(June 30, 2022 at 8:57 pm)Huggy Bear Wrote:(June 29, 2022 at 1:32 pm)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote: It kinda stretches the accepted standards of ‘evidence’ all out of shape, doesn’t it?
If a religious experience isn’t replicable, it isn’t evidence. If Jesus comes to me in a dream, how is that any more evidentiary than if Zlorg, the Slug Empress of Altair VI does the same thing? One common definition of evidence is that it is the available body of facts that are useful in determining whether or not a particular proposition is true (or at least valid). I don’t see how a spiritual or religious experience, unique to one individual, can be viewed as a fact - or even as information - to support the proposition ‘God exists’.
The most the can be said for such an experience is that it supports the claim, ‘I believe that God exists.’
Boru
There's no universal standard for evidence.
As for your dream example, in scripture a dream isn't evidence, but a dream that predicts future events with 100% accuracy is. So if Jesus appeared to you in a dream and told you everything that would happen to you in the next week, and it happens, would you not consider that as evidence?
A more credible scenario is that a person has a dream that they then fit to whatever happened to them that week..but, crucially....as far as this person is concerned - they would not be holding their faith in god in the absence of evidence - they would simply be wrong about what evidence they believed they possessed.
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