The nature of evidence

[robvalue]

One last thing before I go blow up some tanks:

If the nature of your claim is such that there cannot be any proper, convincing evidence for it, then that is a problem with the claim. That's not to say it isn't true, but it should make you stop and consider why you even believe it yourself.

It is not a problem with/for the person you're telling the claim to. Nor is it reasonable to expect them to believe it based on whatever extremely weak evidence you present, because your claim is "special".

[TheRocketSurgeon]

One last thing before I go blow up some tanks:

If the nature of your claim is such that there cannot be any proper, convincing evidence for it, then that is a problem with the claim. That's not to say it isn't true, but it should make you stop and consider why you even believe it yourself.

It is not a problem with/for the person you're telling the claim to. Nor is it reasonable to expect them to believe it based on whatever extremely weak evidence you present, because your claim is "special".

Rob... what tanks game do you play? I'm a regular on World of Tanks on XBox One.

[robvalue]

I play World of Tanks generals, it's a spinoff card game.

It's absolutely amazing, even for someone like me who has played tons of collectable card games. It really sucks though, because they have pulled further development. They're so dumb! The game is so amazing, lots of people are still playing it even knowing it has no new content ever coming. (I'm still hoping they will reconsider though.) For some reason they didn't push it, and they didn't address a couple of problems that plagued the game since the beginning (long waiting time for games, and first turn advantage).

It's such an interesting and deep game, I wanted to do a whole strategy guide for it. I was so gutted when they announced the end of development. It's still fully functional, and the servers will remain up. They'll have to keep them up at least a decent length of time, since they are still selling stuff for real money in the game and people have bought these things previously too. I haven't put any money into it, I did it all the hard way which I prefer anyway.

Fucking awesome. What a senseless waste of an opportunity. I'm still going to play it as long as it remains, most likely. My favourite deck now is a real tricky bastard one where I get out several massive tanks really early at the expense of my library, then when it looks like I'm going to run out cards, I have special ways of pulling them all back again.

It has even got me interested in tanks, and I'm going to a tank museum later this year

[The Valkyrie]

Wry, don't assume you can speak for me. By your response to my statement ir's obvious you're not qualified to do so.

But, if you want to play the "my non belief in your deity is a statement of calling your religion a lie" card and want me to provide evidence backing that up, then I want YOU to provide evidence that every god and religion you don't believe in are lies.

[ignoramus]

Good point Beccs. None of them are comfortable explaining to us why they don't believe in any of the other Gods and also why their one true God is always geographically relative to where they're born?

[Mudhammam]

I am glad someone actually tries to debate with me, instead of doing just pure unbased mockery.

"Would be a violation of the natural order". I do not find this correct. Miracles are supernatural works from God. By stating that miracles cannot exist because they "would be a violation of the natural order" you are stating that God is subject to the very nature He created, and this is incorrect.

I agree that would be incorrect, but that was not my claim. To establish that a miracle occurred, you must demonstrate that 1. A god exists. 2. That this god sometimes intervenes to interrupt the natural order, which, apparently, he felt wasn't quite adequate to bring about his purposes, though he was the one who supposedly fine-tuned its initial conditions. 3. That an event occurs. 4. That the occurrence of this event is best explained by this god.

My point that miracles violate everything we know about nature is that given, on the one hand, the large number of bizarre, and often mutually exclusive, phenomena that people claim to encounter, but fail to substantiate with credible evidence (think UFO abductions, of which miracles professed now or in biblical literature are of no better quality, and in the latter instance, are even much worse); add to this fact the number of instances in which what were believed to be of a supernatural order were merely misunderstood, but natural, if not rare, occurrences; and then the susceptibility of humans to lie, exaggerate, and imagine things that don't really happen the way that memory later projects; then, on the other hand, you have the scientific enterprise, and the thoroughly convincing manner in which collaboration has produced our knowledge about the world. And you must admit that the stack is decked against the miracles alleged in the Bible in the same way that you probably believe they are in the works of Homer, the Sira of the Prophet, or any of the other thousands of stories that have spawned an equal number of silly religious beliefs.

And if you want to claim that non-Christian miracles are the acts of demonic powers, well, then you've created a new problem for yourself, namely, how do you know you haven't been deceived?

[RoadRunner79]

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I think, that what I find peculiar, is the way the term "anecdote" is being used here (almost as if being shoe horned in).  Perhaps I view evidence differently.  I see different kinds of evidence having different uses or strengths. I also do not think that evidence and reason is in the domain of science alone.  This may be dependent on the category of the topic one is dealing with.   Strength of evidence can vary, and is really dependent on how well the evidence speaks to uncovering the truth in question. 

A double blind study, with a large number of tests; I believe is very strong evidence.  Yet to demand this type of evidence above all other's even within science; is incorrect.   I don't see evolution or other historical studies in science doing double blind tests.   This is because double blind tests speaks to what is likely to occur in the future, and doesn't describe the past.  Similarly;  the results of such tests do not preclude an anomaly, or speak to the truthfulness or falsity of what happened previously.  It is a poor method of judgement in this manner.

What you guy's are calling "anecdotes" in legal terms, they call direct evidence.  It is called direct, because it speaks directly to what has occurred.  Most often the physical or forensic evidence is circumstantial.  It requires and inductive leap to connect the evidence to the case being made.   This is not to say, that direct evidence, is better or more preferred over circumstantial evidence.   It all depends on what the individual piece of evidence, can tell us, and overall, how all the evidence together works to paint a picture of what occurred. 

In mentioning "testimony of evidence", all I meant, was someone else telling us, what they found or observed.  I may have to rely on others, to tell me, about their scientific results (and reporting all the information accurately), the same as someone telling me, what they observed.

Also, to the poster, who wrote an anecdote, as evidence against anecdotes.   Your post was noticed and appreciated.

---

You know, I actually agree with almost every word of this. (The exception being that Double Blind studies, while providing exceptionally good evidence, are not applicable to anything that doesn't involve humans directly. The purpose of the Double Blind is to keep the tester from giving subconscious cues to the tested, thereby altering the results. If the tester does not know, he cannot give anything away.

I can agree with that....We can just stick to observable and repeatable which many espouse here. I don't think that common descent evolution meets this criteria, therefore according to the arguments here, I can say that there is no evidence for common descent evolution. And if you disagree could you please send me a kit so I can repeat common descent evolution for myself. I don't want to depend on storybook evidence. I also find these claims quite extraordinary, which would require extraordinary evidence. We'll leave this as a vague and poorly defined standard, which you must meet.

For most things involving the physical world, statistical and process analysis are used.) However, eyewitness testimony still remains incredibly weak evidence, as several scientific tests have shown. People can be mistaken, can misremember, can simply make things up with the best of intentions, for any number of reasons.

I did have a discussion on eyewitness testimony in another thread a while ago. It seems to me, that while I can understand the conclusion of some, to dismiss all of eyewitness testimony if you only read the titles of those studies. In reading the studies themselves, they dealt with specific aspects of eyewitness testimony, and in particular recognition of a stranger afterwards. Which I would agree with. The other parts seemed to show, that eyewitness recollection seemed to show that it is not equal to video recording, where any particular miniscule detail can be recalled at will (I hope they didn't spend too much tax payer money on this).

I'll try to post something about your comments on dating later today, or tomorrow.

[Mister Agenda]

I will prove my atheist claim.

"I don't believe in gods." is my claim.

My evidence is that I'm an atheist.

That's the only particular atheist claim I make.

Practically anything else you're asking is covered by science, not atheism.

No, your claim is "Christianity is a lie" (and not only, also Islam, Judaism and the other religions of the world) and that needs evidence. If you are calling someone a liar you should be based on something, right?

We generally don't think they're liars, just honestly mistaken (though your mistakes seem less than honest). You think the same of every religion but your own, and of non-belief. That you think it is SO significant that we think we're right, as though that were somehow unreasonable on the face of it; makes it sound like you're pretty desperate to find some hateful thing you can say about us that will stick. Good luck with that.

Keep putting words in our mouths and we'll happily do the same to you.

[Edwardo Piet]

Since this fucking cunt has ignored me repeatedly and been rude to everyone else I give up trying to be nice to him.

Wryetui, I am going to ignore your posts from now on you worthless cunt.

I have started trying again. I'm too nice. Still gonna try and talk to him.

Even though I'm 99% sure he's a poe lol.

[Mister Agenda]

I think, that what I find peculiar, is the way the term "anecdote" is being used here (almost as if being shoe horned in).  Perhaps I view evidence differently.  I see different kinds of evidence having different uses or strengths. I also do not think that evidence and reason is in the domain of science alone.  This may be dependent on the category of the topic one is dealing with.   Strength of evidence can vary, and is really dependent on how well the evidence speaks to uncovering the truth in question. 

A double blind study, with a large number of tests; I believe is very strong evidence.  Yet to demand this type of evidence above all other's even within science; is incorrect.   I don't see evolution or other historical studies in science doing double blind tests.   This is because double blind tests speaks to what is likely to occur in the future, and doesn't describe the past.  Similarly;  the results of such tests do not preclude an anomaly, or speak to the truthfulness or falsity of what happened previously.  It is a poor method of judgement in this manner.

What you guy's are calling "anecdotes" in legal terms, they call direct evidence.  It is called direct, because it speaks directly to what has occurred.  Most often the physical or forensic evidence is circumstantial.  It requires and inductive leap to connect the evidence to the case being made.   This is not to say, that direct evidence, is better or more preferred over circumstantial evidence.   It all depends on what the individual piece of evidence, can tell us, and overall, how all the evidence together works to paint a picture of what occurred. 

In mentioning "testimony of evidence", all I meant, was someone else telling us, what they found or observed.  I may have to rely on others, to tell me, about their scientific results (and reporting all the information accurately), the same as someone telling me, what they observed.

Also, to the poster, who wrote an anecdote, as evidence against anecdotes.   Your post was noticed and appreciated.

Here's an anecdote: I noticed a bird while I was driving to work this morning.

What is this evidence of? Well, it's proof positive that I'm claiming I noticed a bird while I was driving to work this morning. You can infer that there is an individual, me, who made that claim. And that's where it ends. On it's own, it's not evidence for my noticing a bird, it's a claim that I noticed a bird.

Anyone can tell a story about anything. Many people make up stories and pass them off as true, many people have faulty memories and get things in their story wrong even thought they're talking about something that really happened. Many people tell stories about things that really happened and alter details to serve their own ends. There are good reasons to be skeptical towards stories and use reasonable criteria to evaluate them.

For example, if a person has earned your trust and you've known their accounts to be pretty accurate in the past, you have a tick mark on your mental checklist for trusting them when they give an account that you can't verify.

Some stories are so inconsequential that it doesn't really matter if they're true or not, so it's fine to take someone's word on them unless you have a particular reason to think they're lying (like my bird story).

If the story is consequential, like testimony at a murder trial, you want more than one person's statements to convict.

Another story that's consequential is if you say you've pulled off cold fusion; you're going to want other laboratories to replicate that experiment.

We should be particularly wary of believing a consequential story that we would like to be true.

Oh, and evolution has made a number of verified predictions. See, if the fossil record and evolution work like we think they do, we can see when we don't have fossils that show an intermediate stage. If evolution is false, we should not ever find those intermediate stages; but it's quite common to do so. The most famous recent example was the Tiktallik discovery, where paleontologists predicted what strata they ought to be able to find a species like that in and subsequently found it by looking there.