RE: In your opinion what causes christians to believe in Jesus
May 5, 2025 at 4:36 am
(This post was last modified: May 5, 2025 at 5:06 am by Sheldon.)
(May 4, 2025 at 8:06 pm)Belacqua Wrote:No one has made that claim, he's attempting to avoid the burden of proof of his claim, by misrepresenting disbelief of that claim, as a contrary claim. It is of course fallacious, to anyone who understand an argumentum ad ignorantiam fallacy.(May 4, 2025 at 5:07 pm)John 6IX Breezy Wrote: Hmm to summarize the conversation: I think that openness to evidence requires openness to possibility. Meaning, the very act of seeking evidence for X implies that X is treated as possible. But of course, many here do not think the existence of God is even possible, and therefore I think them asking for evidence is illogical.
My threshold for possibility is simple: If a proposition is at least conceivable and coherent, and not contradictory, then I'm open to its possibility. But people want me to give objective evidence for possibility itself. And I think that's a weird request. So, with your boar example, I would say the possibility is already there, and the evidence you showed simply makes the case for its actuality. I don't think there is such a thing as objective evidence of possibility itself, because possibility is abstract, it is rational rather than empirical.
Edit: For context, I'm imagining a scale that roughly progresses thus: Conceivable, Possible, Probable, Actual. Most here concede to the first, but we've been stuck on the second for the last 20 pages.
I don't see how anyone could demonstrate that it's impossible for God to exist. If they're making that claim, it would require some serious argument.
conceivable
adjective
capable of being imagined or grasped mentally.
That one can subjectively conceive that a deity is possible, is of no more import to the veracity of that assertions, than that one can conceive that the world is flat, would be to the shape of the earth. Religious apologists often fallaciously imagine that they can dishonestly ringfence their belief, behind an unfalsifiable concept, as if this moves the burden of proof, or at least makes it some sort of 50/50 premise. It is of course irrational to argue that anything gains credence because we lack an alternative explanation or evidence.
This is why John has tried to misrepresent the lack of belief in his bare claim a deity is possible, as a claim that a deity is impossible, but there is an epistemological and rational difference.