Ayman asked:

I have read that Richard Gale in his book God and the nature of existencemade it very clear that the
evidence of God's existence and non-existence are a failure and unsound. Is this true?

The second question is what is meant by saying that atheism and theism are not based on
transparent foundations so that no-one has epistemic priority or privilege to his belief?

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Try to replace the concept of "God" by the concept of "unicorn": How will you prove that you have
seen a unicorn, or how will you disprove somebody who tells you he has met one? Or replace even
this by the well known "Nessie", the evasive monster of Loch Ness. Or by Bigfoot roaming Montana.
Or take UFOs.

You always have the same problems: First: What are you trying to prove? You have seen
"something". But how do you know that this "something" is what you think it was? If you have seen
only some shadow moving through the woods or through Loch Ness or across the sky and under
strange illumination during dusk or dawn, that does not prove much. Now transfer this back: What do
you really "know" of "God"? You have heard something told of him and read some holy book and
some reports from true believers, and you fit this with some great feelings. While those books and
those feelings are both real, your way of fitting them together is not justified. You have seen
something strange in the woods and you have read something on unicorns (or on Bigfoot etc.) and
now you stick this together. This is much more than the evidence could bear. As Leonardo da Vinci
said: "You can hear the Ave Maria in any ringing of distant bells". Or read the solution to E.A.Poe's
"Murder in the Rue Morgue". There is a strong tendency in humans to make meaning of what they
see and hear. We try to live in a meaningful world. Thus if the meaning is not evident, we try to
construct one. There is some "horror vacui" (fear of void) in philosophy, and most people prefer a
plausible answer to no answer at all. Which explains a bit why so many strange demigods and
monsters and "forces" have been invoked at all times to explain strange events. Why do bright
children always ask "why"? Because they try to build up a meaningful world.

The second problem: If there are living unicorns, then there should be dead ones too. And if there
were dead ones they would be stuffed up and shown in the museum. Where do all the dead unicorns
go unnoticed? Thus you have another problem of consistency: If there is one evidence, there
generally should be more evidence of another sort, and they all should be consistent. In this way the
spherical shape of the earth is "proven": By ship-traffic, by air-traffic, by satellites, by theories, by
direct evidence looking from the moon etc.. There is a tremendous mass of evidence consistently
proving the spherical shape of the earth. But what consistent arguments are proving the existence of
God? Of course there are those many true believers consenting on their experiences, but there are
many experiments "proving" collective experiences of "facts" that simply are not provable. If you open
a flask of clear water before a students' audience and tell them that this is a perfume with a lavender
scent, and you ask the students to rise their arms if they smell it, you will get nearly the same results
as if there were really this perfume in the flask and not pure water. This once more is in part an effect
of "horror vacui" — and it is an effect of "being sociable": If you stay objective and deny smelling
anything, then you either seem stupid and having no nose, or you seem arrogant and calling all
others stupid for smelling this lavender scent. To avoid this social conflict you agree to smell
something while in fact you do not. Thus how dare you to think there is no God if all your more
experienced and bright elders agree that there is one? If all elders agree that there are witches and
unicorns and UFOs, how dare you to question them on this?

There are of course some things hard to prove or to disprove. Suppose Columbus had been the only
survivor of his first voyage to the Americas. People would have thought him to be mad perhaps from
exhaustion and telling some absurd and wishful stories of a strange land. If these stories could not be
confirmed by his companions and by further voyages, one would never have known if this America
does exist or not. There are several things that are rare and whose existence has been proven only in
recent times like super-waves crossing the ocean as "solitons" or giant octopuses of 40 feet length. In
the same way there must have been some rabbi Jesus who made a great impression on some
contemporaries in Galilea, otherwise there would have been no apostles and no Christendom. But
how will you prove that he really called himself "son of god" or even identified himself with God?
There are no video-reports of his speeches. To be a really impressive person like Ghandi and to be
an incarnation of God are two different things. There have been several persons in history that have
been risen to the status of a god after their death. But to be seen as the founder of a world religion
and as an incarnation of God even 2000 years after your death you must have been really impressive
and your teachings must have contained more than the usual minimum of truth. But if he really made
the claim to be the creator of the universe incarnated: how would you prove or disprove such claim? It
is impossible. Only to jeer at it is not disproving it. We cannot exclude the possibility. There is much
we do not know.

Thus whether Jesus was indeed God incarnated or only a really great rabbi is not provable. But then
it is not that important. You should listen to him — whatever he may have been.

Hubertus Fremerey