standard of evidence

[ManMachine]

I've noticed a lot on these forums there are those who claim either that there is no evidence that supports theism or not enough. this brings a couple questions to my mind. what do you consider positive evidence to support a religious proposition such as theism? is there only empirical evidence and if so why can't deductive and inductive arguments work as well? lets say there's an argument that consists of premises that are supported by empirical evidence and in and of themselves have no religious implication. the conclusions drawn from such premises would have religious implication and would logically be supported from the premises. would this count as empirical evidence?

the next question I have is what is considered an adequate amount of evidence for theism? sometimes it seems people demand an unreasonable amount of evidence to the point where it is impossible to prove the proposition. I myself have a standard burden of proof for every proposition.
-if a proposition has more supporting evidence than its negating proposition, then it is most reasonable to believe that proposition (note that doesn't make the proposition itself true). if there is an equal amount or no evidence for a proposition and/or its negation, then it is most reasonable to believe in a neutral skeptical agnosticism concerning the propositions.
do you think this is fair?

This is essentially a philosophical question.

It is easy to get bogged down by recursion (the evidence for evidence) which is a fruitless exercise. You could employ formal logic, but as Wittgenstein said, logic, in and of itself, is not a value system, it is simply a framework upon which we hang facts about our world. Demonstrating that any premise is logical simply shows there is a reasonable route to the conclusion, it is not a qualitative analysis of the information used. As it is the very nature of those facts that you are questioning then it seems to me this too would be fruitless.

It is right to question the nature of empirical evidence and exactly what it tells us about what we are observing. We also have to consider the audience for who any conclusions drawn from that evidence are aimed at. Nobody goes to a fish market to buy a car, often people are resistant to ideas that challenge their fundamental beliefs, I know that from personal experience in this forum.

When I challenged the notion of scientific progress I was hit with a barrage of what essentiually amounted to, 'science is progress because that's what it is to me', which is no logic at all but still a valid point. The debate did not change my opioion on the idea of scientific progress beling an anthropocentric delusion, but it did change my opinion about how important the belief in progress is to people, and that, for me, is the root of this.

Evidence (empirical or not) is only as good as the person accepting it wants it to be. It's a value judgement, sure there is a level of mathematical probability to which some evidence can be shown to be accurate - lies, damn lies and statistics, perhaps - but at the end of the day, it all comes down to what it means to people.

After all, those who proport to be adherents of Evolution Theory are not driving humanity to extinction - which the theory tells us is the only possible outcome - but rather they believe and behave as if they can delay it or in some cases even prevent it, which is arrant nonsense.


MM