(June 25, 2015 at 11:49 am)Psychonaut Wrote: Isn't it really that we've just figured out what works, from what is observed?
From what is observed, and what is tested, and what is confirmed. We know that radio waves exist because we see the results attained by those who did more than just observe and theorize. We know what cholesterol is and how it works because of decades of medical and scientific research and testing. We know that aliens routinely visit our planet in their little space ships because... well, many people don't believe that at all, in spite of all of the evidence and claims. Why? Because we have ways to learn and to verify and to add or change to our constantly growing collective base of knowledge. This allows us to accept some wild claims if they can be proven (do you know that you can hold the contents of the Library of Congress in a device the size of your thumb?) and it allows us to remain suspicious of other claims until they are proven (Bigfoot, as an example).
The question of "what would god need to do for you to believe he exists" often relies on a single experience or event. But we already know that such occurrences do not convince most people. We know that they occur all the time to people from various walks of life and varying belief systems, and that they are used to confirm or deny all kinds of beliefs. We don't accept those claims as true because our experiences through human history have helped us to develop ways to determine which are reliable and which are not. If god wants to convince us that he's there, he just needs to show up and let us do the rest. We've gotten pretty good at figuring this stuff out.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould