Evidence for a god. Do you have any ?

[LadyForCamus]

[hide]You know as well as I do that one does not have to posit a formal, logical argument in order to engage in fallacious reasoning, Steve.  I asked you to describe the method you use to distinguish a supernatural cause from an ‘as of yet unexplained’ natural cause. Your answer included a real life example; that if people first prayed for a child with cancer, and then the cancer disappeared, that could be a good reason to think the cause of the healing was supernatural. You and I both know that, “because the second event followed the first” is a faulty reason to think the second event was caused by the first. Your methodology, at least in this one particular instance, is invalid by way of fallacious reasoning. I don’t see that there is much to dispute here.

Your mistake is the larger set of reasons/beliefs that form the context. It's inductive reasoning based on the fact that brain tumors do not generally disappear on their own, the belief that God exists, the belief that God can heal, and the belief that prayer is part of that process as outlined in the NT to effect that intervention. As in any inductive argument, the premises are probabilistic and the conclusions still may not be true.

And, as you well know, the fact that folks are credulous to the “supernatural” has absolutely no bearing whatsoever on the truth of whether such causes exist at all, let alone whether or not such a cause is the most probable one for any given event.  To think otherwise is begging the question.  And, using prayer as “the context” (reasons) for determining “supernatural” as the cause of someone’s cancer disappearing is a post hoc ergo proctor hoc fallacy no matter how you attempt to twist your words. You have no sound, reliable methodology for distinguishing a rare medical phenomenon from a “miraculous” one, which renders the latter completely useless as an explanation.

In fact, perhaps the prayers did nothing to change the outcome--that God would have healed him anyway for some other reason. I said before, we cannot know for sure, there is no way to prove it.

 
At least you’re willing to admit that.  

Entities that exist and are therefore part of a greater reality that are not bound by the laws of nature that govern the universe. Worldviews that belief it the existence of the supernatural have a particular framework that provide context to the interaction.

What do you mean by “greater reality”?  Why would entities that exist as part of a greater reality be disqualified as “natural”?  Can you describe the positive qualities of this reality that eliminate it from the category of, “natural”?  How is it that our bodies exist in the natural world, and our souls can exist in the natural world, yet one can be detected but not the other? So many unanswered questions, Steve. 

Of course I believe in free will. So do most people...because...that is what we experience every waking moment of the day. If you are dualist, you believe the mind is a separate thing  from the brain. My particular worldview holds that that mind is our soul and that it will continue to exist after we die.

So, what I’ve learned about the supernatural in this thread:

1. It effects the natural world yet somehow cannot be observed or investigated, but we don’t have any idea how this technically works.

2. It is part of a greater reality, but we don’t know what that greater reality consists of, or how to know if science can have access to it or not, or why its disqualified from the natural fabric of reality that we currently exist within.

3. We have no positive language to describe the specific characteristics of supernatural things or entities.

And you say atheists have gaps in their world view?



PS: I’ve had some wine, so if this is less than eloquent, I sincerely apologize. 😛