Evidence vs proof?

[Minimalist]

Fuck - they don't even bother with trials for them anymore.  They just gun them down in the streets.

[Amine]

There is a difference between evidence and reason/explanation (I wouldn't say proof), and it is an important one. Without reason anything can be evidence. The fact that gifts appear under the tree on Christmas morning seems to a child like evidence for Santa.

[Minimalist]

I wish people would outgrow jesus as easily as they outgrow Santa.

[Edwardo Piet]

Proof is of mathematics and logic.

Evidence is of science.

[Cyberman]

This came from the TAE blogspot; it's not mine but I keep it in my collection for convenience:

The thing is, outside of math, "prove" just means "demonstrate beyond a reasonable doubt, with sufficient evidence". The problem doesn't tend to be that no evidence is provided, but rather that the evidence provided does not even remotely meet the standards of science.

If someone came to you and said, "The evidence for Zeus is that lightning happens, and lightning comes from Zeus, therefore Zeus exists.", would you find that compelling evidence? That's about the level of "evidence" that we're given, typically. It's been our observation that all theistic claims to evidence include at least one logical fallacy. They can't seem to escape it.

The first step is to realize that some evidence is better at helping to converge on the correct answer than others.

1) Objective evidence. We need data drawn from reality, not from someone's mind. Objective evidence is demonstrably much more reliable that subjective.

2) Exclusitivity. If a piece of evidence implicates 10,000,000 possibilities equally... it's not that useful. If it implicates 2 possibilities equally, it's much better quality. Additional evidence that demonstrates that it was cause A over cause B, that helps narrow down the exclusion.

3) Logical connection. A Snickers bar resting in middle of a desert doesn't logically implicate a tornado. A path of destruction through a field/forest, with trees knocked over and a twirling pattern on the ground, does.

4) Repeatibility. If we only get one example of the evidence, it may just be a fluke. Bigger sample sets are better.

5) Presentability. One can simply claim to have irrefutable evidence, but if no one can access or review it, it's useless.

6) Falsifiability. It's possible to construct an argument that appears to be true, but can never be disproven, even if it really is false. Prayer for instance, follows this model. No matter the outcome, a theist will simply claim that it was supposed to come out that way, and thus, proves prayer works. Thus, unfalsifiable claims tend to be useless.


If you managed to uphold all those standards, you've then generated one pieces of evidence. Like a jigsaw puzzle, you need to assemble lots of individual pieces before you can reasonably accurately discern what the picture is. Pointing at one piece that appears grey and furry, and declaring that the image is that of a cat is premature.

So it'd take mounds of non-conflicting, validated, confirmed, peer reviewed evidence that consistently builds a model before you remotely have anything resembling a demonstrated claim.

[Jenny A]

I wish people would outgrow jesus as easily as they outgrow Santa.

The difference being that Santa is credited with doing verifiable things each year,  living at a specific place, not to mention being visible.  This makes him rather unlike any invisible god to whom many things are attributed but ofor whom no particular thing is necessarily expected.

[Anomalocaris]

I wish people would outgrow jesus as easily as they outgrow Santa.

That's because Santa wasn't created with malice.

[The Grand Nudger]

The difference being that Santa is credited with doing verifiable things each year,  living at a specific place, not to mention being visible.  This makes him rather unlike any invisible god to whom many things are attributed but ofor whom no particular thing is necessarily expected.

Oh, IDK..all of those things mentioned are -also- claimed for gods.....until those claims are challenged.  It's only when the faithful are asked to demonstrate their claims that gods become invisible, nebulous, and unverifiable.

[TheRocketSurgeon]

I wish people would outgrow jesus as easily as they outgrow Santa.

That's because Santa wasn't created with malice.

Then what's the deal with all the lumps of coal I got every December?

[dyresand]

That's because Santa wasn't created with malice.

Then what's the deal with all the lumps of coal I got every December?

^because you didn't  pray to me hard enough.... i mean Santa hard enough