The nature of evidence

[Mister Agenda]

The type of reasoning we use to get from facts to a conclusion is inference. For instance, I can breathe and am aware of my breathing. From my experience in general and some basic knowledge of biology and physics; I can use that fact to conclude there is breathable air in the room, I am alive, I am conscious, the air contains a fairly high percentage of Oxygen and a fairly low percentage of Chlorine; and so forth.

Boolean logic withdraws its support pretty quickly when we start to go past what we know and it disappears on us entirely when we delve into what we can't know.

[Wryetui]

Fact = There is a world in which I live. I live in this world and I have relations with this world and its other creatures. I see them and I see that they are ordered. Their behavior is ordered, no matter if they are animal or plants, this is facts, right? I conclude that this order has to come from somewhere, and since order can only bee seen by intelligent minds, there has to be a superior intelligent mind that put this order where it is now, this is my conclusion. Why is it wrong?

Those are facts, correct. Nothing that you said after that are justified conclusions deriving from those facts.

The only way a completely orderless universe could exist would be by the intervention of an immensely powerful entity, because complete lack of order is an order in itself; truly chaotic systems always contain some degree of order. Order observably comes from chaos. And I will point out that there seems to be a LOT of disorder mixed in with the order you observe; why would there be any disorder at all in a handcrafted world?

It does take a mind to recognize that 'order is orderly'. It does not follow that a mind is required for order to exist; though I think one could make a case that a mind would be necessary for no order at all to exist. If there were no humans to observe how orderly their world is, it would still be orderly. A tree that falls in the woods with no one to hear still causes vibrations in the air.

To me, your reasoning seems to be going:

A. Facts.
B. I feel like order has to come from somewhere and the only kind of somewhere it can come from is a superior mind.
C. Therefore, Superior mind.

B is your feelings and intuitions. Your feelings are not evidence of anything outside your head. Reality is under no obligation to conform to your expectations. Even if it was sound to base your conclusion off B, the set of possible minds that could be proposed that satisfy C is potentially infinite, and all but one of those possibilities must be wrong. If you're trying to get to God, you would still need to show why your choice is the true one. The odds of you being right by chance approach zero very closely.

It is interesting, but I do not entirely agree. I do not agree that order can come from disorder. That is, imagine you go to the beach and you find this on the shore:



You conclude this is ordered. You would never think that this comes from disorder, how could it? For that to happen disorder must know english and its propper grammar, disorder must also know how to choose the right rocks of a suitable weight, color and shape, but this belongs to order, not to disorder. If you found that same picture on the beach would you conclude it has been brought up by disorder, that it formed accidentally?

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Wyretui:  If you're going to copy and paste reams of someone else's work, you should credit him.  Otherwise, you're committing plagiarism, of which the Administration of this board take a VERY dim view.

From one of your posts here:

A man is also a physical object in as much as he is also a physical body. The ancient Greeks disagreed, however, about whether there was anything more to man than his body. The Atomists and the Epicureans insisted that the soul was made out of matter, just like the body. The Platonists, on the other hand, believed that the soul was an immaterial and immortal form imprisoned in the body. The difference of opinion has persisted down to our own day, with the majority now firmly in the materialist camp. Many forms of psychology and all of the so-called social sciences presume that human life can be studied empirically and quantified.

From http://www.ancientfaith.com/podcasts/car..._of_reason

A man is also a physical object in as much as he is also a physical body. The ancient Greeks disagreed, however, about whether there was anything more to man than his body. The Atomists and the Epicureans insisted that the soul was made out of matter, just like the body. The Platonists, on the other hand, believed that the soul was an immaterial and immortal form imprisoned in the body. The difference of opinion has persisted down to our own day, with the majority now firmly in the materialist camp. Many forms of psychology and all of the so-called social sciences presume that human life can be studied empirically and quantified.

The author of the second passage is Clark Carlton, who, according to his online biography, is in his early 50s.  You, according to your introductory post, are an 18 year old university student in Romania.

I find it monumentally ironic that a self-styled Orthodox Christian uses the thievery of another man's words to make his case.

Boru

[TheRealJoeFish]

---

Those are facts, correct. Nothing that you said after that are justified conclusions deriving from those facts.

The only way a completely orderless universe could exist would be by the intervention of an immensely powerful entity, because complete lack of order is an order in itself; truly chaotic systems always contain some degree of order. Order observably comes from chaos. And I will point out that there seems to be a LOT of disorder mixed in with the order you observe; why would there be any disorder at all in a handcrafted world?

It does take a mind to recognize that 'order is orderly'. It does not follow that a mind is required for order to exist; though I think one could make a case that a mind would be necessary for no order at all to exist. If there were no humans to observe how orderly their world is, it would still be orderly. A tree that falls in the woods with no one to hear still causes vibrations in the air.

To me, your reasoning seems to be going:

A. Facts.
B. I feel like order has to come from somewhere and the only kind of somewhere it can come from is a superior mind.
C. Therefore, Superior mind.

B is your feelings and intuitions. Your feelings are not evidence of anything outside your head. Reality is under no obligation to conform to your expectations. Even if it was sound to base your conclusion off B, the set of possible minds that could be proposed that satisfy C is potentially infinite, and all but one of those possibilities must be wrong. If you're trying to get to God, you would still need to show why your choice is the true one. The odds of you being right by chance approach zero very closely.

---

It is interesting, but I do not entirely agree. I do not agree that order can come from disorder. That is, imagine you go to the beach and you find this on the shore:



You conclude this is ordered. You would never think that this comes from disorder, how could it? For that to happen disorder must know english and its propper grammar, disorder must also know how to choose the right rocks of a suitable weight, color and shape, but this belongs to order, not to disorder. If you found that same picture on the beach would you conclude it has been brought up by disorder, that it formed accidentally?

Of course not. We would claim that a human did it.

But that shows you're completely missing the point. If you saw the words "I AM GOD" on the beach in rocks, and could prove that a human hadn't done it, then maybe I'd listen to you.

But, no, that's not the kind of "obvious design" you're talking about. You're talking about the circulatory system or DNA or something. You know, the *incredibly inefficient* thing with all sorts of remnants of change over time and messiness and propensity to malfunction that resembles things like roots of a tree or crystals (rather than watches or computers or words) but just *has* to have a creator because, come on, guys, look at it, it's obvious, you're just not looking hard enough, your using your "brain thinking" and not your "soul thinking," you know, the kind of thinking where you come up with any twisted excuse you can why there is a god and when you succeed in cobbling together a convoluted string of non sequiturs you say "see, of course there's a god, because he designed that" and then you go home and plagiarize things from Ray Comfort's website.

/rant

[bennyboy]

It is interesting, but I do not entirely agree. I do not agree that order can come from disorder. That is, imagine you go to the beach and you find this on the shore:



You conclude this is ordered. You would never think that this comes from disorder, how could it? For that to happen disorder must know english and its propper grammar, disorder must also know how to choose the right rocks of a suitable weight, color and shape, but this belongs to order, not to disorder. If you found that same picture on the beach would you conclude it has been brought up by disorder, that it formed accidentally?

Here's the beach of evidence for God:

If asked to find an image in there, I'd find perhaps a bunny. You'd see the Lord.

You still haven't given any actual evidence for God that DIFFERENTIATES between a universe with a God and one without one.

[drfuzzy]

Hello.

I have listened and witnessed that, when debating about God, the main questions that is present within the atheist party is that they do not believe in God because there is no evidence for Him. I am interested but also confused, because I need to understand what "evidence" really means, certainly what for some people is enough "evidence" for others is not even close to that, so, my questions are:

1. What does the word "evidence" mean?
2. What kind of said evidence would be necessary for you to actually believe there is a God?

1)  Evidence: 
From Merriam-Webster:
 something which shows that something else exists or is true
: a visible sign of something
: material that is presented to a court of law to help find the truth about something

I would also add that this evidence needs to be measurable, verified, and the same results confirmed by other unbiased researchers examining the same data.

2) Have him show up and say "hi".   Any entity capable of creating billions of galaxies does not need a human being to prove his existence.  He does not need priests or prophets or books.

[drfuzzy]

Wyretui:  If you're going to copy and paste reams of someone else's work, you should credit him.  Otherwise, you're committing plagiarism, of which the Administration of this board take a VERY dim view.

From one of your posts here:

A man is also a physical object in as much as he is also a physical body. The ancient Greeks disagreed, however, about whether there was anything more to man than his body. The Atomists and the Epicureans insisted that the soul was made out of matter, just like the body. The Platonists, on the other hand, believed that the soul was an immaterial and immortal form imprisoned in the body. The difference of opinion has persisted down to our own day, with the majority now firmly in the materialist camp. Many forms of psychology and all of the so-called social sciences presume that human life can be studied empirically and quantified.

From http://www.ancientfaith.com/podcasts/car..._of_reason

A man is also a physical object in as much as he is also a physical body. The ancient Greeks disagreed, however, about whether there was anything more to man than his body. The Atomists and the Epicureans insisted that the soul was made out of matter, just like the body. The Platonists, on the other hand, believed that the soul was an immaterial and immortal form imprisoned in the body. The difference of opinion has persisted down to our own day, with the majority now firmly in the materialist camp. Many forms of psychology and all of the so-called social sciences presume that human life can be studied empirically and quantified.

The author of the second passage is Clark Carlton, who, according to his online biography, is in his early 50s.  You, according to your introductory post, are an 18 year old university student in Romania.

I find it monumentally ironic that a self-styled Orthodox Christian uses the thievery of another man's words to make his case.

Boru

Lying Plagiarist!  
Eh, what can you expect from a Seminarian?  He just wants to graduate from college so he can start lying to his own little church and rape all of the altar boys.  Little baby college-boy witch-doctor in training - - he's just practicing, after all.

[bennyboy]

2) Have him show up and say "hi".   Any entity capable of creating billions of galaxies does not need a human being to prove his existence.  He does not need priests or prophets or books.

Nuh uh. Obviously, if I created a practically infinite universe with trillions of planets, from a point of zero size, and I brought even TIME into existence, I'd pick one planet, populate it with bald big-brained monkeys, give them instincts to do things like have sex, and then get upset when they ignored my directives only to have sex in certain ways and under certain conditions.

I'd TOTALLY need a percentage of those monkeys to act as my ambassadors and explain my will to the other monkeys, cuz, you know, I'd be busy creating an eternal punishment of fire and anguish for those monkeys who were unwise enough to follow the instincts I gave them.

Then I'd pick SOME of the monkeys, and help them conquer (or escape from) some of the other monkeys. Cuz. . . you know. . .FUCK those other monkeys.

[LadyForCamus]

1. Evidence is a demonstrable observation or fact that leads to a particular conclusion.

2. That's going to vary quite a bit from person to person. The right word from the right individual might do it for some. 'I am real--God' spelled out in galaxies would probably do the trick for most skeptics. Probably most of us fall somewhere in between. For me, one supernatural thing would be enough to send me back to the drawing board, it wouldn't prove God, but it would prove that something supernatural is possible.

Fact = There is a world in which I live. I live in this world and I have relations with this world and its other creatures. I see them and I see that they are ordered. Their behavior is ordered, no matter if they are animal or plants, this is facts, right? I conclude that this order has to come from somewhere, and since order can only bee seen by intelligent minds, there has to be a superior intelligent mind that put this order where it is now, this is my conclusion.Why is it wrong?

bold mine

And how exactly did you reach the conclusion that human intelligence can only come from a "superior" intelligent mind?

[drfuzzy]

---

1. Evidence is a demonstrable observation or fact that leads to a particular conclusion.

2. That's going to vary quite a bit from person to person. The right word from the right individual might do it for some. 'I am real--God' spelled out in galaxies would probably do the trick for most skeptics. Probably most of us fall somewhere in between. For me, one supernatural thing would be enough to send me back to the drawing board, it wouldn't prove God, but it would prove that something supernatural is possible.

---

Fact = There is a world in which I live. I live in this world and I have relations with this world and its other creatures. I see them and I see that they are ordered. Their behavior is ordered, no matter if they are animal or plants, this is facts, right? I conclude that this order has to come from somewhere, and since order can only bee seen by intelligent minds, there has to be a superior intelligent mind that put this order where it is now, this is my conclusion. Why is it wrong?

Could you at least PLEASE educate yourself on the basics of logical fallacies?  You have an argument from ignorance followed by a non-sequitur.
Here are the very basics, in a nice meme, so you won't have to go to the trouble of clicking on a link.