The Reasons to Believe in Yahweh

[John V]

Your "perspective" (which is really your ASSUMPTION) is exactly what is in question. So just repeating what your bible says (and trying to call it "evidence") is no more evidence than a person claiming they were abducted by aliens.

A person claiming they were abducted by aliens is indeed evidence. You may reject the claim as insufficiently supported if you like. We commonly take claims as evidence. Some people claimed that Abraham Lincoln said certain words on a certain day in a place called Gettysburg. Those claims are evidence that he gave the Gettysburg address. You can certainly hold religious or alien claims to higher standards. I do too. As atheists sometimes note, they only reject one more god than Christians do.

Second, regarding #2, the "extraordinary evidence" is NOT a "miracle" - because you have YET to demonstrate such a thing actually occurs. All you have pointed to (just like the other religions) are uncommon/unexplained phenomena (i.e. - Argument from Ignorance). You haven't demonstrated a miracle. So you cannot call "miracles" as synonymous with extraordinary evidence.

If they’re just unexplained phenomena and nothing extraordinary, then why do you hold them to higher standards of evidence than other unexplained phenomena? You can’t have your cake and eat it too.

Third, "the text" is NOT the ordinary means of "perceiving the extraordinary evidence". The ordinary means of presenting extraordinary evidence is DEMONSTRATION (just like all other extraordinary claims in the world - such as "I can fly!").

We can’t DEMONSTRATE the Gettysburg address, yet reasonable people believe it happened.

If someone demonstrates that he can fly to a number of people, then later dies, that doesn’t mean he didn’t fly.

NO, they do NOT fit the definition. Just because someone accepts what an ancient book says (i.e. hear-say) does not (in any way) make such texts "evidence", anymore than space alien books are evidence.

Actually, yes, according to the definition, that makes it evidence. Doesn’t make it conclusive, and you’re free not to accept it.

You need far more than this to actually have evidence and you have an extremely low standard of evidence. This is why you want to smuggle in your bible while kicking out the rest.

Now you’re getting it a little bit. Different people have different standards of evidence. These can be influenced by, among other things, their philosophic stances. As a theist, I have a lower standard of evidence regarding certain things. As presumably a materialist, you probably have lower standards of evidence regarding other things, such as abiogenesis.

Second, your "faith" indicates (precisely) a point I made earlier. Faith is not a pathway to truth. It is a pathway to gullibility and credulity. You are "having faith" in hear-say.

And? Everyone does. I find abiogenesis to be an extraordinary claim. Has anyone DEMONSTRATED it to you? No. You have faith that someone someday will figure it out, despite literally billions of observations showing that life comes from life and inert matter doesn’t come alive.

And you are in direct contradiction with your own religious texts (Mark 16), which clearly indicate that you WILL be DEMONSTRATING the supernatural ("greater things than these") if you believe.

Where is your moved mountain? Where is your verbal 'killing' of an olive tree? Where is your drinking poison and not getting sick? Where is your raising the dead? Where is your healing an amputee, born blind, or down-syndrome (no medical care)?

Making excuses/rationalizing why you are unable to do these things (consistently) doesn't help your case. It just puts you in the same category as all the other superstitious folk who make claims to the supernatural and can't demonstrate them.

I haven’t made a claim to have supernatural powers. You’re setting up a straw man from a passage which is generally thought to be a later addition and not authentic.