The nature of evidence

[LadyForCamus]

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?

Coming up on the next episode of "theists at AF!" - A Christian's disastrous failure to grasp the fundamental concepts of evolution.  

Yeah...I know.  It's a re-run.  

[robvalue]

After 7 pages I still have no idea what the claim is.

What distinguishes a god from a non-God? How do I tell the difference?

And what does all this vague deistic-style creator business have to do with a storybook?

My general formula is God = "intelligent creator of our reality" + "meaningless word salad which varies from theist to theist"

The first part is simply unfalsifiable and untestable, it seems to me. The second part just makes it less likely exist and/or so vague it's not a meaningful claim.

[ignoramus]

It'll never change Rob. The same word salad every time with different dressings.

What I don't understand is that the whole intangible concept of God is based on a belief system.
Why isn't belief enough for these people?

They come to an theist forum to test a unfalsiable belief? WTF?
If there was any evidence at all, it wouldn't be a belief system and we wouldn't be here debating.

But they persist on continually testing....why?

My opinion is that none of them are truly content with the belief alone, as they have been programmed to accept.
The little voice of sanity in their head brings them here in a futile attempt to validate this extraordinary concept.
They do this subconsciously as deep down, they're not really comfortable following a cult which may not be true if it has no underpinnings with reality at all.

News Flash theists!!!
It's all bullshit. Always has been, always will be. You get one chance at life. Deal with your mortality and try not to fuck it up!

#sopabox off

[robvalue]

Yeah, I don't know what they're doing here.

I wish there was some way we could get them to... hear themselves. Do you know what I mean? Just turning up and quoting passages from a random book like that's meant to mean something to us.

If you have evidence for something, go ahead and present it. It should be evident that it backs up the claim, to those people qualified to understand it. If you have to try and persuade someone that your evidence is more convincing that it appears, or that your claim is special and doesn't require proper evidence, then you've failed. Just announcing your audience to be ignorant is also not a way to convince them.

People don't seem to realise that I don't give a fuck even if there is a god, or if that God is the vile cartoon character in a popular storybook. I don't care. What are they hoping to convince me of?

[ignoramus]

Being an unfalsifiable topic, it's the same dilemma for an atheist going to a religious forum trying to "prove" that God doesn't exist! It can't happen. Hence, for those logical atheists, they/we don't bother.

On top of that, we have no underlying motive to recruit people to "reality".
Don't know about you, but mother nature hasn't approached me with a deal yet.

[robvalue]

Yeah. I couldn't imagine going to a theist forum. I think I'd have a brain haemorrhage.

Here's the "evidence" that we get presented with. I think this covers everything:

1) Personal experience: anecdotes. Very poor evidence.

2) Books: filled with anecdotes. Very poor evidence.

3) Arguments not backed by evidence: Mostly they contain logical fallacies and so are worthless. Even the ones that don't rely entirely on the speculative premises being universally true, which cannot be verified. It's not evidence at all.

That's it. I've never heard of anything else. It's absolutely pathetic. If any theist has evidence that doesn't fall into one of these three categories, I'd love to hear it.

And after all that, you've got to explain why I should care about any of it.

[Redbeard The Pink]

Frustrating when people ask you to support your claims instead of just accepting them and patting you on the back, isn't it?


The dictionary is always a good choice if you really don't know what something means, but in general evidence is that which shows something to be true. If you can't show it, you don't know it.


As for what evidence would convince me of god, some atheists give answers that are a little dodgy for my taste, saying that they don't have to answer because an omniscient being should know what evidence they need to see and an omnipotent being should be fully capable of showing it to them. Personally, I'm willing to go ahead and set the bar, knowing that theists still won't hit it.


I would be intrigued, for example, if prayers to one particular deity had consistent, measurable, demonstrably better results than praying to other deities or not praying at all. I'm sure some atheists would say that this wouldn't suffice as evidence for the existence of whichever god it was, and maybe that's true, but if prayers to one god were demonstrably more effective than prayers to any other or no prayers at all, then I would be extremely curious as to why that's the case. It never is, though. Study after study shows that prayer is not effective one way or another, regardless of which deity or being is impeached. Praying to Jehovah has about the same demonstrable impact as praying to Oscar the Grouch.

[Redbeard The Pink]

Duplicate

[ApeNotKillApe]

1) Personal experience: anecdotes. Very poor evidence.

2) Books: filled with anecdotes. Very poor evidence.

3) Arguments not backed by evidence: Mostly they contain logical fallacies and so are worthless. Even the ones that don't rely entirely on the speculative premises being universally true, which cannot be verified. It's not evidence at all.

Don't forget the stupid word games.

[robvalue]

This thread is yet another example of why I take the ignostic position.

Agnostic = "I don't know"

Ignostic = "I don't know what you're talking about"

We have a single theist, trying to make a claim, and even then the subject of the claim is completely unclear after all these pages. So imagine trying to assess the general claim of "god's existence"! How can I? I haven't a clue what people are talking about.

If they'd just say "an intelligent creator", then we can at least have a sensible discussion. But almost no one can stop there, they have to pile on all this other garbage. And not every theist will even agree to that part. They start calling the universe "God" and such.