(December 1, 2019 at 10:46 pm)Paleophyte Wrote: Evidence: lit trans That which can be shown. As opposed to that which plays epistemological hide-and-seek for no good reason.

I don't think "evidence" means "that which can be shown." It means something more like "what we use to show something." 
Here is what Google tells me:

Quote:evidence
/ˈɛvɪd(ə)ns/

noun

the available body of facts or information indicating whether a belief or proposition is true or valid.
"the study finds little evidence of overt discrimination"

What I've been talking about here is what we consider to be good evidence, in order to show that a thing is true or not. 

Religious people think that their God has been shown to be real. They accept tradition, authority, revelation, metaphysical arguments, personal feelings, and other things as evidence. So they think that God's existence is a thing that can be shown.

You don't agree with them, and it may be that -- like most people on this forum -- you don't accept those things as good evidence. Most people here are only willing to call something evidence if it is empirical, repeatable, quantifiable, obtained through methodological naturalism, and fitted into currently widely accepted theory about how the world works -- in other words, science. 

And I'm certainly not arguing with you. Science works really well because it limits what it accepts as evidence in that way. 

I'm only saying that what you consider to be shown is based on criteria such as these. You have a viewpoint, and it is not nothing. So when you consider and reject the claims of religious people, you do so based on something.

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(December 2, 2019 at 1:36 am)Rahn127 Wrote: Real tables are visible & tangible, but imaginary tables are not.
Having a delusion about an invisible & intangible table is not a reasonable position to hold.

Why do you think that God, if it existed, would be visible and tangible? 

Pre-Christian Greek philosophy, for example, thinks of God as something more like the laws of mathematics, which are neither visible nor tangible, but real in a different way.

Bel, you reply to my post about a non existent table and insert a god into the mix.

I don't have any thoughts about a god at all. I don't think they are real. I don't think they exist.

When someone shows that a god exists, then we can talk about attributes.

Until then, I was merely talking about delusional thoughts that some people have. If you want, you can respond to that.

(December 3, 2019 at 12:51 am)Belacqua Wrote:

(December 1, 2019 at 10:46 pm)Paleophyte Wrote: Evidence: lit trans That which can be shown. As opposed to that which plays epistemological hide-and-seek for no good reason.

I don't think "evidence" means "that which can be shown." It means something more like "what we use to show something."

It is literally translated from the Latin evidentia which means "obvious to the mind or eye".
 

Quote:Religious people think that their God has been shown to be real. They accept tradition, authority, revelation, metaphysical arguments, personal feelings, and other things as evidence. So they think that God's existence is a thing that can be shown.

Replace "think" with "believe" and we're in agreement. It's belief because while they believe that one deity exists they do not believe that an army of equally (im)probable deities also exist. Dispassionate application of their standards would result in the belief in a literal host of mutually exclusive deities and theological chaos.

Quote:You don't agree with them, and it may be that -- like most people on this forum -- you don't accept those things as good evidence. Most people here are only willing to call something evidence if it is empirical, repeatable, quantifiable, obtained through methodological naturalism, and fitted into currently widely accepted theory about how the world works -- in other words, science. 

If you think that's how I think then you don't understand me very well. Any "deity" that is reductible to empiricism is a pitiful excuse for a god. Quantifiable gods just don't measure up. Give me a Deity that's absolutely baffling, so that it may be worthy of my wonder.

Quote:I'm only saying that what you consider to be shown is based on criteria such as these.

It's funny that you'd think that you'd have to tell a sceptic that any given viewpoint should be regarded with suspicion, especially one's own.

Quote:You have a viewpoint, and it is not nothing. So when you consider and reject the claims of religious people, you do so based on something.

And knowing that I try to use a variety of relatively objective standards. They aren't perfect but then nothing ever is. An amusing side effect of this is that I can probably construct better arguments for a better deity than most theists can.

(December 3, 2019 at 11:58 pm)Paleophyte Wrote: It is literally translated from the Latin evidentia which means "obvious to the mind or eye".

OK, but I'm sure you know that etymology doesn't tell us the current meaning of the word. I think the definition I quoted is the common one.

Quote: 
Replace "think" with "believe" and we're in agreement. It's belief because while they believe that one deity exists they do not believe that an army of equally (im)probable deities also exist. Dispassionate application of their standards would result in the belief in a literal host of mutually exclusive deities and theological chaos.

Well, I think that if you believe something, you just hold it to be true. 

I understand that some people want "belief" to be a weaker version, in which we hold something to be true without persuasive evidence. But that just gets us back to the issue of what kind of evidence is persuasive. 

The age-old definition of knowledge as "justified true belief," in which belief is anything you hold to be true, and knowledge is a subset of that belief, seems to avoid these issues. I don't want to say that knowledge is what people hold to be true according to standards I like, while belief is what other people hold to be true based on standards I don't like. 

Quote:It's funny that you'd think that you'd have to tell a sceptic that any given viewpoint should be regarded with suspicion, especially one's own.

[...]

And knowing that I try to use a variety of relatively objective standards. They aren't perfect but then nothing ever is. 

I've been surprised by how many atheists think they can reject religious claims based on no viewpoint and no objective standards. They say that they just hear a claim and reject it and that's that -- they don't have to apply any logic, evidence, etc. To me, this is an indication that they may be insufficiently skeptical of their own standards of judgment, just because they aren't consciously applying such standards. 

It's encouraging for me to hear that you are not only conscious of your analytical process, but capable of skepticism about it.

Part of the issue is that Christians seem to consistently move the goal posts in defining what god is, mostly because they do not know what god is, mostly because they have no reason, or evidence mind you, to tell them what god is.

How can we argue about the existence of a being if we don't even understand what defining qualities that being possesses?

And, if the argument is that god is so outside of our understanding that there's no way we could ever interpret the evidence, then why even talk about it? You may as well ask a caterpillar about the pros and cons of a career in financial analysis. This is just the Christians way of saying, "We can talk about god, but you can't, neener neener neener"

Yeah, religious people should first agree among themselves which God is real and what God supposedly wants from us, before criticizing atheists. Retreating to some universal Deism is not a valid argument.

I've debated the existence of God ad nauseam in this forum and have come to the conclusion that, if God exists, the only way one can come to believe in him is to be convinced by God himself.  Nobody is going to argue anyone into belief in God.

(December 5, 2019 at 1:49 pm)Lek Wrote: I've debated the existence of God ad nauseam in this forum and have come to the conclusion that, if God exists, the only way one can come to believe in him is to be convinced by God himself.  Nobody is going to argue anyone into belief in God.

Well, it does happen.  Not here, as far as I know, but it isn't unheard of.

Boru

If Jake came into a courtroom, claiming to have "evidence" that Tom shot Harry, and then when asked about this evidence, Jake revealed that he had a personal revelation where he "saw" Tom shoot Harry, do you think Tom would be convicted? Or would Jake be laughed out of the courtroom?

Let's keep in mind that the police found no evidence of Tom ever owning a gun, and never even found evidence to corroborate that Harry was shot.

Do you think Tom's going to jail?

(December 5, 2019 at 4:38 pm)EgoDeath Wrote: If Jake came into a courtroom, claiming to have "evidence" that Tom shot Harry, and then when asked about this evidence, Jake revealed that he had a personal revelation where he "saw" Tom shoot Harry, do you think Tom would be convicted? Or would Jake be laughed out of the courtroom?

Let's keep in mind that the police found no evidence of Tom ever owning a gun, and never even found evidence to corroborate that Harry was shot.

Do you think Tom's going to jail?

You just gave me a good excuse for getting out of jury duty next time.