Personal evidence

[Foxaèr]

Many theists tend to state that their belief in god is dependent upon personal evidence which seems to be intertwined with religious faith, but I am not discussing religious faith at this point.

Rather, I want to focus on this "personal evidence". Here we have something that is personal, something developed from within to lead an individual to a particular belief that by the very definition of "personal" cannot be experienced by anyone except the individual person experiencing it. Then there's the "evidence" part; of course, so long as the theist claims it is "personal" the definition of "evidence" can be altered to fit that person's experience.

The problem rises when we have a bunch of people who believe the same thing, claiming to believe in the same god, having evidence all of them agree upon, yet in the end it's still "personal evidence" which cannot logically be compared with others since every one's personal experience of the world and how it is viewed is completely different, right?

No. There are things upon which we can all agree when we view them. A rock is a rock to everyone, a tree is a tree to everyone. God cannot be held to this standard, which makes religious belief as a community false if the only evidence that can ever be provided is "personal" and merely within that individual person experiencing it.

Those who believe in something that actually exists can get together and point at it, touch it, see it, etc, in order to understand collectively that it is the same thing being experienced. The same cannot be stated for god, for there is no empirical evidence upon which to agree. All there is for the religious person is a personal unnecessary need for something that does not exist.

[Edwardo Piet]

"Personal evidence" is basically an oxymoron.

EDIT: There is one exception. If we're talking about the self-evidence of our own qualia. That is personal evidence of itself. (And in fact the only thing in the universe that we can know exists absolutely: our own conscious experience. We can be deluded about the way it corresponds to external objective reality but we cannot be deluded about the fact perception itself is experienced by us). But to say that God resides in qualia is identical to saying he's imaginary or not real so . . .

EDIT 2: I mean, it's like when MK babbles about the ontological argument for God as if it makes sense. The fact the greatest conceivable being by definition is conceivable just proves that the imagination exists, it doesn't prove that the greatest conceivable being exists. The only way it could possibly prove that the greatest conceivable being exists is if the greatest conceivable being is imaginary. Ergo, the final conclusion that the greatest conceivable being must exist because existence is greater than non-existence and existence is also conceivable... fails to recognize that the imagination DOES exist and unreal in the sense of imaginary is different to nonexistent. Non existent =not present, not anything at all, and imaginary/unreal= existent but only within the imagination. The problem is that "nonexistent" and "not real" are often equivocated and it's not clear which sense of "existence" is being discussed (actually present in any form of reality at all including the imagination, or merely present in specifically external non-imaginary reality, outside the mind).

I mean, the only thing I know that exists for sure is my own imagination. I don't even know if my external body is real. So if the ontological argument and my own personal evidence really proved God then all it would really be doing was proving that *I* was God. But if I'm also imaginary and so is everyone else which is as meaningless as saying neither I nor anyone else is imaginary and we're all equally real and then we're back to square one again

(Why? Because if I'm imaginary and just a perception of myself then my perceptions of others are no less real (or more real) than me (or my perception of me) and the self (as any meaningful separate entity with a clear definable border) is an illusion *. Which doesn't make me special at all. The fact I experience myself as a conscious witness is not to say that other people don't too. They could be a part of me (and me a part of them, since we're all one entity) that I am not aware of. Or in other words a part of myself (/I am a part of theirself. Ourself) that I am not aware of (/they/we are not aware of). So basically by labelling everything as unreal or imaginary or myself being all that exists it results in the same actual reality as saying that we all exist equally. And the fact we're all the part of one entity is only the same as saying that even if there is a multiverse it's ultimately all connected somehow as a totality of one existence (which is by definition everything as a whole). And the parts that I and others are not aware of are just the parts of the universe that are unconscious and not living. Literally what starts to sound like solipsistic wooy hocus pocus, when followed through logically just results in normal reality. (It's the same way that when pantheists define God as "the universe" and say that "everything is God" they're effectively saying the exact same thing as if they said God is "not the universe" and "nothing is God". When nothing is distinguished, nothing is real, so when everything is distinguished equally, nothing is distinguished differently and nothing real is being said. And when everything is unreal, it's the same as everything being real. Really, in truth, all there is is differences in coherent meanings. Incoherent statements literally don't refer to anything. They are empty statements that fail to refer to something. Everything unreal still exists at least in the mind. But there's nothing magical or special about that. Ultimately you can follow this kind of philosophical thinking, like I do, and realize that questions like "Why does anything exist at all?" is, far from the ultimate question, a question that has a very clear but very boring answer: "Because true nonexistence is impossible. A nonexistent thing . . . is not existent. Things exist because the alernative is literally impossible. That is not to say that a different universe couldn't have existed, that's not even to say that any universe at all had to exist . . . but if you're asking why ANY THING has to exist. That question makes no sense because there's literally no such thing as a non-existent thing. So there's no alternative")).

* For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe anything but the perception.

—Hume, Treatise, I, VI, iv

Maybe I think too much

[Minimalist]

The trouble with personal evidence is that it is not transferable to another person.  I suppose you could find some other lunatic who, when you say "jesus tickled my nutsack" will say "he tickled mine too." 

I find such arguments unpersuasive.

[Foxaèr]

The trouble with personal evidence is that it is not transferable to another person.

Which was mentioned, not using those words, in my OP.

[Minimalist]

Yeah but you left out the good part about jesus tickling your balls.

[Foxaèr]

Yeah but you left out the good part about jesus tickling your balls.

LOL, that's for sure, which is why I leave such things to you.

[Edwardo Piet]

I am now going to quote mine min for parody purposes. This is not what he said. I repeat, this is not what he said. It's a joke:

jesus tickled my nutsack

He tickled mine too!

I have to be careful though, because literally have you ever seen how people like William Lane Craig (Or, as I prefer to call him "Billy Lame Creg") will literally quote mine parodies and jokes from serious atheists and seriously try to mispresent quotes of quotes and obvious non-representations as serious representations of what the atheist said?

Next up: Neo jumps in to put what Min didn't say here into the Hall of Shame.

---

Yeah but you left out the good part about jesus tickling your balls.

OH my God! He ticked yours too?!

[vorlon13]

I'd rather have mine chortled.

[Edwardo Piet]

I'd rather have mine chortled.

Chorled balls? Hm. I must admit I often personally fantasize about a guffawed snatch and all its implications.

[Minimalist]

I am now going to quote mine min for parody purposes. This is not what he said. I repeat, this is not what he said. It's a joke:

jesus tickled my nutsack

He tickled mine too!

I have to be careful though, because literally have you ever seen how people like William Lane Craig (Or, as I prefer to call him "Billy Lame Creg") will literally quote mine parodies and jokes from serious atheists and seriously try to mispresent quotes of quotes and obvious non-representations as serious representations of what the atheist said?

Next up: Neo jumps in to put what Min didn't say here into the Hall of Shame.

---

Yeah but you left out the good part about jesus tickling your balls.

OH my God! He ticked yours too?!

Just think of all the morons who will come here looking for the original source?

Oh what am I saying.  Chad never gives sources!