Why not deism?

[chimp3]

In the court room setting I would hope that "authoritative" is a synonym for "expert". So, that includes something like science based.

Well, I guess it depends on the topic. If it's something amenable to scientific study, then sure, an expert is someone who knows about scientific study. 

  In the court setting their testimony is not evidence, they are presenting evidence. 

I'm not sure I understand the difference. Are you wanting to differentiate between the authority of the person speaking and the persuasiveness of the facts he gives? If so, I agree with you that the witness's personal clout is not what's important. 

On the other hand, it turns out that in a lot of cases the facts are not conclusive, and different experts can reach different conclusions from the same facts. In real life, science-type approaches aren't definitive, sad to say. 

Ballistics, Pathology, etc. Regarding a religious claim authorities have a much higher hurdle. If someone claims they are an authority on exorcisms I could just as easily claim I am an authority on talking, flying frogs. They have to support their claim with the evidence for demon possession, not just anecdotes.

Right. I'm fine with that. Ballistics et.al. have lots of empirical backup. Exorcisms not so much. 

The case I've been watching on YouTube is a sad little high school cheerleader who didn't want to be pregnant so much that she ignored it and finally gave birth on her own in the bathroom. The expert testimony comes down to whether the baby was stillborn or whether the cheerleader killed it through neglect after a few minutes. This turns out to require a surprising amount of personal interpretation among the expert doctors. 

What I want to say about evidence, though, is broader. To me, it is dangerous and a bit arbitrary to say that any and all evidence must only be science. (And by science I mean: empirical, repeatable, quantifiable, theory-embedded.) To me, evidence is anything that gives added believability to a proposition. Depending on the proposition in question, I think this could include the personal opinion of someone experienced. It could include common sense. Other things too, depending on the topic.

I am not saying that I want to put spooky ghost stories on an equal basis with science. I am only saying that in the real day-to-day world, where we have to decide things, we should value all input. And I acknowledge that this puts a higher burden on us, because I am not drawing clear boundaries on what I'll accept. It's case-by-case, you-have-to-use-your-brain type situations. 

Basically, in my day to day life, I do not demand evidence from believers. I just don't believe them or their magic books. On line I may get into these debates or I may not. I live in a very religious community and I just glide through my day ignoring that nonsense. But, I am not willing to give personal anecdotes the same credence as physical evidence. If a believer states that their god can alter physical reality (water into wine, weather patterns,etc.) then they are making a claim about physical reality. The burden of proof is far greater for them since they have to demonstrate which property of their god altered the chemistry of water for instance. This is not a case by case situation. This is saying that reality is consistent.

[Belacqua]

Basically, in my day to day life, I do not demand evidence from believers. I just don't believe them or their magic books. On line I may get into these debates or I may not. I live in a very religious community and I just glide through my day ignoring that nonsense. But, I am not willing to give personal anecdotes the same credence as physical evidence. If a believer states that their god can alter physical reality (water into wine, weather patterns,etc.) then they are making a claim about physical reality. The burden of proof is far greater for them since they have to demonstrate which property of their god altered the chemistry of water for instance. This is not a case by case situation. This is saying that reality is consistent.

That's all understandable. It's very unlikely that believers in literal stuff like water-into-wine are going to have any kind of persuasive evidence. 

It's a far cry, though, from what you said earlier:

Authoritative testimony is not evidence. Logical proofs are not evidence. Both need to be supported by evidence.

I agree that the fundies around you won't have good evidence. But I do think that authoritative testimony and logical proofs certainly are evidence, depending on the topic. (I suppose people disagree on who is "authoritative" -- that's something else that needs arguing out.)

[The Grand Nudger]

You're just flat out wallowing in this ad pop filth.  Good for you.

[chimp3]

Basically, in my day to day life, I do not demand evidence from believers. I just don't believe them or their magic books. On line I may get into these debates or I may not. I live in a very religious community and I just glide through my day ignoring that nonsense. But, I am not willing to give personal anecdotes the same credence as physical evidence. If a believer states that their god can alter physical reality (water into wine, weather patterns,etc.) then they are making a claim about physical reality. The burden of proof is far greater for them since they have to demonstrate which property of their god altered the chemistry of water for instance. This is not a case by case situation. This is saying that reality is consistent.

That's all understandable. It's very unlikely that believers in literal stuff like water-into-wine are going to have any kind of persuasive evidence. 

It's a far cry, though, from what you said earlier:

Authoritative testimony is not evidence. Logical proofs are not evidence. Both need to be supported by evidence.

I agree that the fundies around you won't have good evidence. But I do think that authoritative testimony and logical proofs certainly are evidence, depending on the topic. (I suppose people disagree on who is "authoritative" -- that's something else that needs arguing out.)

Preachers/ Apologists don't impress me (my own Dad is a preacher). If believers want to filter out one expert over another then that is an internal problem for believers. This is not a problem with me. I don't believe any of them nor am conflicted about this. If their Sky Fairy wants to impress me, it is welcome to.

[Belacqua]

Preachers/ Apologists don't impress me (my own Dad is a preacher). If believers want to filter out one expert over another then that is an internal problem for believers. This is not a problem with me. I don't believe any of them nor am conflicted about this. If their Sky Fairy wants to impress me, it is welcome to.

I think we've gone from "logical proofs are not evidence" to "sky fairies are dumb." 

I agree that sky fairies are dumb.

[chimp3]

Preachers/ Apologists don't impress me (my own Dad is a preacher). If believers want to filter out one expert over another then that is an internal problem for believers. This is not a problem with me. I don't believe any of them nor am conflicted about this. If their Sky Fairy wants to impress me, it is welcome to.

I think we've gone from "logical proofs are not evidence" to "sky fairies are dumb." 

I agree that sky fairies are dumb.

You've gone from "logical proofs are not evidence" to "sky fairies are dumb."  I said (read above) that Sky Fairies are unimpressive. Words are important.

[Belacqua]

I think we've gone from "logical proofs are not evidence" to "sky fairies are dumb." 

I agree that sky fairies are dumb.

You've gone from "logical proofs are not evidence" to "sky fairies are dumb."  I said (read above) that Sky Fairies are unimpressive. Words are important.

I agree that sky fairies are unimpressive.

[EgoDeath]

Just more and more attempts from @Belaqua to dirty this subject into ambiguous oblivion. I think he projects his own inability to decide whether or not he believes in anything onto any and everyone else, meaning if you have thought about something thoroughly and come to a conclusion that you're comfortable with, he wholeheartedly believes that you must have overlooked something, because no person could possibly decide on anything if they've considered all the options.

Reminds me of Chidi from The Good Place. He is seemingly well-read, obsessed with philosophy and couldn't decide between chocolate or vanilla ice cream if his life depended on it. Although, he's much more pompous than Chidi.

"Actually, Aquinas had some interesting thoughts about vanilla ice cream that differ vastly from modern day conceptions! Bet you didn't think of that, atheist!"

[Fake Messiah]

The truth is that there is a lot of deism, especially when a religious person is losing an argument. Like when a Christian claims that there is evidence that God exists because most of the people believe in God, and yet, the reality is that 70% of all people in the world don't believe that Jesus Christ is a God. Majority of people worships cows and stones, but to that Christian at the moment that doesn't matter because he's a deist at the moment and "as long as someone believes in something" it proves his point and his point is nothing more than an ad hoc fallacy.

[mordant]

The truth is that there is a lot of deism, especially when a religious person is losing an argument. Like when a Christian claims that there is evidence that God exists because most of the people believe in God, and yet, the reality is that 70% of all people in the world don't believe that Jesus Christ is a God. Majority of people worships cows and stones, but to that Christian at the moment that doesn't matter because he's a deist at the moment and "as long as someone believes in something" it proves his point and his point is nothing more than an ad hoc fallacy.

Very, very true.

Fundamentalists consider themselves the keepers of the pure (or, at least purEST) faith, the most Important Truth, which is to them that faith in the salvific "finished work" of Jesus is the ONLY possible way to be right with god. By this standard, let us run a few numbers.

Roughly one-third of people currently alive are, by the loosest cultural definition, self-identified Christians.

Depending on who you believe, 1/6 to 1/3 of those are evangelicals. Let us take the 1/3 figure.

"Evangelicals" is a somewhat imprecise term these days, but we can fairly say that not all evangelicals are fundamentalists and strict literalists / inerrantists / dominionists. I can't find any hard numbers but by inferring the % of the US population that belong to evangelical or black churches vs the % that belong to the more conservative fundamentalist strains of those churches I infer that roughly 1/3 of evangelicals are fundamentalists. Let us be charitable however and say 1/2.

Half of a third of a third of the world population equates to about 5% of the world population. And remember, I'm being generous in my estimates here.

By a fundamentalist's reckoning, everything is about being right (as in RIGHTeous), not being good or kind. So those who are not fundamentalists are somewhere between questionable and just plain wrong as to their eternal destiny and thus their membership in the club. "All our righteousness are as filthy rags to god".

The current world population is about 7.7 billion. If only 5% of those have a "saving knowledge of Christ" then about 385 million are heaven-bound and about 7.3 billion are hell-bound.

Let that sink in for a minute.

And then stop and think of the even bigger implications.

Per current UNICEF estimates about 130 million people are born every year worldwide, which means about 123.5 million hellbound and 6.5 million new converts.

All of which has been going on since the beginning of time in some form or other, but let's just consider the past two thousand years and gloss over how people made the grade or didn't, prior to that.

Remember that Christianity was never more of the world population by percentage than it is now, but rather less. So the rate of perdition was higher in the past.

Rough estimates are that 105 billion people have lived on the earth since the upper Paleolithic. Even assuming the "rate of salvation" was a steady 5% the whole time, the Fundamentalists are willing to consign almost a hundred billion people to eternal torment in the service of their god's righteous anger.

Faced with these estimates, assuming they would ever admit they are reasonable or accurate, in my observation and experience, fundamentalists tend to suddenly become liberal or deist-leaning to try to soften the harshness of this reality. They have invented the "Age of Accountability" out of whole cloth so they don't have to tell their own bereaved parents of younger children than their deceased children are burning in hell because they had not yet made an overt "profession of faith". They would follow a similar line of "reasoning" concerning, e.g., primitive tribes who are wholly ignorant of the Bible or of Jesus, opining that any sincere seeker for truth in such a culture would find god revealing himself to them directly in some fashion, or just accepting them as too "primitive" and "ignorant" to "willfully rebel". This is why their organizations such as Wycliffe Bible Translators exist, to make sure every hunter-gatherer culture on earth has the gospels in their native tongue (and if they don't have a written language they will concoct one for them). They believe that once they have completed that task they will usher in the second coming.

But this is all lipstick on a pig. It doesn't change that fundamentalists see themselves as a privileged minority, a "remnant" that will be saved at the expense of those outside the "tribe". It is just an extension of the "chosen people" narrative. It is small, mean, nasty and cruel in the extreme. It encourages a sort of indifference to human suffering, cloaked from the believer in various diversions but nevertheless at bottom it is still the opposite of that "agape love" they are always talking about, namely, indifference.

And that's on a good day. In the past, fundamentalist firebrand writers and pastors have spoken of how the righteous in heaven will be filled with glee at the plight of the wicked who were too stupid to turn from the wrath to come. Some of them openly embrace such notions, many more privately harbor them.

It's hard to argue that Christian fundamentalism isn't the worst of the worst in this regard -- morally and ethically and empathetically bankrupt and emotionally somewhere between empty and toxic depending on the individual.