Atheism, Evidence and the God-of-the-Gaps

[Randy Carson]

What type of evidence or proof would you accept? Because of your presuppositions, you can’t examine any evidence or proof that I might show you without bias.

Your presupposition is this: there is no God. Therefore, no matter what I might present, you will and must interpret it in a manner consistent with that presupposition.

• If I showed you a video tape of God coming down from heaven, you’d say it was done with special effects.
• If I had a thousand eye-witnesses saying that they saw it, you'd say it was mass-hysteria.
• If I showed you Old Testament prophecies fulfilled in the new Testament, you'd say they were forged, dated incorrectly or simply misinterpreted.

So, I don’t think I can show you any evidence of God’s existence that you will accept because your presuppositions will not allow you to consider that evidence objectively

Randy, it's your claim that god exists, so it is up to you to come up with adequate proof for your particular claim. We are not making the claim and thus cannot tell you what proof you need to have.

The point I'm emphasizing is that there IS no evidence that atheists will accept because of their presuppositions.

One of the prime problems with your claim is that "god" is a very poorly defined and a broad term. Some people even consider aliens to be gods. some consider the sun to be a god, some worship crocodiles, and so on.... Each will require their own different proofs to back up their claim. In your case, before trying to prove it, try to properly define your god and it's attributes.

Given that I am a Catholic, the attributes I claim for God are well known. Do I need to list them again here?

Next regarding the actual proof, you need to understand how scientific proofs work. You keep saying that even if you present your proof we will come up with alternate explanations, but you should know that is how science works. Once a claim and it's associated proof/hypothesis is presented, people will try to disprove it and come up with alternative ideas, and the one hypothesis to survive all such attempts will get accepted temporarily till someone disproves it or finds a better explanation. This is what means to be a falsifiable claim. If your god claim is true, then the proof that you present will be run through the same gauntlet and it would survive. If you are not confident that your proof can pass the scrutiny, then maybe it is not a real proof? How can you be certain that the alternate explanations presented is not the correct one?

Thanks. I'm not a scientist, but I'm pretty familiar with the general ideas behind the scientific method. See the avatar? I didn't choose it because I have a thing for Yellow Jackets. I've taken a class or two.

Yes, I am confident that the resurrection of Jesus actually IS the most reasonable explanation for ALL of the evidence that is available. It has been scrutinized, it has run the gauntlet, and it has survived.

How do you account for that?