Religious Evidence

That should be in quotes: "Evidence".

Many sacred texts are thought to contain evidence of God's supernatural influence. The texts are believed to contain an understanding of the world unattainable by ordinary people. An omniscient being could inspire a text full of scientific facts that no human living at the time could have known.

Sacred texts could also accurately predict future events. It is believed that God sees the future, understands the workings of the world, and can tell us in advance what will happen even in the most distant future. Supernatural events, prophecies, and scientific miracles would be evidence of the divine reality behind a particular religion and valid evidence of God's influence on the human mind. 

Many believers believe that their holy books contain miraculous wisdom, or "scientific miracles". They argue that the Bible or the Qur’an know things about the universe that their authors could not have known from their culture and environment. Therefore, they must have known it through inspiration from God. While prophecies refer primarily to future events and human actions, scientific miracles refer to the universe and its laws.

Similar to prophecies, "scientific miracles" are seen after carefully selected - cherrypicked - verses match modern science based on free associations. The evidence offered in these scientific miracles is very superficial for two reasons. Either the verse makes no true statements about the universe, or the ancient authors knew only things that could be inferred or were generally known in their cultural environment.

Much of the material in the Bible, Quran and other ancient texts is written in vague, poetic language. Like modern horoscopes, the verses can be interpreted to mean almost anything one wants them to mean. Most of the time, the "miracles" are mere coincidences. One must wonder if the verse is trying to make true statements about the nature of the universe. Or is it poetic, metaphorical, or symbolic? With the tens of thousands of verses in the Bible, for example, it is easy to find a connection with historical events or scientific data by free association. However, this is nothing more than literary pareidolia.

This image represents a supposed "insect" on Mars. It was taken by the Curiosity rover in 2022. The phenomenon is called pareidolia, which is the tendency to perceive a specific, often meaningful image in a random or ambiguous visual pattern.

The word derives from the Greek words pará (παρά, "beside, alongside, instead [of]") and the noun eídōlon (εἴδωλον, "image, form, shape").

Usually, pareidolia is associated with images. Prophecies and scientific miracles, on the other hand, involve literary pareidolia. This involves selecting and interpreting verses from ancient texts that are believed to contain prophetic and scientific wisdom. For the religious believer, this is evidence of God's direct activity in the world. If, according to the Bible or the Qur'an, the world is "expanded" - it knows about the Hubble flow! If the text uses the word "membrane" - it knows the membrane theory: its author must have understood advanced physics! Deuteronomy... sounds a lot like Deuterium.... gotcha atheist! A reasonable person can see that this is about recognizing patterns in texts that do not actually exist. Read the other articles to see what this looks like in practice. There is even more on the topic in my book, the Lens of Faith.

In religious beginnings, God communicates truths to his messenger. God performs miracles that are seen by many people. The prophet is surrounded by omens and signs. His birth also happens miraculously. An evil relative tries to kill him, but he is miraculously saved.Angels visit him. The prophets and later other saints, gurus, arhats and others perform miracles - they multiply food, control the weather, heal people, and raise the dead.

Religious believers have visions of gods and spirits. People are miraculously healed. Prayers are answered. They receive supernatural guidance.

A final great, earth-shaking miracle is expected from God. As prophesied, a great savior will descend from heaven. He will pass judgment on the world in favor of the believers of the "true" religion. The whole world will be renewed.

God performs a heap of great miracles, which are witnessed by the masses. These miracles cease completely in modern times.
Prophets and gurus perform a myriad of miracles through their supernatural powers. It is believed that some powerful men of god still have this ability. But they will never exhibit it under controlled circumstances.

Spirits and gods perform a myriad of miracles and healings. There are a great number of manifestations of them. But they only appear to those people who already know them from their cultural environment. They never provide tangible evidence of their existence. Healings never restore limbs.

No religion has tangible evidence that would stand up to critical scrutiny. The Abrahamic God has given no clear evidence of his existence in the Bible or elsewhere. There are:
1) No advanced cultural objects were manufactured by the ancient Hebrews/Israelites/Judeans. No weapons to deter their enemies, for instance
2) There is no advanced scientific data in the Bible
3) There is no advanced medical data in the Bible
4) There is no knowledge of future events in the Bible

And one could say the same about every other religion - none of them contain any better evidence. There is no advanced scientific knowledge of the laws of nature, only flimsy stories of supernatural intervention in them.

We have no choice but to argue about which of these thousands of supernatural interventions are most likely to be real. God must be laughing up his sleeve at the confusion he has caused.

In medieval depictions, Jesus has pale skin, a narrow face and long medium-brown hair. He looks European, like a Greek God. In the scientific facial reconstruction by British scientist Richard Neave, Jesus looks entirely different. Which one is the Shroud of Turin based on?