Q: Do you agree that an open-minded person should be willing to look at all the evidence?

Of course! But do keep in mind the old saying, “Don’t be so open-minded that your brain falls out.” Being open-minded doesn’t mean that you have to abandon all logic and rationality and actually accept as true every bit of evidence that is offered without critically examining it first.

Q: If so, then are you willing to look at the evidence for God’s existence?

What makes you think I haven’t? Do you not realize that many atheists were actually raised as believers and had tons of supposed “evidence” for the existence of the particular god they were told to worship shoved down their throat on a daily basis? Are you incapable of comprehending the fact that the reason so many people become atheists in the first place is specifically because they carefully looked at the offered evidence for the existence of various gods and found it all wanting? Are you really that blinded by your own indoctrination that you actually think that the evidence for your god’s existence is so overwhelming that the only reason people don’t believe in your particular god is that they simply have never bothered to examine the so-called “evidence”?

Seriously?

Part of the problem, of course, is simply that atheists tend to use the same standards of evidence that they use to evaluate the truth of everything else in their lives, whereas theists are willing to make an exception when it comes to the particular god they happen to believe in. Both theists and atheists alike usually agree that “good evidence” in general is evidence that

• Is objective in the sense that it is or can be experienced by anybody equally, given the same circumstances. As such, personal spiritual experiences do not constitute good evidence since, by their very nature, they are personal and cannot be directly experienced by others.
• Can be independently verified and replicated. As such, so-called “anecdotal evidence” such as stories of miraculous occurrences and third-hand accounts do not constitute good evidence since they can't be verified.
• Provides affirmative support for a proposition and doesn't just attack supposed counter propositions. As such, any of the many supposedly logical arguments for the existence of God do not actually constitute good evidence for the existence of God insofar as they take the form of “Science doesn't have a comprehensive explanation for some phenomena (the origin of the universe, the origin of life on earth, the apparent design in nature, etc.) and therefore it's more likely that God did it.”

It’s just that theists are willing to toss all of this out the window when it comes to their god beliefs. They would never trust a “gut feeling” or an anecdotal story as good evidence of, say, whether somebody who claims to be the widow of a Nigerian prince is really going to share $50 million with them for a small upfront payment, but when it comes to their religious beliefs, suddenly anything whatsoever that could possibly be interpreted to support their beliefs is absolutely valid evidence, including

• The result of being told from birth by their parents and members of their cultural group that one particular god is the One True God™ and that one particular religion worshiping that One True God™ is the One True Faith™. Which, of course, means absolutely nothing as far as evidence goes else every single believer of every single faith would be equally justified in claiming that they had evidence that their god and their faith were true while everybody else’s god and faith were wrong, which is a logical impossibility.
• Stories written hundreds and even thousands of years ago for which there is little (if any) supporting evidence (archaeological or otherwise) and plenty of contradictory evidence.
• A belief that if a prophecy written in one part of a book is said to have come true in another part of the same book, that this somehow means it actually came true instead of just meaning that somebody claimed that it did.
• A post hoc reinterpretation of passages contained in their holy book done after a particular scientific discovery is made that lets them claim that, despite the fact that plain language of that passage either has nothing whatsoever to do with the scientific discovery or else is just plain wrong, this passage somehow miraculously matches that scientific discovery exactly (if you interpret the language just right, ignore the bits that clearly don’t agree, and squint really hard). Strangely enough, however, there never seem to be any instances where somebody figured out the “correct” interpretation before science made the discovery.
• Lots and lots of anecdotal stories from people, both ancient and modern, who claimed to have had “miraculous” experiences, ranging from direct encounters with divine beings to inexplicable healings (never the restoration of a severed limb for some reason, though) to things as mundane as finding their lost car keys after praying for help. Aside from the fact that many of these stories might be outright fabrications, and aside from the fact that “inexplicable” is not the same as “miraculous,” and aside from the fact that these events never seem to be repeatable in any consistent manner, and aside from the fact that accepting these stories as “evidence” of the divine means ignoring all the instances where prayers were not answered, once again we are faced with the fact that if such stories were actually considered evidence of the divine, then it would mean that there would be simultaneous evidence for the gods worshiped by completely different religions, since they all tell miraculous stories to support a belief in the existence of their particular god. And, once again, that would be a logical impossibility. Either these types of stories are reliable evidence, in which case all gods and all religions are simultaneously true (despite the fact that many claim that they are the One True Faith™), or else this evidence isn’t reliable after all. And since the first option leads to a logical impossibility, the second option must be true.
• Personal spiritual witness. Sadly, the same exact logic applies here. People of different faiths worshiping different gods all claim to have the same sorts of personal spiritual witnesses, and if the same evidence can be used to prove completely conflicting results, it’s not good evidence. Besides, personal spiritual witnesses are wholly subjective to the person having them, which means that there’s nothing clear and obvious for atheists to “deny” since they aren’t the ones who had the experience. To an atheist, it’s just another anecdotal story.
• A conviction that if “science” cannot currently explain one or more aspects of observed reality, whether it be how the universe came to be, the origin of human consciousness, the complexity of DNA, etc., the only possible explanation is that the particular god worshiped by that particular theist (and not the gods worshiped by other theists, of course) is responsible for it. And it doesn’t matter how many things science eventually is able to explain — there will always be something that theists can point to and say, “Well, what about that? Huh? Huh? Huh?” Again, however, this is not actually evidence of any particular god. It’s just one big “Argument from Ignorance” that doesn’t even demonstrate that the particular god the theist worships could even possibly exist, let alone actually does exist. You can’t argue that your god is a “more probable” explanation for something until you can first demonstrate just how probable the existence of your god is in the first place. And, I’m sorry, but once you start talking about gods that supposedly exist “outside of time and space” (whatever the heck that means) and that are composed of “pure spirit” (whatever the heck that means) and are simultaneously all-powerful, all-knowing and all-loving (despite the inherent contradictions of such a being given all the suffering in the natural world), I’m afraid you’ve already lost that battle.
• Flawed pseudo-logical arguments that attempt to prove some general concept of some sort of supreme being (not the actual specific god worshiped by anybody, mind you) by relying on carefully crafted definitions and unwarranted assumptions. Even if it were true, for example, that the universe had a “cause” of some sort to exist, that doesn’t mean that this “cause” is necessarily a god and certainly not the particular god you happen to worship. And just defining the particular god you happen to worship as “the most perfect being imaginable” and then claiming that a god that exists is more perfect than one that doesn’t, doesn’t mean that this definition actually reflects reality, any more than defining god as a chair means that the god actually worshiped by anybody must exist.

Again, it’s not that atheists are logical and rational and theists are illogical and irrational, per se. It’s just that theists tend to abandon logic and rationality when it comes specifically to their religious beliefs, regardless of how logical and rational they may be with regard to everything else in their lives. Maybe it’s because they simply want their religious beliefs to be true, maybe it’s because they have been indoctrinated from birth that those beliefs must be true, maybe both. That was certainly the case for me when I was a theist.

The bottom line is that, after thousands of years, theists have yet to produce any good, objective evidence that the particular gods they worship actually exist, and atheists routinely look at what little evidence is offered and reject it specifically because it is not good and objective.

Thanks for asking.

Footnotes