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

[Randy Carson]

Post #32, Jenny.

What evidence would you accept?

I've answered this one a couple times now.  You need to start by defining god.  What is it exactly that you are trying to prove? 

If you are merely trying to show that there is a very powerful being, so powerful that it's actions appear outside the laws of nature, then you need to produce some verifiable miracles that appear outside of the laws of nature.  And to make a miracle more likely than not you'll need more than eyewitness testimony.  A few amputees (verified by medical examination) and healed overnight by prayer, and once again verified by medical examination would fit the bill.  And it is important that the miracle be associated with the powerful being either by only working in connection with prayer to him or some other means.  Otherwise you have proven the miraculous event but not the agency thereof.

Jenny, I'm not familiar with this website, but the owner states that the Catholic Church has validated 67 miracles which have occurred at Lourdes. Make of them what you will.

If you are trying to prove the gods of the Bible, add few returnees from heaven recently enough dead to be verified as their former selves describing heaven and meeting their maker would do just fine provided they all agree and they aren't given a chance collude in telling their stories.  But visions of them by believers won't do it.  You'll need to actually produce them for skeptics.

Hmmm...a little more dicey, but okay...I'll give this a shot. Consider the experience of Colton Burpo (the little boy in Heaven is For Real) and this is key cross-reference his experience of seeing Jesus with that of Akiane Kramarik, who painted the picture that Colton latter recognized as being the Jesus that he saw in heaven.

If you are actually trying to prove an omnipotent being, then you need more than just regrowing limbs and returnees from the dead, you need a variety of miracles on demand.  Creating a few planets in our neighborhood overnight, repairing the ozone layer with a snap of his fingers and so on.   A few explanations for how the world does work, not yet discovered by man and far out of our range of knowledge that test out would be helpful. So would a series of really unambiguous prophecies about specific unlikely events that can be shown unambiguously to come true and no prophecies that do not come true (if the Bible is Yahweh's word, he's already failed this last).  Do enough of those things and an omnipotent being becomes more likely than not.  But really, I repeat, by definition an omnipotent being would know exactly what evidence I would accept even if I don't know.  Apparently he either doesn't know or he's not interested in providing proof.

All of those things are a very tall order.  But not nearly as tall an order as the claim that there is an all powerful being operating outside the laws of nature.

Gee, most people are willing to settle for gas money mysteriously found in their seat cushions.     

What I find funny, is the evidence that is actually offered:  inner certainty on the part of the believer; we don't know how the universe or life began, therefore god; the Bible says so; I was once in a really tight spot and I survived; I feel better believing; and the ever popular, you believe you just won't admit it.  It's so far from convincing evidence of an all powerful being as to be ludicrous.  It's as if a three year old boy with a pea gun approaches a nuclear armed destroyer and asks it to surrender and after the laughter dies down, says, "so what can I do that would scare you into surrender?"

It's almost exactly like that.