standard of evidence

[Minimalist]

they have valid arguments backed up by empirical evidence.

And where, do tell, is this empirical evidence of which you speak?

[Airyaman]

Standard of evidence that something exists: actually show it exists. Its really that simple. All theists have are words to show their god exists and words can be used for reality or fiction so not good enough.

I think Christians have a little more than 'just words' to substantiate their beliefs. they have valid arguments backed up by empirical evidence.

So you say, what is it?

if I were to say "my car stopped running and the fuel gauge says empty, therefore I must be out of gas" I just used logic to determine why the car wasn't running. the empirical evidence being the car isn't working and the gauge is at empty, and the rational conclusion being it's out of gas. now, this may not be necessarily true. there may be another problem coupled with the fuel gauge breaking. but to say "it's possible therefore your belief isn't rational" isn't an argument against it. we may not be able to 100% say there is a God. as I said before, even if God were physically present in everyone's lives they could simply revert to solipsism. but you can certainly find out what is most rational to believe. in the case of the car for example, even though it is possible that some random problem coupled with the fuel gauge breaking, you couldn't say it's rational to believe that's the case on the evidence you have initially. only when you rule out the most likely conclusions do you consider the less likely.

Well the rest of this response left me scratching my head. Maybe you thought it meant something to you though.

[Rational AKD]

You don't think the lack of demonstrable evidence is a rational reason?

no, I don't. as I've said absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. if theism lacks substantiating evidence, all that shows is that the proposition hasn't been established to be true. but that doesn't automatically mean it's false or unlikely. if it did, you would have a conundrum when people say "theism is more rational because there's no evidence against it." you can't play this one sided street game. if some logical entailment applies to one side, it must apply to the other as well.

Maybe you put a lot confidence in the various philosophical arguments for the existence of god? They are demonstrably fallacious, and therefore unreasonable by definition.

you seem to have a lot of confidence. i'll have to put your claims to the test when I demonstrate the arguments I have.

Is more or less rational to believe in miracle claims? I'll bet you reject them for every other religion, but not your own.

I don't think other religions have met the burden of proof, but I think Christianity has.

Is it more or less rational to base your beliefs on ancient texts written by unknown authors, decades or more after the alleged events, than to think they are most likely unreliable?

so because it's old it's less useful? do you think that about Aristotle's three laws of logic: identity, non-contradiction, and exclusive middle? I think those are the most useful concepts we could think of and without them we can't establish any truths. I don't discredit them because they're old, or possibly poorly transmitted.

If you question this, think about all the 1000's of people that claim they've been abducted by UFO's. Do you give their accounts any credibility?

1000 people throughout various places and time periods claiming this? no, I don't think that's sufficient. 1000 people who suddenly claimed they were all simultaneously abducted to the same place and they all can corroborate each other's stories? yes, I think that's sufficient.

1. It explains a mystery with a bigger mystery.

irrelevant and non sequitur. quantum mechanics was a field that explained quite a bit but had way more questions than answers. just because the answer provokes a "bigger mystery" doesn't make it any less right.

2. Explaining something by saying that "god did it" does not really explain a thing. You might as well be saying "magic did it"

I understand the God of the gaps fallacy. but i'm not saying "I can't find evidence for X therefore God." my arguments would look like this: "we have evidence x and y which logically and inescapably leads us to proposition Z, which entails the existence of God."

3. There are natural explanations for almost everything attributed to gods. Where there isn't, the intellectually honest answer is "we don't know yet".

so what? this could just mean God created nature in a self functioning way. it doesn't show the proposition of God to be any less likely.

4. There is insufficient supporting evidence for the claim.

I already tackled this absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. i'm not gonna beat a dead horse.

A supernatural explanation is by default the more extraordinary claim

the funny thing is all of those even if they are true (which some of them are) they don't at all substantiate the proposition of God being extraordinary, or even less likely for that manner.

"I have a pet dog". Extraordinary or ordinary claim?

"I have a pet invisible dragon". Extraordinary or ordinary claim?

See, it is not too hard to tell the difference.

so you're saying an extraordinary claim is determined consistency with preconceived knowledge. the problem is all that knowledge has a potential of being wrong. you could think for the longest time "maggots spontaneously generate from raw meat" but that doesn't make the person who says "no they don't" subject to any more extraordinary evidence than any other claim. every claim is subject to a standard amount of evidence, regardless of how extraordinary they may seem.
secondly, if the proposition "God exists" is infinitely extraordinary requiring infinitely extraordinary evidence, then that makes the negating proposition "God does not exist" un-falsifiable. and you're trying to tell me this is just rational to believe claims that are un-falsifiable? I think you would quickly change your mind if the same logic was turned against you.

[Minimalist]

no, I don't. as I've said absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

Incorrect. The fact that no one has found El Dorado in the American South West in the 4 centuries since the Spanish dreamed it up is not evidence that it exists.

The fact that it has not been found is, in fact, strong evidence that the whole tale is bullshit.

[Faith No More]

I apologize that I missed your comment. I've been flooded with plenty and it's hard to keep track and reply to everyone.

No problem. And I apologize for the broken link. I had to board an airplane at the moment I made that post, and I didn't get a chance to check it over.

this seems to be well thought out, but I don't intend on relying on purely metaphysical reasoning. I may use the concept of possible worlds to help with a deductive argument, but I also rely on empirical evidence supported in the premises. as for metaphysical answers, I disagree. there may be problems that demand metaphysical answers. there may be an occurrence impossible to explain using the universe alone and thus we need to postulate something metaphysical outside the universe to answer the problem. I know i'm not really being too revealing of what i'm referring to but i'm not comfortable straying off topic on a huge tangent so i'm not bringing up specific arguments.

Except the problem is that once we attempt to draw metaphysical conclusions, we can never know the validity of those conclusions due to the fact that we cannot know that our knowledge and understanding that is based upon empirical observations can extend beyond what we can empirically observe. Thus, any metaphysical conclusion is just pure speculation at best and doesn't really lead us to any conclusive truth.

well I kind of disagree with this as well. we can certainly postulate certain conditions outside of space and time. for example, a material object could not exist outside space and time due to the fact that it requires space as a property of itself being that it's made of matter.

But you're basing this on your observations within space and time, and you simply can't conclude on that basis how things are outside of space and time. That is why these types of conclusions can't lead us anywhere.

conclusions people draw from evidence are often based on their own biases and thus are not rational. I think giving every proposition an equal burden of proof is essential to removing biases from our conclusions. math is pretty standard. there's almost no dispute among mathematicians on how to do math. why? because no one really invests emotional attachment in that subject, so they don't have biases to throw them off. logic should be the same. putting emotion in logic only leads to fallacies, the two don't mix when making rational claims.

Well, we are human beings, which means any conclusion we draw will be marred by a whole host of biases and emotions. The most we can hope for is to limit the effect of these biases and emotions as much as possible. That is where logic does come into play, but the problem is the human brain. Studies have shown that much of our beliefs are preconceived, and our minds interpret the evidence to fit those beliefs. We're not really the rational beings we perceive ourselves to be.

true, and that's where solipsism comes from. but putting that epistemological belief aside, it is important to be aware of certain filters concerning your perception. that's why it's always good to cross examine claims with other people. other people may perceive something you didn't that can shape your conclusions.

Right, cross examining your claims with others is one way of attempting to weed out bias and emotion, like I had mentioned above.

I agree that for different individuals, the manner of interpreting evidence will vary between individuals. but I still think the standard of evidence should be solid. if there is more evidence for a proposition than its negation, it's rational to believe that proposition. you may later realize the evidence for that proposition was false, or misinterpreted. if this is the case, it would be rational to change your view to fit with the evidence. you may believe string theory is the most rational theory of quantum mechanics at one time and then change it when new evidence comes to light. being rational doesn't mean you're always right, it means you're always able to justify your position and you can always justify it by saying there's more evidence supporting the proposition than its negation or alternatives. no one can say you're irrational for believing the proposition with the most evidence.

One of things I was trying to point out with my process was that it's not simply enough to believe a claim if there is more evidence for it than its negation. For instance, Plantinga claims it is properly basic to believe in god's existence based upon one's intuition that god is responsible for certain phenomenon, i.e. creation of the universe. If you go through his defense of this, there is nothing truly negating that belief, nor are there any apparent holes in his reasoning. The problem I see, however, is that it doesn't make intuitive sense to conclude that something exists based simply upon the intuition that that something is responsible, no matter how forceful the intuition. In other words, something smells funny about his argument. I cannot negate it, but I would never conclude that it is rational. And therein lies the rub. There is no objective standard as to what constitutes rationality.

[Rational AKD]

no, I don't. as I've said absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

Incorrect. The fact that no one has found El Dorado in the American South West in the 4 centuries since the Spanish dreamed it up is not evidence that it exists.

The fact that it has not been found is, in fact, strong evidence that the whole tale is bullshit.

thanks for straw manning my argument for me. why don't you read this site to see what I actually mean.
http://www.fallacyfiles.org/ignorant.html

[Minimalist]

You can try to define it however you like but even Kenneth Kitchen - who invented the stupid phrase - did not mean what you want it to mean.

We get this shit all the time from jesus freaks who insist that the failure to find "evidence" of David's marvelous empire simply means that we haven't looked in the right place. "Absence of evidence" shout the fucking lunatics.

But it doesn't apply at all in the case of Jerusalem where there is no absence of evidence. Instead, there is ample evidence that 10th century "Jerusalem" was, at best, a minor little shithole of a village and more probably not even that.

And again comes the chorus: "ABSENCE OF EVIDENCE!!!!!" shriek the jesus freaks who, like you, do not know what the fuck they are talking about.

[Rational AKD]

You can try to define it however you like but even Kenneth Kitchen - who invented the stupid phrase - did not mean what you want it to mean.

We get this shit all the time from jesus freaks who insist that the failure to find "evidence" of David's marvelous empire simply means that we haven't looked in the right place. "Absence of evidence" shout the fucking lunatics.

But it doesn't apply at all in the case of Jerusalem where there is no absence of evidence. Instead, there is ample evidence that 10th century "Jerusalem" was, at best, a minor little shithole of a village and more probably not even that.

And again comes the chorus: "ABSENCE OF EVIDENCE!!!!!" shriek the jesus freaks who, like you, do not know what the fuck they are talking about.

look, you can argue against the scholars of philosophy who support the Argumentum ad Ignorantiam fallacy all you want since you seem to know way more than them.
and you're still straw manning my argument. yes, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, but that doesn't make the proposition true either. absence of evidence for a proposition doesn't make a proposition true or false, it simply shows a lack of establishment for that proposition. and it also doesn't make it less likely or more likely either.

[Minimalist]

That's not what you said in post #103. Make up your mind.

[Rational AKD]

That's not what you said in post #103. Make up your mind.

I said:

as I've said absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. if theism lacks substantiating evidence, all that shows is that the proposition hasn't been established to be true.

how is that inconsistent with what I just said?