Debate with a Christian

[discipulus]

When you can prove something, it is known as fact. Or truth. Or reality.

Proving something does not imply showing it to be certain beyond all doubt Deidre. You understand that right?

When you can't prove something, you only have your opinions to serve you.

This is a non-sequitur informal fallacy. It does not follow that being unable to prove something necessarily means that one only has an opinion on the matter. A person may know that they did not commit a murder they have been accused of committing and yet be unable to prove that they are innocent. This actually happens in real life and it is one example of why our justice system is fallible. It is also an example of why, as I stated, this is incorrect reasoning.

Do you understand?

If we all went on living life with just opinions to guide us, a lot of innocent people would be incarcerated, using one example. Our justice system requires proof or evidence to acquit or convict.
Right?

The justice system in the United States contains in general several degrees or standards of evidence. These standards of evidence ascend as follows: no credible evidence, some credible evidence, a preponderance of evidence, clear and convincing evidence, beyond reasonable doubt, and beyond any shadow of a doubt i.e. certainty (i.e. undoubtable—recognized as an impossible standard to meet—which serves only to terminate the list).

So while it is true that our justice system requires evidence to convict, it is not true that that proof or evidence must be certain!

In fact, it is recognized that certainty is an impossible standard to meet which actually serves to support my argument.

Faith/religion doesn't require proof, and how convenient, it has none! lol

Deidre, truth claims in order to be true, must have support or corroborating evidence. Christianity, which is what we are discussing, makes certain truth claims and relates these claims to us in a historical context. You say there is no evidence or proof that Christianity is true. If by proof you mean a proof that is so strong as to exclude any and all doubt i.e. certainty then yes you are correct. We cannot be certain without a doubt that Christianity is true. But as I have demonstrated, certainty is an unreasonable expectation.

What you should say is that you do not believe Christianity has any reliable or credible evidence to support its truth claims. To which I would respond, yes it does.

And by proof, I mean absolute truth based on evidence.

That is incorrect. A proof is simply an evidence or argument establishing or helping to establish a fact or the truth of a statement. I am not aware of any definition for "proof" that includes the words "absolute" or "certain" in them.

In fact, a proof in a philosophical sense is a series of statements which serve as premises from which a conclusion can be drawn based on the rules of logic. Those premises don't need to be known with 100% certainty. Maybe they'll just appear slightly more plausible than not or perhaps they'll have a great deal of plausibility. But nevertheless, if we have more reason to believe the premises than their negations and together these premises imply by the rules of logic a conclusion then we can say that that conclusion is proved by this argument. But it doesn't require anything like 100% certainty.

In fact, contrary to popular belief, "proof" as you define the term is not even a scientific concept. Contrary to popular belief, there is no such thing as a scientific proof.

Proofs exist only in mathematics and logic, not in science. Mathematics and logic are both closed, self-contained systems of propositions, whereas science is empirical and deals with nature as it exists. The primary criterion and standard of evaluation of scientific theory is evidence, not proof. All else equal (such as internal logical consistency and parsimony), scientists prefer theories for which there is more and better evidence to theories for which there is less and worse evidence. Proofs are not the currency of science.

Proofs have two features that do not exist in science: They are final, and they are binary. Once a theorem is proven, it will forever be true and there will be nothing in the future that will threaten its status as a proven theorem (unless a flaw is discovered in the proof). Apart from a discovery of an error, a proven theorem will forever and always be a proven theorem.

In contrast, all scientific knowledge is tentative and provisional, and nothing is final. There is no such thing as final proven knowledge in science. The currently accepted theory of a phenomenon is simply the best explanation for it among all available alternatives. Its status as the accepted theory is contingent on what other theories are available and might suddenly change tomorrow if there appears a better theory or new evidence that might challenge the accepted theory. No knowledge or theory (which embodies scientific knowledge) is final. That, by the way, is why science is so much fun.

Further, proofs, like pregnancy, are binary; a mathematical proposition is either proven (in which case it becomes a theorem) or not (in which case it remains a conjecture until it is proven). There is nothing in between. A theorem cannot be kind of proven or almost proven. These are the same as unproven.

In contrast, there is no such binary evaluation of scientific theories. Scientific theories are neither absolutely false nor absolutely true. They are always somewhere in between. Some theories are better, more credible, and more accepted than others. There is always more, more credible, and better evidence for some theories than others. It is a matter of more or less, not either/or. For example, experimental evidence is better and more credible than correlational evidence, but even the former cannot prove a theory; it only provides very strong evidence for the theory and against its alternatives.

The knowledge that there is no such thing as a scientific proof should give you a very easy way to tell real scientists from hacks and wannabes. Real scientists never use the words “scientific proofs,” because they know no such thing exists. Anyone who uses the words “proof,” “prove” and “proven” in their discussion of science is not a real scientist. Published on November 16, 2008 by Satoshi Kanazawa in The Scientific Fundamentalist


So you see Deidre, your understanding of the term is simply erroneous and can be corrected by using the term in the sense of "evidence".

This doesn't mean you can't choose to believe in a god, but you have to be sure to not lie to yourself as to why you believe in the first place.

I think you need to understand that asking for certainty regarding God's existence is unreasonable. If certainty is not a prerequisite for you when determining whether secular truth claims are true, then you should not make it a prerequisite for religious truth claims. You have yet to give a good argument as to why you would make such a distinction.

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At one point, we were taught math basics in school, yes? 2+2 equaling 4 is an objective, absolute truth. All things being equal.

When you can prove something, it is known as fact. Or truth. Or reality.

When you can't prove something, you only have your opinions to serve you. If we all went on living life with just opinions to guide us, a lot of innocent people would be incarcerated, using one example. Our justice system requires proof or evidence to acquit or convict.
Right?

Faith/religion doesn't require proof, and how convenient, it has none! lol

And by proof, I mean absolute truth based on evidence.

This doesn't mean you can't choose to believe in a god, but you have to be sure to not lie to yourself as to why you believe in the first place.

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Excellent point. I joyfully agree. I do not know with certainty that God exists. I do not know with certainty that anyone exists in fact, except maybe myself, and even then, some philosophers would take exception to this.

It seems to me you equate knowledge with certainty. Allow me to ask a question:

Do you think someone has to be certain that some proposition P is true in order for them to know P?

Wait a minute. This debate is over. You admit ... you don't know God exists with certainty.

Game over?

I never said I knew with certainty that God existed. I do not know with certainty that "I" am not a brain in a vat or a body lying in the matrix. Does it follow from this that I am not a human being with a physical body? Does it follow from this that reality is simply a construct and that the physical world is not real? Of course not! There is very little that is known with certainty Deidre. This does not mean we therefore are justified with being total skeptics.

I will ask you again:

Do you think someone has to be certain that some proposition P is true in order for them to know P?