(June 29, 2016 at 4:30 pm)Ignorant Wrote: Chad's definition of evidence predates the alternative presented by excited penguin...
Chad's evidence = things that are EVIDENT...Excited Penguin's evidence = ..."raw data" already considered in relation to a proposition (e.g. a hypothesis)
Thank you. If someone proposes the proposition "Evolution is true" and I ask what is your evidence, his reasonable reply could be "the fossil record." Now if for the sake of argument I was a YEC (which I am not) I would challenge that response by saying that the fossil record shows no such thing. I am open to discussing whether the proposition "God exists" logically follows from the observable facts about reality, those facts that I cite in my signature line.
What I find; however, is that many atheists simply will not acknowledge the "raw data" knowing full well that these are the observations on which Thomas Aquinas built the 5 Ways. Since the logic of Aquinas is faultless the only line of attack for the skeptic is to challenge the facts. In doing so he or she often demonstrates a prior intellectual commitment to either absurdism or nihilism. That is their existential choice, just as it is my existential choice to believe that the world is intelligible and that reason is effective.
I also find that many atheists will simply not face up to their absurdism or nihilism. I do not know why. When I was an atheist I embraced both. To my mind, that is the only intellectually honest stance for an atheist. I would not fault them for taking that stance, but I do fault them for denying the logical conclusions of their lack of belief. They cannot claim the high ground of rationality while denying the power of reason and how the secrets of the world yield to it.
