Quote:In my experience God is much more likely to communicate with people through strange circumstances which speak to them personally, as these are much easier to engineer.

Nothing can be 'easier' or 'harder' for God to engineer. According to the handbook, God is omnipotent. Such a being would require no more effort to speak to me in a gnat's whisper than he would to turn the Himalayas into bread pudding.

As to what evidence (as opposed to argument) would convince me, waking up one morning with my left eye re-grown and fully functional should do. I've had a lot (and I mean a LOT) of people tell me they've prayed for this to happen. So far, bupkiss.

Boru

(October 25, 2014 at 7:38 pm)trmof Wrote: The respondents are the ones who have asked me to define myself.

Who asked you to explain yourself? I asked you to demonstrate evidence for the claims in the OP.

Quote:The topic of this post is asking what are your personal standards for examining non falsifiable evidence,

That's not what you asked in the OP. So, there's that.

Quote:and getting an interesting cross-section of opinions about that topic. You are trying to change the point to being about my personal beliefs and whether or not I can prove them; if I wanted to discuss that, I would have started a post about that. If you would like to have arguments about the existence of God with non-atheists I'm sure there are plenty of more suitable threads to do that on. Not this one.

No, I am not asking you about your personal beliefs, I am asking you to provide evidence. You have danced around what constitutes evidence and have provided none, nor even any examples.

(October 25, 2014 at 7:38 pm)trmof Wrote:

(October 25, 2014 at 7:18 pm)Stimbo Wrote: Do you see what's happening here? We've gone from insinuations that we will reject outright any evidence for your (or any) god claims, to evidence that you admit cannot be acceptable evidence to anyone but yourself, alongside admissions that you have no mechanism even to verify said evidence objectively.

Congratulations: you've defined yourself into a nice, safe corner.

Meanwhile, until you present us with some justification for any of your claims that we can examine, I'm breaking out Hitchens' Razor - that which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.

The respondents are the ones who have asked me to define myself. I've never expressed any interest in doing so. All of philosophy can be asserted without evidence; for example, there is absolutely no evidence that anything but my consciousness is real, or any way to prove to me otherwise besides an appeal to your personal authority, which, if you are not real, is meaningless. Wow, what an interesting topic to explore the connotations of, which is what this entire post was about in the first place. If you aren't interested in philosophical dissecting a philosophical question such as this without constantly reminding everyone about your beliefs or lack thereof, then it kind of makes one question why you are commenting on a post headed under "philosophy" if you are not interested in discussing the philosophical implications behind the question.

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(October 25, 2014 at 7:11 pm)Chas Wrote: Your first sentence does not make sense.
And since I am not making a claim, I am neither right nor wrong. I am saying I don't accept your unevidenced assertion.


Testimony alone is not credible evidence. It is no more credible than my claiming there are pixies in my garden.


You have provided no testimony, let alone evidence, of God's intervention in your life.

The sooner you stick to the point, the sooner you can have a meaningful discussion.

The topic of this post is asking what are your personal standards for examining non falsifiable evidence, and getting an interesting cross-section of opinions about that topic. You are trying to change the point to being about my personal beliefs and whether or not I can prove them; if I wanted to discuss that, I would have started a post about that. If you would like to have arguments about the existence of God with non-atheists I'm sure there are plenty of more suitable threads to do that on. Not this one.

If it is nonfalsifiable even in principle, then it is noise, not evidence of any kind. Now what is yours? I suspect your is noise is noise unless it sounded like what you wanted to hear. So your standard of evidence is whether you like it to be true, not whether there is reason to believe it has heightened probability of being true.

(October 25, 2014 at 7:54 pm)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote:

Quote:In my experience God is much more likely to communicate with people through strange circumstances which speak to them personally, as these are much easier to engineer.

Nothing can be 'easier' or 'harder' for God to engineer. According to the handbook, God is omnipotent. Such a being would require no more effort to speak to me in a gnat's whisper than he would to turn the Himalayas into bread pudding.

As to what evidence (as opposed to argument) would convince me, waking up one morning with my left eye re-grown and fully functional should do. I've had a lot (and I mean a LOT) of people tell me they've prayed for this to happen. So far, bupkiss.

Boru

Good point. If God gives a fuck about me believing, then he needs to fix this:



That would constitute more than sufficient evidence.

(October 25, 2014 at 4:48 pm)Chuck Wrote: There is reason to discount one form of evidence when another form is better: the first form has never been demonstrated to be sufficient for anything, much less a thing for which so much has been claimed.

But it has. Just not to you. Billions of people disagree with this statement. Simply asserting that such means exactly as much to them as their asserting their opinion of what constitutes evidence would mean to you. They hold the exact same weight as evidence according to your statement, because your statement is backed by no evidence of the type you claim is required in the statement itself. Your statement is a philosophical Catch-22.

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(October 25, 2014 at 8:03 pm)Chas Wrote:

(October 25, 2014 at 7:54 pm)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote: Nothing can be 'easier' or 'harder' for God to engineer. According to the handbook, God is omnipotent. Such a being would require no more effort to speak to me in a gnat's whisper than he would to turn the Himalayas into bread pudding.

As to what evidence (as opposed to argument) would convince me, waking up one morning with my left eye re-grown and fully functional should do. I've had a lot (and I mean a LOT) of people tell me they've prayed for this to happen. So far, bupkiss.

Boru

Good point. If God gives a fuck about me believing, then he needs to fix this:



That would constitute more than sufficient evidence.

It looks like you have a sufficient artificial knee and it's already been fixed well enough for you. What more would constitute fixing it at this point?

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(October 25, 2014 at 7:57 pm)Chuck Wrote:

(October 25, 2014 at 7:38 pm)trmof Wrote: The respondents are the ones who have asked me to define myself. I've never expressed any interest in doing so. All of philosophy can be asserted without evidence; for example, there is absolutely no evidence that anything but my consciousness is real, or any way to prove to me otherwise besides an appeal to your personal authority, which, if you are not real, is meaningless. Wow, what an interesting topic to explore the connotations of, which is what this entire post was about in the first place. If you aren't interested in philosophical dissecting a philosophical question such as this without constantly reminding everyone about your beliefs or lack thereof, then it kind of makes one question why you are commenting on a post headed under "philosophy" if you are not interested in discussing the philosophical implications behind the question.

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The topic of this post is asking what are your personal standards for examining non falsifiable evidence, and getting an interesting cross-section of opinions about that topic. You are trying to change the point to being about my personal beliefs and whether or not I can prove them; if I wanted to discuss that, I would have started a post about that. If you would like to have arguments about the existence of God with non-atheists I'm sure there are plenty of more suitable threads to do that on. Not this one.

If it is nonfalsifiable even in principle, then it is noise, not evidence of any kind. Now what is yours? I suspect your is noise is noise unless it sounded like what you wanted to hear. So your standard of evidence is whether you like it to be true, not whether there is reason to believe it has heightened probability of being true.

Who said that it's a non-falsifiable principle, How do you know that its non-falsifiable, and what scientific data did you use to come to this conclusion? Because it sounds like just your opinion. That's a very unscientific way to look at an unsolved problem, to claim that it could never be solved. If you are saying that there is no way to test for the presence of God EVEN IF HE DOES EXIST, then you have already conceded that science is an insufficient method for addressing the question. Hence my post under PHILOSOPHY and not SCIENCE.

Also, you are trying to change the commonly understood definition of evidence to SCIENTIFIC DATA. Evidence is a legal and philosophical term which includes both strong and weak evidence of different varieties, the value of which is decided on by subjective experience and intuition. You are engaging in a semiotic fallacy, which I have already pointed out to several other people.

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(October 25, 2014 at 7:54 pm)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote:

Quote:In my experience God is much more likely to communicate with people through strange circumstances which speak to them personally, as these are much easier to engineer.

Nothing can be 'easier' or 'harder' for God to engineer. According to the handbook, God is omnipotent. Such a being would require no more effort to speak to me in a gnat's whisper than he would to turn the Himalayas into bread pudding.

As to what evidence (as opposed to argument) would convince me, waking up one morning with my left eye re-grown and fully functional should do. I've had a lot (and I mean a LOT) of people tell me they've prayed for this to happen. So far, bupkiss.

Boru

The Bible does not call God omnipotent. The God you are describing is not the God I worship, so your opinions about this particular potential form of God are not something I can address.

Also, you have an incredibly high standard of evidence, which is fine, but the fact that God hasn't grown you an eyeball has no bearing on whether he exists outside of your intuition. That's fine, as your intuition is perfectly valid in your own mind, as long as you recognize that for what it is: An opinion based on a LACK of personal experience with the thing you are disclaiming. This is philosophically less valid to me than my opinion of things I HAVE had personal experience with.

(October 25, 2014 at 8:11 pm)trmof Wrote:

(October 25, 2014 at 8:03 pm)Chas Wrote: Good point. If God gives a fuck about me believing, then he needs to fix this:



That would constitute more than sufficient evidence.

It looks like you have a sufficient artificial knee and it's already been fixed well enough for you. What more would constitute fixing it at this point?

Well done! You have a future as an idiot apologist.

You presume that the repair is sufficient, and imply there isn't more to be done.

You're an arse.

I feel we've gone as far as we're going to without repeating ourselves. My larger point in posting this, beyond simply the nature of evidence in it's different forms, is to address our communal level of discourse by drawing attention to the fact, that lacking scientific data on either side, other people's experiences are just as valid to them as yours are to you. A failure to recognize this when debating any philosophical topic results in a failure to consider things seriously from the other person's point of view. If you wish to do this, that is fine, but it is both non-productive and has a tendency to perpetuate wars of words instead of spirited, friendly, enlightening debates, which is all anybody can hope for on this topic at the moment. I think this is a bad thing, and if you would like your conversations with other people to be more productive, you should try to be the kinder, more understanding person, as this is the only part of the conversation you have any control over. I would like to think I have done so to the best of my ability during these exchanges, even when bated.

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(October 25, 2014 at 8:44 pm)Chas Wrote:

(October 25, 2014 at 8:11 pm)trmof Wrote: It looks like you have a sufficient artificial knee and it's already been fixed well enough for you. What more would constitute fixing it at this point?

Well done! You have a future as an idiot apologist.

You presume that the repair is sufficient, and imply there isn't more to be done.

You're an arse.

I implied nothing and politely asked a followup question, which you ignored, and you failed to answer said question while implying none was asked. You, sir, are a quisling. You appear more interested in venting your personal frustrations than discussing the topic outlined in a calm and rational manner. Please express your personal internal frustrations to someone else, and thank you for book-ending the post which I just made in such an appropriate manner.

(October 25, 2014 at 8:46 pm)trmof Wrote: I feel we've gone as far as we're going to without repeating ourselves. My larger point in posting this, beyond simply the simple nature of evidence in it's different forms, is to address our communal level of discourse by drawing attention to the fact, that lacking scientific data on either side, other people's experiences are just as valid to them as yours are to you. A failure to recognize this when debating any philosophical topic results in a failure to consider things seriously from the other person's point of view. If you wish to do this, that is fine, but it is both non-productive and has a tendency to perpetuate wars of words instead of spirited, friendly, enlightening debates, which is all anybody can hope for on this topic at the moment. I think this is a bad thing, and if you would like your conversations with other people to be more productive, you should try to be the kinder, more understanding person, as this is the only part of the conversation you have any control over. I would like to think I have done so to the best of my ability during these exchanges, even when bated.

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(October 25, 2014 at 8:44 pm)Chas Wrote: Well done! You have a future as an idiot apologist.

You presume that the repair is sufficient, and imply there isn't more to be done.

You're an arse.

I implied nothing

You wrote "it's already been fixed well enough for you. What more would constitute fixing it at this point?"

You presumed is was enough. Don't you even read your own posts?

And, yes, lacking evidence opinions are all worth very little. And you still don't understand what constitutes evidence.

Quote:and politely asked a followup question, which you ignored, and failed to answer the question while implying none was asked. You, sir, are a quisling.

I don't think that word means what you think it means, because it makes no sense in this context.

Quote:You appear more interested in venting your personal frustrations than discussing the topic outlined in a calm and rational manner. Please express your personal internal frustrations to someone else.

And I suggest you take your passive-aggressive crap elsewhere.

And with that I'll take my leave for awhile.

Quote:The Bible does not call God omnipotent.

Revelation 19:6 (KJV): 'And I heard as it were the voice of a great multitude, and as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of mighty thunderings, saying, Alleluia: for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth.'

I get so tired correcting theists on scripture....

Boru