While there might not be hard evidence for God's existence (at least, not to my knowledge), there is are various hints.
No, there is no sound reason to think a god exists, let alone
hard evidence. People are free to believe in god(s) without reason and call it
faith, but belief in god(s) does not have a rational basis.
We sin. A lot (unfortunately). We've disobeyed God, and His standards are perfection. And the punishment for sin is death. "But what about all the good I've done?" someone may ask? Imagine a brownie. A marvelous, delicous brownie. Now let's add a tiny amount of dog poop. Not so appealing anymore, right? Unfortunately, that's us.
Fortunately, God still loves us, in the way I love my cat even when she makes a mess or bites me, so God has provided a way for us to live, without eternal death. If the punishment for sin is death... the does it have to be the one who sinned? Thousands of years ago He told the Jews to sacrifice an animal in their place, to pay for their sin. This was only a symbol of what would come. In order for this substitution to work, He sent his Son to save us (who existed from the beginning, the specifics of this are a discussion for another day). His son entered this world as a baby, concieved by the Holy Spirit and a virgin (Mary). Jesus was raised from birth as a Jewish carpenter, performed miracles to prove his divine power, gave one of the, if not the most, influential sermons ever (the Sermon on the Mount), and was tempted by the devil to sin in many, if not all, of the ways we are. Because Jesus wasn't born into a sinful nature like we were, he managed to never sin, and was absolute perfection. Because reasons (the details of which are in the bible and are again a discussion for another day; basically Jesus denounced their bad practices, and there was some political stuff going on too), the Jewish leaders plotted to kill him. But this was part of the plan all along. Jesus willingly confronted his own death by crucifixion (on a cross), in order to pay for our sins. (To make it worse, he was almost killed by lashes from a whip beforehand, and what many people did to him around that time can easily be simplified as "torture".) He died in our place so that we can live.
But that's not the end of it. While not many realized it at the time, Jesus is God's Son. Three days after Jesus was executed, God brought him back to life. Not only in this world, but eternal life, which He is offering this as a gift to anyone who wants it. All you have to do is believe that Jesus did in fact die on the cross to save us, and your sin is paid for.
TLDR
Here's 6 words that summarizes all of this. I remembered this half way into typing all of this, it may or may not explain it all better.
http://www.lifein6words.com/
The difference between God's alleged love and my love for my cat is I don't condemn my cat to my basement torture chamber when she does something wrong. I would say that it's perhaps a false analogy because the cat doesn't necessarily know the difference between right and wrong each time (which doesn't matter), but a god who would condemn someone to his basement torture chamber due to lack of belief in him despite lack of evidence is probably just as bad if not worse.
This is a sad side effect of the world being corrupted by sin.
Whether or not people are sinful doesn't solve God's
problem of evil. If a god exists who has the power to stop evil but chooses not to, that god is not benevolent. For example, if you were in a building, knew a child was about to be raped in a bedroom, had the power to stop it and/or attempt to stop it, but you did nothing, you are not benevolent.
This also ignores the fact that God had to have created evil in the first place.
The Big Bang is an effect, and it is outside the scope of science to attempt to explain the cause. Not only is it outside the nature of the universe as we know it, scientifically, any idea anyone comes up with is just a guess, because the biggest requirement of a hypothesis is that it can be tested. Any guess about this cannot be tested.
We don't know what, if anything, caused the universe. That doesn't mean the idea that a god exists and created the universe is a rational explanation to hold. I've outlined some other possibilities in my previous posts.
I believe that God is the cause. While I am not aware of any evidence that can prove this, there is other evidence indicitive of God.
One of these is the question of where languages come from. Evolutionists believe there is a common ancestor, using this theory, one would think language would be the same, right? One single language that became the ones we have now? Wrong! We have many different languages that are completely different from each other. To quote wikipedia, "The origin of language in the human species has been the topic of scholarly discussions for several centuries. In spite of this, there is no consensus on the ultimate origin or age of human language." The Bible explains this nicely: God told everyone to spread out, to fill the Earth, but we were like "naw, we like it here, let's build a giant tower that will keep us occupied here", so God invented different languages for everyone so that everyone would spread out, since different groups of people couldn't understand each other.
There is no evidence
indicative of God. Even if you didn't know where language came from, absence of an explanation is never evidence for another. If I find a dead body in the woods but cannot figure out cause of death, that doesn't mean I get to assume fairies killed him.
On an unrelated note, the evolution of language is very much related to the biological evolution of humans. In fact, I have a degrees in both biology and linguistics, so this is the kind of topic I could go on and on about. In short, however, primitive precursors to language likely evolved in conjunction with our physiological mechanisms for language. Our ancestors didn't have mouths, vocal cords, brains, etc. conducive to language, but all of these things slowly changed. As our mouths became more complex, so did our ability to communicate. As our brains became more complex, so did our ability to communicate. It was a gradual process, and the line between language and primitive non-language precursor to language is likely very blurred. Much like we can show common ancestry among the species on the Earth using DNA evidence, we have evidence in the aspects of language that demonstrate common ancestry. Just as there's a
phylogenetic tree of life that shows groupings and the likely evolution of species from a common ancestry, we have a
similar tree for groupings and the evolution of languages. Your confusion about the uncertainty of the origins of language is similar to our confusion on abiogenesis. While we are aware of possibilities regarding the origin of life, we do not know for sure what exactly happened because the necessary evidence just doesn't exist. The uncertainty about origins doesn't cast any doubt on our substantiated understanding of the evolution of species and languages.
-Intelligent design - all of creation is rather complex. Athiests like to believe it all happened by chance, but that seems unreasonable to me.
There's a difference between, for example, evolution by natural selection and
chance. While there's an element of chance, don't be disingenuous and make our position out to be something it isn't. You don't do yourself or anyone else any favors by building strawmen. Complexity does not equal intelligent design; in fact, evolution is one of many things that proves this concept.
-The story of Jesus - proclaimed as fact by witnesses... who were burned at the stake at parties until they simply said something like "it was all a lie", but no one did. Christians were murdered, persecuted, many people tried to completely destroy all trace of the bible... and it's still going strong today. Divine intervention anyone?
Ignoring that there's no verified contemporary eyewitness testimony for the Jesus story (and nobody should care even if there were), the persecution of Christians and the prevalence of Christianity is no reason to think there's divine intervention or that the Jesus story is true.
-God's instructions - The old testament has rules on how to deal with various types of mold. People back then would have had no clue how it all works, but these instructions are consistent with what we know today. Also the thing about not eating certain meat? Back then, people didn't know how to safely cook everything, but now we do.
Having no clue how things work, such as germs and worms, doesn't mean people can't see their effects. If one notices that certain foods have a high likelihood of making people sick, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to say, "Don't eat that." In addition, as I alluded to earlier, a lot of the food-related rules in the Bible are related to worms, which were relatively understood at the time.
If God made the universe, then everything else is simple. Don't try to overthink it.
Considering that the idea of a god creating the universe doesn't actually have any explanatory power (i.e. "Why does God exist? Why is his nature one that would cause him to create the universe?"), everything else is
not simple. More importantly, there's no reason to think a god exists or did anything.
What do they believe caused everything?
Absence of an explanation is never evidence for another answer. Saying "I don't know" isn't a bad thing. We don't need to offer an alternative explanation in order for atheism to be the only logically justified position. However, I've referred to a previous post where I outlined several possibilities on the origin of the universe, but you seem to have ignored it each time I've referred to it.
I did say it wasn't hard evidence; however, all together, I believe that it's enough to make a leap of faith.
I agree with you that the amount of evidence for a god is enough to make a leap of faith, as defined as belief without reason. There is no evidence for a god's existence, and I cannot see any reason aside from faith for belief.
