked me “why? There’s no proof”

I wanna ask why you dedicate your life for something that’s there’s no real proof for.

If your parents have taken you to church when you were little and convinced you from a really young age it’s hard to think any different.

Im sorry if that came off as aggressive, it’s not meant to. I’m just genially curious. Any answer would be great. Thank you!

[jimwalton]

You don't come off as aggressive. Not to worry.

There's plenty of evidence, but no proof: logical, scientific, historical, and experiential. For that matter, we can't even prove we or the external world exist, so we go for the weight of evidence beyond a reasonable doubt.

The logical evidences are issues of causality (why is there something rather than nothing? Where did it all come from?), teleology (purpose, elements of design, balance, function, orderliness, etc.), ontology (issues of being: God is either impossible or necessary, and we know he's not impossible), morality (from where does our standard of "good" derive?), reason (it makes more sense that our ability to reason came from an intelligent source rather than from a random one), and even personality (did personality derive from an agglomeration of chemicals or a personal source?).

The scientific evidences are in matters of regularity, balance, design, orderliness, predictability, math, purpose, and even beauty.

The historical evidences weigh the credibility of the Bible given what archaeologists have dug up.

Experiential evidences come from personal experiences (on the part of millions of people) of life-change, personality and value changes, and spiritual experiences. Though some claim personal experiences are too subjective to count as evidence, personal experiences, frankly, are really all any of us have to go by on most of life.

These are all very hefty discussions, which we can tackle a little at a time if you wish. While none of these things are technically "proofs," nothing really is (philosophically, scientifically, empirically, and experientially). We weigh the evidences and infer the most reasonable conclusion. On evaluation of the evidences and arguments, I find Christianity to be a far stronger case than anything presented in contrast to it. Let's talk more.