standard of evidence

[LastPoet]

Well, you could suck my dick for all eternity, it still wouldn't prove god. Hell, mabe.

[Doubting Thomas]

you don't need proof beyond a reasonable doubt for everything, so why would you for God?

Because claims about gods existing are highly unlikely and chances are high that someone wants me to believe in it for some ulterior reason. Usually to surround themselves with like-minded believers so they'll be comfortable in their beliefs and to increase their political power.

It's the extraordinary claims thing which you seem to have a hard time understanding. If I claim I have a baseball, chances are you'll take me at my word since I really have little to gain by convincing you that I actually do have one. However, if I tell you that the invisible pink unicorn which lives in my back yard wants you to believe in her and give me money, you're going to demand some actual evidence before you believe me, especially since I have a motive for getting you to believe me (the money).

more importantly, do you have proof beyond a reasonable doubt that God doesn't exist? if not then why do you cherry pick the negating proposition while denying the proposition?

There you go with shifting the burden of proof. I don't believe in Bigfoot, either, but until someone actually captures one alive or dead and science confirms that it is some previously unknown species of animal, then there's no reason for me to believe in it. And I don't have to roam the entire country not finding Bigfoot in order to not believe in it. The burden of proof is on those claiming Bigfoot exists, just like the burden of proof is upon those claiming God exists.

I'm not cherry picking anything, I just want to see some evidence.

there is also no way to show someone a quark, but does that mean we shouldn't believe in them?

Scientists don't just make up theories and then expect everyone to believe it. There is actual scientific discovery, peer review, and repeatable experiments which must be undergone to prove the validity of any theory. So if someone proposes the existence of a quark, it is going to have to be measured or tested in some manner before that particle is determined to exist. The same can't be shown of any gods. Whenever someone says they can't detect a god in any manner, the theist just shifts the goalposts and makes up magical properties for their god.

[Rational AKD]

Well, you could suck my dick for all eternity, it still wouldn't prove god. Hell, mabe.

the thread I posted doesn't aspire to prove God, it only asks what kind of evidence is acceptable and how much is adequate. unfortunately, you and everyone else all seem incapable of giving a minimum reasonable standard.

[Doubting Thomas]

unfortunately, you and everyone else all seem incapable of giving a minimum reasonable standard.

What part of "convince me beyond any doubt I have" is not a reasonable standard?

[Minimalist]

Let me know when you find that amputee to cure.

[LastPoet]

the thread I posted doesn't aspire to prove God, it only asks what kind of evidence is acceptable and how much is adequate. unfortunately, you and everyone else all seem incapable of giving a minimum reasonable standard.

And yet, you all fail to define a god, to show us (because he likes to hide). And yes, I will dismiss your god as easily as the tooth fairy and santa claus.

I find it hard to believe based on old hearsay.

[Brian37]

Well, you could suck my dick for all eternity, it still wouldn't prove god. Hell, mabe.

the thread I posted doesn't aspire to prove God, it only asks what kind of evidence is acceptable and how much is adequate. unfortunately, you and everyone else all seem incapable of giving a minimum reasonable standard.

YOU don't get to pick the standards for the world. You are entitled to claim until your blue in the face your pet god claim. But you are not entitled to your own facts.

Do you seriously believe that there is an invisible magical super brain with no material, no location, that is everywhere and nowhere at the same time, that actually gives one rats ass about us being stuck on this blue rock out in the middle of nowhere?

You'd have us believe, although we know it takes one ray of light 100,000 years to travel across our galaxy, that a magic man had a hand in it? You'd have us believe humans pop out of dirt knowing what a black hole is? You'd have us believe in "poof" babies knowing it takes two sets of DNA?

You can call your magical sky daddy "Frank" for all we care, and claim it can shit ice cream, it would still be as absurd as every other naked assertion we've heard from people with other pet god claims.

Sorry, your pet god claim is as silly as claiming Thor makes lightening. It is not our fault someone sold you that bullshit.

[max-greece]

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You seem to go word-by-word calling fallacy, and there is the fallacy of fallacy. Your attempt to stain informal discourse to your profit, fails. You are still dodging. Show us a god!

yes very good, there is a fallacy fallacy. unfortunately you don't seem to know what it is. the fallacy fallacy is when you claim someone is wrong because they use a bad argument or a logical fallacy. I didn't claim that. I claim your argument is invalid because you use a logical fallacy. that's not committing the fallacy fallacy. a rule of thumb you can use is when they are attacking the conclusion because of faulty logic in the argument, it's the fallacy fallacy. if they just attack the argument, it's not. and i'm still dodging? let me make a parody the argument.
A: how much evidence do we need?
B: extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
A: that's subjective.
B: why?
A: the dictionary says so.
B: you're dodging.

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So the question appears to be why do we need such strong evidence, relatively, for God as opposed to other things (like Quarks).

Its a reasonable question and deserves a reasonable but brief answer, namely:

I am not expected to worship a quark, nor am I commanded to love that Quark. God on other hand appears to demand both whilst quarks make no demands of me whatsoever.

Its not, however, all bad news. You (probably) claim your God is all-powerful, all-knowing and so on. For that God to provide sufficient evidence of his existence to an atheist must be a walk in the park.

So just put in a request and we'll be waiting here.

irrelevant. to say a claim requires more evidence because of the implications of how it impacts your life is an appeal to consequence fallacy. all claims require equal burden of proof, and lifestyle implications have absolutely no baring on the proposition's truth value.

Don't be a twat. Whether or not quarks exist has little or no bearing on my life. If you want me to accept a God however you are going to need to prove it to me if he is expecting worship.

That isn't a fallacy - I have every right to demand more proof.

In other words I am telling you the standard of proof I require and why. Whether you regard it as a philosophical fallacy makes no difference. That is what I require as I live in the real world.

[Rational AKD]

Because claims about gods existing are highly unlikely

really? how did you calculate those odds? i'll give you a hint... you can't.

and chances are high that someone wants me to believe in it for some ulterior reason. Usually to surround themselves with like-minded believers so they'll be comfortable in their beliefs and to increase their political power.

intentions of believers have no baring on the proposition's truth value.

It's the extraordinary claims thing which you seem to have a hard time understanding. If I claim I have a baseball, chances are you'll take me at my word since I really have little to gain by convincing you that I actually do have one. However, if I tell you that the invisible pink unicorn which lives in my back yard wants you to believe in her and give me money, you're going to demand some actual evidence before you believe me, especially since I have a motive for getting you to believe me (the money).

and what you aren't understanding is you're equivocating on the potential for someone to believe and burden of proof in a logical argument. there are some people who wouldn't believe you have a baseball because they are a solipsist. believability has no baring on the truth value of a proposition. burden of proof has to do with establishing what is rational, and deducing by eliminating the impossible. there is no way to objectively establish believability, but there is a way to establish burden of proof. though you seem to have a hard time understanding the difference between subjective and objective.

There you go with shifting the burden of proof.

there you go showing false understanding of logical fallacies. let me share a bit on burden of proof. the burden of proof is on someone who makes a claim to knowledge. if someone makes a claim that God exists, they have burden of proof to show that proposition is true. but if someone claims God does not exist, they likewise have burden of proof. furthermore, shifting the burden of proof is an extension of Argumentum ad Ignorantiam or appeal to ignorance fallacy. you commit this fallacy when you claim "there is no evidence against God, therefore God exists" but also when you claim "there is no evidence for God, therefore God doesn't exist."
http://www.fallacyfiles.org/ignorant.html

I'm not cherry picking anything, I just want to see some evidence.

you are cherry picking in the sense you claim the proposition of theism is extraordinary but the negating proposition is not. also, you are not justified to say the proposition is false due to lack of evidence because that would again be Argumentum ad Ignorantiam. and no, you can't claim it more irrational than it's negation either without establishing more evidence against his existence than for. the default position is not claiming it's false, it's claiming ignorance.

Scientists don't just make up theories and then expect everyone to believe it. There is actual scientific discovery, peer review, and repeatable experiments which must be undergone to prove the validity of any theory. So if someone proposes the existence of a quark, it is going to have to be measured or tested in some manner before that particle is determined to exist.

of course, which is why i'm trying to establish what kind of evidence is acceptable. you really don't like answering questions do you?

The same can't be shown of any gods.

that's exactly what I would like to show, but i'm first asking about the acceptable evidence. I suspect that no amount of evidence is acceptable. even if God came up to them in person, took his arm off and made it come back I suspect they would prefer hallucination to the God explanation. I suspect atheism is an un-falsifiable claim that would prefer solipsism to theism.

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Don't be a twat. Whether or not quarks exist has little or no bearing on my life. If you want me to accept a God however you are going to need to prove it to me if he is expecting worship.

That isn't a fallacy - I have every right to demand more proof.

In other words I am telling you the standard of proof I require and why. Whether you regard it as a philosophical fallacy makes no difference. That is what I require as I live in the real world.

I really don't care if you accept it or not. what i'm asking for is a reasonable standard to consider a belief rational. you can be irrational in your belief and I could care less.

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YOU don't get to pick the standards for the world. You are entitled to claim until your blue in the face your pet god claim. But you are not entitled to your own facts.

that's not at all what i'm doing. i'm asking for a reasonable standard and determining whether your answers are reasonable or not using logic.

Do you seriously believe that there is an invisible magical super brain with no material, no location, that is everywhere and nowhere at the same time, that actually gives one rats ass about us being stuck on this blue rock out in the middle of nowhere?

no, that's a parody of my belief that you've created.

You'd have us believe, although we know it takes one ray of light 100,000 years to travel across our galaxy, that a magic man had a hand in it? You'd have us believe humans pop out of dirt knowing what a black hole is? You'd have us believe in "poof" babies knowing it takes two sets of DNA?

apparently you didn't know i'm not a young earth creationist...

You can call your magical sky daddy "Frank" for all we care, and claim it can shit ice cream, it would still be as absurd as every other naked assertion we've heard from people with other pet god claims.

Sorry, your pet god claim is as silly as claiming Thor makes lightening. It is not our fault someone sold you that bullshit.

apparently you don't know how to use logic. come back when you learn more, maybe from this source.
http://people.hofstra.edu/stefan_waner/r...intro.html

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What part of "convince me beyond any doubt I have" is not a reasonable standard?

because it's a double standard as you don't demand proof beyond a doubt for everything and you can't honestly tell me you do.

[Doubting Thomas]

Because claims about gods existing are highly unlikely

really? how did you calculate those odds? i'll give you a hint... you can't.

No, but I know that Christians also believe that all gods ever worshiped throughout history were made up by man... except the one they want me to believe in. Yet I'm supposed to suspend logic and believe that all other gods were imaginary yet this particular one is real. All this based on zero evidence. So the claims about any gods existing are highly unlikely.

intentions of believers have no baring on the proposition's truth value.

You miss the entire point of me pointing out why I don't demand proof of every single tiny little detail of my life every day. When my wife calls to tell me that our child has an ear infection, I don't demand to see the medical report. When a Nigerian prince asks me for my bank account details so he can move money out of the country, I'm pretty skeptical. It's all based on making rational judgements, and some times total evidence is not necessary. But that's all moot, because Christians never show evidence for their god anyway. So they get treated like the Nigerian princes, because they want something from me.

believability has no baring on the truth value of a proposition.

But there's a massive difference in the claim "I have a baseball" and "I have a god." You know it, and to deny it is just being dishonest.

burden of proof has to do with establishing what is rational, and deducing by eliminating the impossible.

No, burden of proof has to do solely with whoever's making a claim. Again, if I have a baseball and you don't believe I do, it's not up to you to disprove it.

the burden of proof is on someone who makes a claim to knowledge. if someone makes a claim that God exists, they have burden of proof to show that proposition is true. but if someone claims God does not exist, they likewise have burden of proof.

Right, so why did you imply that I have a burden of proof to explain my atheism? I never claimed that there are no gods anywhere. I just stated that most likely all gods were invented by man. You'd have to agree (with the exception of your pet god), or else believe that there are a shitload of gods floating around the universe and running around here on earth.

All I'm saying is that I don't believe any gods exist until someone shows evidence of one. I don't have a burden of proof to have to justify my disbelief.

you commit this fallacy when you claim "there is no evidence against God, therefore God exists" but also when you claim "there is no evidence for God, therefore God doesn't exist."

Hardly. Not believing in a god is the logical and rational default position when there's no evidence to support this god. Do you commit a fallacy when you say "there's no evidence for Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy, so therefore they don't exist?" It's not a fallacy to conclude they don't exist when no evidence is shown that they do.

It's stupid to have to go through life saying, "I don't believe that X exists because there's no evidence, but some previously unknown evidence could be found in the future or they could exist in some other dimension that is unknowable by science." No, we just stop at "I don't believe that X exists" and be done with it. Because while that possibility is always there, no matter how slim, it's extremely unlikely.