What philosophical evidence is there against believing in non-physical entities?

[RozKek]

I'll give you a very quick demonstration that almost everyone who claims to be receiving messages from God is, in fact, not:

People making such claims disagree with each other about what God says and wants.

The only other explanation is that he intentionally misleads almost everyone. In such a case, any messages from him should be disregarded.

What about schizophrenia?? Isn't it quite common with schizophrenia?

[robvalue]

Oh yes, indeed it is. That makes religion doubly dangerous to someone who is already vulnerable to hearing and seeing things that aren't there.

I was saying that if you try to cling to the fact that god is talking to someone, it still leaves almost everyone getting the wrong message.

[Neo-Scholastic]

Right. Testimony and "records" are anecdotal.

Except when they aren't. Put enough together and you have a case study. It's a common scientific practice to take commonly reported experiences, look for commonalities and wonder if something is behind them. Skeptics tend to misuse the term anecdote. It refers to something totally anomalous. If something happens often enough though, it cannot be dismissed as anomalous. For example, people used to call placebo effects anecdotal because they did not fit the model prior of how healing works. In that model, there had to be an effective ingredient in order to produce healing effects.

Similarly, alien abductions were considered 'anecdotal' because what they described did not fit how we thought the universe worked. But thousands of people claim to have been abducted. Now I am most definitely NOT saying that these should be taken at face value. I doubt very much that aliens are visiting the earth. But there is a widespread phenomena that is in no way anecdotal. It may be a perfectly understandable and interesting explanation. Calling it anecdotal becomes just another way to take it off the study table for no other reason that it doesn't fit the model of how we think the world should work.

[Neo-Scholastic]

Materialism is dead nowadays as a serious philosophical theory. I think the Kantian realization that the world is dependent on our senses...

I don't think that's quite right. Kant's position was that the mind shoehorns the affect of an incomprehensible reality-as-it-is into comprehensible categories. Otherwise I agree that materialism is a dying paradigm, which is why most serious atheistic thinkers have made the semantic shift to 'physicalism'. No one seriously believes anymore that the world is made of indivisible particles that interact mechanistically.

[Homeless Nutter]

But there is evidence,

No, there isn't. You're mistaking claims for evidence.

virtually all human societies have records and testimonies of people who had contact with spiritual entities. This is universal. [...]

LOL... That's because telling fantastic stories to gullible morons has always been a great business. Having sex for money is universal too. Human psychology is structured around seeking agency and it's very overactive in that department, often leading to false positives - which is why we easily accept antropomorphized entities as explanation for things we don't understand.

Virtually all the "records and testimonies of people who had contact with spiritual entities" can be explained by known psychological phenomena. No need to invoke "extra dimensions", gods, fairies, witches, devils, time-travelers, or ghosts.

Spirituality is a substitute for knowledge, ideally suitable for stupid people and/or those too lazy to learn. And - of course - wack-jobs.

[RoadRunner79]

I would agree... contradictory claims cannot both be true!

It seems a sensible principle, yes.

This puts everyone who claims to be having any sort of communication "from God" in an extremely dubious position. They are either the only one getting it right, or they are deluded. Statistically, they are deluded, even if God is actually talking to anyone at all.

The fact so many people really believe God talks to them through leaves and such shows how the underlying truth matters so little when the belief is so strong.

Actually, what I am speaking of; pointed me to orthodoxy, and what Christians have historically believed and experienced through the centuries (as apposed to a Maverick approach). And frankly I find your approach naïve and ill-informed(statistically speaking). I think that a number of conversations here, show that underlying truth matters so little, when the belief is so strong. Hence we see begging the question in so many of these discussions.

[robvalue]

Okay, we're back to this again are we, childish "you too" speak. Good day.

[The Grand Nudger]

 No one seriously believes anymore that the world is made of indivisible particles that interact mechanistically.

The above would be atomism, not materialism...but don't let that get in the way of a good rant.

[RoadRunner79]

Okay, we're back to this again are we, childish "you too" speak. Good day.

It is naïve and ill-informed, because you don't understand that much of Christianity is in agreement on a number of things (although if most of your education has come from sites such as this, I think it is understandable) And the comment that statistically they are deluded even if God is speaking to them, is just non-sensical (as well as mis-applying the application of statistics).

If you only want a one way conversation, to confirm you dogma, then it is probably best that we do wish each other good day!

[The Grand Nudger]

Hold your horses there sharpshooter.  One of the most pernicious and varied disagreements between sects is the issue of christology, and for a cult collective named "christianity"..... that would seem to be quite a disagreement.

Yall didn't start "agreeing" with each other until living memory, as a part of a political paradigm meant to stop the bleeding of authority. The various sectarian groups finally realized, after 300 years or so of infighting...that it was causing people to lose confidence in their ability to make normative proclamations at a broad social level, that it had a negative effect on their relevance, and perhaps more importantly..that it cost them members and thus resources. Better late than never, I guess.