Of course, and I have never claimed nor intentionally implied otherwise. In fact, I genuinely have never met a single person who thought that evidence causes existence. As such, I am not quite sure why you felt the need to state this?
You do not think that way because you are logical but I have met atheists who think that way. In fact there is an atheist I conversed with for over eight years who insists that if God existed there would be proof, and he says that the fact that there is no proof means God does not exist. Of course that is not logical, because God could exist and choose not to provide proof of His existence. I believe God provided evidence but not proof, because if God provided proof everyone would be a believer.
I suspect that we are using very different definitions of "evidence" and "proof." Proof, to me, is a facet of mathematics, and this includes statistical proofs based on mathematical statistics. These proofs are used quite frequently in conjunction with observation in the natural sciences.
Below are the definitions I use:
Evidence: anything that
helps to prove that something is or is not true:
EVIDENCE | definition in the Cambridge English Dictionary
Evidence: the available body of facts or information
indicating whether a belief or proposition is true or valid:
https://www.google.com/search
Evidence is anything that you see, experience,
read, or are
told that causes you to believe that something is true or has
really happened.
Objective evidence definition and meaning | Collins English Dictionary
Proof: evidence or argument
establishing or helping to establish a fact or the truth of a statement:
https://www.google.com/search
Something is scientifically
verifiable if it can be tested and proven to be true.
Verifiable comes from the verb verify, "authenticate" or "prove," from the Old French verifier, "find out the truth about." The Latin root is verus, or "true." Definitions of
verifiable.
https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/verifiable
Something that's verifiable can be proven. In a courtroom, verifiable evidence is
backed up with specific proof. If you have a birth certificate, your exact time and place of birth is verifiable — in other words, you can prove where and when you were born.
Verifiable - Definition, Meaning & Synonyms | Vocabulary.com
Proof is a kind of evidence (verifiable evidence) that establishes something as a fact.
Therefore verifiable evidence is proof.
Other kinds of evidence
that are NOT verifiable do not establish anything as a fact.
They only
indicate whether a belief or proposition is true or valid.
Perhaps when you think of proving something, that carries the connotation that what you have proven has been shown to be necessarily true and that it is impossible for something proven to be false. Proof here would therefore be in the narrow sense of deductive argumentation.
Yes, that is how I think of proof. It is impossible for something proven to be false because it has been proven as a fact.
fact
something that is
known to have
happened or to
exist,
especially something for which
proof exists, or about which there is
information:
fact
I think this is true for all beliefs, if I understand you correctly, but genuine proof is objective and can stand on its own.
That's true, but there is no objective proof of God since God has never provided such proof.
Likewise, there is no objective proof that an alleged Messenger was a Messenger of God, but there is objective evidence of the Messengers since they walked the earth and left such evidence for us to see and examine.
