Worth noting that, at least in the American justice system, a defendant is never found "innocent", merely "not guilty". Legal standards are biased in very particular directions, and you might not want to adopt those standards to other areas.

+1. I would emphasize the "repeatable". Daniel Boorstin made the important distinction between experience that is by definition not repeatable and experiment which is a repeatable distillate

@JonathanZ, what standard(s) do you suggest? Historical?

It's highly dependent on what functions the "god" in question is supposedly performing. Like most of the god questions here, this one is ridiculously under-specified.

@JonathanZ OK, well I think legal standards of proof are perfectly appropriate for events that cannot be reproduced. If you disagree you should at least provide a better example if you are going to comment.

@JonathanZ Only accepting that someone is guilty if it's demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt is actually an excellent analogy for epistemology and accepting that something exists. It's why we don't accept the existence of unicorns, goblins, ghosts, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, Bigfoot, aliens flying around in flying saucers abducting people... and gods. Atheists commonly use the legal analogy.

@MichaelHall - Okay, so you want to prove your version of god exists using only evidence that is not reproducible. That's a fine strategy, and it's good to have a clear understanding that that is the extent of your god.

@NotThatGuy - Sadly, I am hobbled by years of doing math, where the standards of "proof" are very rigorous, and where we will entertain unreasonable doubts - and sometimes those unreasonable doubt turn out to be valid. But if that's a good standard for epistemology then that's good to know. I just wanted to re-emphasize that we are changing our standards (which the answer does make fairly clear, but might go by unnoticed by some).

@JonathanZ I'm not really following your comment, and I'm not quite sure you understood what I said. I'm not really endorsing the answer. Scientific verification is one of the best ways to remove reasonable doubts. I'm not saying we should accept things based on unreasonable doubts. The legal system already relies heavily on reproducibility - we can't reproduce some murder, but we can e.g. use reliable and reproducible DNA analysis, to draw conclusions about a murder (that's how a lot of science works, too).

@JonathanZ, So how would you use math to reproduce a past event, or evaluate eyewitness testimony? I submit that you can't, which is why other techniques and standards must be applied. That's really all my answer states. Interesting admission of being "hobbled" BTW... I'm sure you meant it tong in cheek, but it's enlightening precisely because it illustrates the hangup many have with demanding 100% certainty when our legal system convicts people on less than that.

@MichaelHall No-one that I've seen is "demanding 100% certainty". Most skeptic atheists even say that they don't have 100% certainty for anything. Scientific verification doesn't even get to 100%, but it is one of the most reliable things we've got. We're just looking for "beyond reasonable doubt". We accept conclusions that are supported by reliable methods.

@NotThatGuy, but it sure seems that many are applying unreasonable standards without providing a plausible counter explanation... Anyway, that's why juries aren't always unanimous!

@NotThatGuy, "Most no longer say gods are responsible for rain" is a classic strawman alluding to a long bygone era. "you also don't need a plausible counter-explanation for the evidence, to reach a "not guilty" verdict, because your goal is just to determine whether this person is guilty." I agree if you default back to agnosticism, but you do need a plausible explanation of the alternative if that's what you choose to accept instead.

@MichaelHall "is a classic strawman" - it's not a strawman, it's merely acknowledging the reality that many of the things once attributed to gods, are now accepted as being the result of mindless natural processes. Of all the claims of gods doing things, we've proven many of them wrong, but we've never demonstrated any of them to be right. "I agree if you default back to agnosticism" - I agree if you hold that we're similarly agnostic about the existence of unicorns, goblins, Hogwarts, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, Bigfoot, etc. When speaking informally, we just say those things don't exist.

@NotThatGuy, No, I don't agree. And piling on more (widely acknowledged as fictitious) strawmen doesn't bolster your case. Look, we both know that we fundamentally disagree, let's just exit this rabbit hole...

"I don't agree" - just like I don't agree with your suggestion to default back to agnosticism. "strawmen" - you keep using that word...

@MichaelHall I've extensively considered questions of our origin (and other supposed evidence for God), and I've considered the answer of "God did it", and I've concluded that it creates more problems than it solves, and I'm no more justified in accepting that than I am in accepting "the Flying Spaghetti Monster did it". That only seems "intellectually dishonest" to you because you reached a very different conclusion. Also, even supposing some god that made the universe, that gets one nowhere close to that god acting in this universe or having any concern for humanity.

@MichaelHall I get why people get upset when their most closely-held and foundational beliefs is compared to fictional things, but it's the most accurate analogy to express my evaluation of how (un)justified we are in accepting God's existence. The best thing it has going for it is that plenty of people with vaguely-relevant expertise accept it as true. But that expertise doesn't count for much here, because it's either too unreliable (e.g. philosophy) or too distantly related (e.g. the sciences). Never mind that both philosophers and scientists are less religious than the general population.

@NotThatGuy, Fictional imaginary things are also the most accurate analogy to express how I feel about those who blindly accept that dead matter can begin compiling and organizing useful information. As controlgroup said above, "Prove that it's real physics first, and then we'll talk."

@MichaelHall "those who blindly accept that dead matter can begin compiling and organizing useful information" - good thing I don't "blindly" accept that, then. I accept it, because of all the massive amounts of evidence pointing in that direction, and lack of a better explanation for the evidence. And no, that's not simply the evidence of "life exists", but rather the evidence of billions of years of the history of Earth and the universe... with no gods in sight. Although "information", in a philosophical sense, is vague mystical nonsense (theists have quite a pile of that).

Gosh. I must have totally missed the announcement of this earth shattering discovery. Surely they won the Nobel prize, who was it, and when?

Have they harnessed the code writing capability of this soil to revolutionize quantum computing yet?

What a stupendous achievement, forever to be memorialized in the annals of scientific achievement, putting Watson and Crick to shame even. Clearly demonstrating how the blueprint for life itself can be written by nothing more than a slurry of material. How clever that slurry is... I mean who would have thought?

Yep, there's the evidence by golly... Plain as the nose on your face. Guess I will have to shift my paradigm now.

That vague mystical nonsense... Who would have thought that a microgram of this nonsense could contain all the information necessary to create human being? But I guess that's what we've proved undisputably though, right? Can we recreate the event? No? Oh well, that won't stop me from believing! ;)

Just like I believe in the tooth fairy. Because that's a fair comparison, right?

I don't see any meaningful counterargument, among all that sarcasm.