Okay, how about if a scientist examines the evidence and finds that God exists.
And an atheist looks at the same evidence and says that God doesn’t.
How about that has nothing to do with my question?
Look if the premises are the same, the conclusion will be the same. But that is seldom the case. Look at the situation with an atheist and scientist looking at the same evidence and coming to different conclusions. Obviously the premises must be different in some manner.
But why is that necessarily the premise rather than the conclusion?
Assume for the sake of argument that – as per your recommendation – two people read the Bible and talk with folks and pray for guidance, in hopes of intuiting some divine revelation about whether Jesus is the Messiah; one of them ends up concluding yes, and the other guy concludes no.
You’re talking about folks who answer the famous Liar-Lord-Lunatic choice with a starting premise; I’m asking about people who treat it as a question.
Meanwhile, George Meade was also a servant of God, and could only act on behalf of God.
So: is God just sitting back and letting people decide the outcome, including God’s own will? God doesn’t know which side he really favors?
If God really existed, and was asking Lee to serve him, he might also have been decent enough to contact Meade and tell him that, to best serve God, Meade might simply not march his troops northward.
What the fuck kind of God tells both sides in a war, “I’m on your side. Really! Serve me by killing the other guy.”
Dipshit God!
Unfortunately, many religious wars have been fought based exactly on this model. I’ve always thought this is ridiculous.
If God is on my side then who is on theirs.
If the premises are exactly the same then people should arrive at the same conclusion unless they are weighing evidence differently.
For instance, if the Jewish are insisting on an eyewitness account of Jesus’ resurrection, it’s unlikely to occur any time soon. Most of the eyewitness’ have already gone to heaven.
Will you please not suppose what scientist think when you don’t know anything about it? If you’ve ever read a review of a scientific paper, which I’m sure you haven’t, you’d know that there are vastly different opinions about arguments and conclusions beginning with basically the same premises. No one accuses the author or reviewers of not being rational. One has to examine the structure of the argument.
Heck, probably most of them went to the other place…
I believe he attibuted to a God,but it could well be and probably is just fronm his own mind. People are taught that they are chilldren of God. not servants.(Psalm 81 or 82 depending on what Bible you use) A supreme being would have no need for servants. I see prayer as an affront to an all knowing, all loving being (if the Bible is a source). To me it is like a child with a full stomach asking a parent when they were gong to be fed, or give them something that would harm them. One should just trust, if they truly believe. If the Supreme being is all knowing. A Human parent can just guess and hope!
I would not give my child anything that would harm them nor would I keep anything from them, and they don’t have to guess if I am their parent or if I love them.
How do you know they went to a Heaven maybe they didn’t? Belief is not fact!
One of my beliefs is that ultimately there is only one side. (I say that despite knowledge of Auburn and Alabama.) Without most being aware of it, they are the same. They are One. “God, please let our side win” is a little silly. I understand it in times of war, but the answer is still the same. I share that as a belief based on personal experience, not as a fact.
What if you are part of the universe again, but you have awareness? What might that be like for you?
I believe most of the time that you do indeed make tough ethical decisions. Many religious people turn to God for assistance in making these decisions. Maybe you have assistance that you are unaware of. Maybe people who believe that they are turning to God are actually just getting in touch with with their own sense of ethics. Who knows?
Most of what you say could apply to Christians and Christian beliefs (or to other religions) – just not through the scientific method. That doesn’t mean that the answers aren’t logical.
How exactly does “Maybe this, maybe that, maybe yes, maybe no-who knows-what if?” add to this conversation, Zoe?
Sure, but this evidence is usually of things which could have plausibly happened, right? If an abductee sued NASA for not protecting him from aliens, with his memories of abduction as the only evidence it ever happened, how far do you think he’d get.
Juries can also reject evidence which is unsupported. When I was on a jury the defendant testified that his wife kicked him in the balls. I rejected this, on the grounds that none of the other witnesses, who gave rather thorough testimony of the events in question, testified that they heard him yell. I’m not sure that many juries would or could accept testimony that God told a witness anything. Which is different from proving God exists, though I suppose anyone claiming a jury should accept this kind of evidence needs to demonstrate that there is such a being. Otherwise, you might as well ask them to accept evidence from the imaginary friend my daughter had when she was young.
That’s a strawman if I ever heard one. I did not say that someone claiming to have these experiences was either lying or crazy. In fact I quite explicitly accepted that they did have the experiences. What I don’t accept is that the experiences represent reality outside their own minds. That is why I brought up alien abductions. Do you believe in them or not? Aliens almost certainly do exist, somewhere. God - not likely.
Sure there is a “reason” (in the sense that it must have gave us a reproductive advantage.) I believe that the two brain theory came from observing people whose connections between the sides of the brain were cut. But this right brain/left brain stuff may not be anything all that important. I don’t know the current state of the theory, but it seems like it might have been blown way out of proportion to sell books. “I’m OK, You’re Left Brained.”
Now and then? Try every day. When I was in grad school I got trained that attacking weak arguments was a very good thing. Paper reviews are full of people contradicting the arguments of the author, and I have observed, participated in, and moderated knock down drag out arguments in program committee meetings about the quality of various papers.
I don’t remember its name, but there was a book about the “killer asteroid” controversy which described in detail the fight between the paleontologists and the physicists/geologists about what killed the dinosaurs.
If no one contradicts each other about an area, the area is boring and dead.
pchaos is actually correct when he says it depends on premises. You can construct a very large number of logical arguments based on varying premises and coming to various untested conclusions. Aristotle is full of them. But “logical” is not a defense when the premises have been shown to be wrong and the conclusions have been tested and have failed. At that point continued adherence to the argument and its conclusions is something other than rational. The God hypothesis for the origin of the Earth was somewhat plausible 1,000 years ago. Tom Paine said he was not an atheist because he could not see how the solar system got its structure without a creator. (Just not the Western God.) Those are no longer valid reasons, do you agree?
You misunderstand me, intentionally or not. The question posed in the thread is whether there is “evidence” for the existence of God. Multiple posters have stated that there isn’t any. If you would look at my above posts, I’ve merely pointed out that there is evidence (i.e. personal experiences) but it is not the sort of evidence that is likely to be accepted as probative, at least not by those who have not had corollary experiences.
And others have referred to lies and delusions as prompting visions/belief in God, sorry if you felt I was accusing you of taking that stance.
But again when someone recounts a personal experience and you don’t have an affirmative reason to reject it (i.e. one based on fact rather than your own opinions) the reasonable verdict is something akin to the Scottish “not proven.”
If that adds nothing to the discussion, I apologize and will bow out.
Why does it matter whether I believe in alien abductions? I haven’t experienced any. Nor am I asking you to believe as I do or even accept my experience as true.
That one. many people who are not trained in science or the law take shortcuts. Under your broad definition, it is trivially true that there is evidence for God. In fact, evidence for lots of different gods - and evidence for abducting aliens also.
But to have something interesting to discuss, I think the meaning of evidence used here is “evidence that would stand up under even a superficial examination.” That does not include evidence from visions or dreams, or evidence from fantasy-prone personality types without some backup. It is subjecting these testimonies to the screen used for primary historical documents.
Why alien abductions? Well, for God experiences, I haven’t experience any, but you are asking me to accept the experiences of others as good evidence for the existence of God. Similarly I am asking if you are willing to accept the experiences of others as good evidence for the existence of alien abductions. The situations are quite similar. And the question in neither case is whether you accept the experiences themselves. I accept the experiences in both cases, but reject the step of saying the the experiences imply the physical existence of the thing experienced.
A big objection many of us have to religious arguments is special pleading. This is an excellent example. Why should I give any more credence to experience of God than I do to experiences with aliens (or succubi for that matter?) That many of us were brought up to believe in God is no justification.
Voyager, I don’t know why you keep saying -'m expecting or even wanting you to accept anything.it is not logical to say that someone seeing or experiencing God is not offering evidence that God exists. It is also not logical to say that person’s belief in God is irrational if you haven’t had the same experience, and are withhout other evidence that the person is biased or deluded. You can, obviously, conclude as they do in Scotland that the correct verdict is “not proven”
Even in Scotland the judge can say, “Why are you wasting my time with this? You don’t have a case to bring forth, and you know it. Get the hell out of my courtroom!” There’s not a court in Scotland(or anywhere else) that would dignify the slim(to the point of being invisible) pickings you have with a “Not Proven”.
You are equating a belief contained inside of someones head with actual physical evidence. This is a fallacy. You have totally succumbed to the personal Bias that the scientific method is designed to guard against. It is absolutely logical to say a persons belief in god is irrational, the claim that a super duper supernatural santa clause is up there watching you and hoping you do the right thing and all the other nonsense is preposterous. Your continued argument that this is somehow valid evidence is just further sign of your own susceptibility to personal bias. Click the link in the op and read even one of them.
The whole point of the op was that you provide evidence WITHOUT resorting to fallacy and or bias. It simply cannot be done.