There is no scientific evidence for the existence of God...just assertions.

Part of that charge is fair: a lot of popular Christian writing asserts rather than argues. But the standard being used here is not scientific, and cannot be, which is the first thing worth noticing.

1. "Only science gives knowledge" is not science. That sentence cannot be tested, measured, or falsified. It is a philosophical claim about the limits of knowledge, and by its own rule it would be neither true nor meaningful. Anyone who asserts it has stepped outside the method they are recommending.

2. Science runs on things it cannot prove. That nature is uniform, that the future will resemble the past, that our minds can grasp reality, that truth is worth pursuing, that we should follow the evidence — none of these are experimental results. They are preconditions of doing science at all. Theism explains why a rational mind would find a rational universe; naturalism can only assume the fit. Hebrews treats this as a starting point rather than a result: "By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God" (Hebrews 11:3).

3. The universe began to exist. Standard cosmology holds that space, time, and matter had a beginning. The Borde-Guth-Vilenkin theorem (2003) shows that a universe expanding on average cannot be past-eternal; it must have a boundary. Whatever begins to exist has a cause. A cause of space, time, and matter is not itself a physical thing inside the universe, which is why "no scientific evidence" is partly a category error.

4. Fine-tuning is data, not decoration. The constants of physics and the initial conditions of the universe fall within extraordinarily narrow life-permitting ranges. Change them slightly and there is no chemistry, no stars, no observers. Robin Collins and others argue that a mind which intended observers explains this better than brute chance plus an unobserved multiverse. It is an inference to the best explanation, which is exactly what science does.

5. Information in cells is a real puzzle. DNA carries a coded sequence, and the origin of the first such sequence is not explained by known chemistry. Stephen Meyer argues in Signature in the Cell that specified information is best explained by intelligence, since that is the only cause we know that produces it. Many biologists disagree. But that is an argument with a literature, not an assertion.

6. Consciousness and morality remain unaccounted for. No one has explained how physical processes produce subjective experience, and it is not obvious why a purely physical world would contain real obligations rather than useful feelings. These are facts about ourselves that materialist accounts have to explain and have not. They are evidence in the ordinary sense: data that a hypothesis must accommodate. Paul says this knowledge is not obscure: what can be known of God is "plain to them, because God has shown it to them" (Romans 1:19).

7. The resurrection is historical evidence. Christianity's central claim is not a metaphysical intuition; it is an event with a date. The earliest documents report an empty tomb, appearances to individuals and groups, and the sudden transformation of fearful disciples, plus the conversion of James and of Paul, who was persecuting the church. That is investigated the way all past events are — by testimony and documents. Demanding a laboratory test for a past event is a rigged standard.

8. The turn: the demand assumes God is an object. "Show me the scientific evidence for God" treats God as one more item inside the universe, on the list with quarks and quasars. But on the classical view, God is not a being among beings; he is the ground of existence, the reason there is anything rather than nothing. You do not detect the author by inspecting the paper, and the demand is not unreasonable in tone so much as misdescribed in kind. Paul's Athenian sermon makes the same distinction: "The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man" (Acts 17:24).

9. There is evidence, and it can be weighed. Cosmological, fine-tuning, biological information, consciousness, moral, and historical arguments are all evidence claims. They can be attacked and defended. What they cannot honestly be called is "just assertions" by someone who has not engaged them. The honest version of the objection is "I don't find these arguments convincing," which is a position worth discussing.

The evidence for God is not a lab result, and it was never going to be, because the claim is about the source of nature rather than an object within it. The arguments from existence, order, information, mind, morality, and history are public and checkable. That is what evidence looks like in this domain.

Sources: William Lane Craig; Robin Collins; Stephen C. Meyer, Signature in the Cell; Hugh Ross; Rodney Stark.

Related challenges:
• Atheism is the DEFAULT position. The burden of proof is on the Christian asserting God exists. All we're asking is to see the convincing emperical EVIDENCE.