RE: Attn: Theists - What would it take to prove you wrong?
August 25, 2013 at 1:14 pm
(This post was last modified: August 25, 2013 at 1:17 pm by pineapplebunnybounce.)
(August 25, 2013 at 1:10 pm)Theo Zacharias Wrote:(August 10, 2013 at 12:59 pm)pineapplebunnybounce Wrote: @theo, you are sooo confused. Absence of evidence thing only applies if you don't claim that your god has evidence.
But if your god affects the world in anyway, it must generate some form of evidence. So absence of evidence is evidence of your god's inability to affect this world.
In a clinical trial, if a drug does not demonstrate efficacy, the absence of efficacy is evidence that the drug cannot perform.
If you claim that god doesn't affect the world in anyway, then that's another story.
Btw, above is your original posting that started our discussion.
When you said "it must generate some form of evidence", which one did you mean:
(1) it must generate some form of evidence *that we can detect with our current technology*
(2) it must generate some form of evidence, *but we may not be able to detect it with our current technology*.
Don't forget that after you claim that, you said that the absence of evidence is evidence of God not affecting this world. This is the conclusion of your claim.
The conclusion only makes sense if you meant to say (1). If you meant to say (2), then the absence of evidence is certainly not evidence of absence because there may be evidence but we are unable to detect it with our currently technology.
I meant both, evidence is evidence. My claim is not temporally bound btw, in the future if they detect something then my claim still stands, it'll lead to a different conclusion. In the past, technology wasn't advanced enough and people had a different conclusion (that god interferes), they still concluded based on the evidence at hand.
Based on the evidence at hand right now, I conclude that god is not interfering with the world.
The evidence leads to a conclusion, you cannot ignore the absence of evidence and claim the opposite and say you're doing the more honest thing. You admit to the possibility of both, but conclude what the evidence supports. The possibility thing is something religious people like to hold on to, it's not common practice to consider far fetched possibilities, only probabilities, which is why I didn't think to even bring that up.