Well, why?

[Marc_Anthony]

Waaaaiiiiit a moment here. AntiTheist said this:

“So is that the end of this thread [referring to Luke K mentioning that there is no empirical evidence for God’s existence]? I could have told you that 14 pages ago, but Marc Anthony is going to be so disappointed now.”

…But my original question was NOT “What empirical evidence is there for God’s existence?”

Instead, my question was:

“Why believe in one God if no empirical evidence supports God’s existence?”

I already KNOW that no empirical evidence supports God’s existence. What I asked is if there was any good reason to believe in God DESPITE that.

Which is what we’re discussing.

 

[Windfish]

Not really, one can question the whole process by which the story ‘emerged’, the nature of the ‘evidence’ collected and the ‘methodology’ by which the ‘evidence’ was collected.

I provided for this, actually: “wild conspiracies and skepticism.”

You are totally within your right to question the nature of the evidence and the methodology used to obtain it, but I think you will have a hard time doing so since it doesn’t get any stronger or simpler, respectively. It is like I said earlier, you would have to assert that someone like Almeida was paid or otherwise coerced, and that assertion could only be just that, an arbitrary and unreasonable assertion, especially given the evidence that squashes that possibility. Needless to say, of course you can question, of course you can. We’ve debunked the moon-landing, after all.

 

[Windfish]

Again, I’m skimming through multiple pages in a hurry, so apologize for the multiple posts.

Windfish, you’ve mentioned this a couple times, and I was wondering if you could expand on it. As far as I know, Fatima is a uniquely well attested and documented miracle. Can you fill me in on some of the others you’re referring to?

Thanks!

I’ll PM you. Like I said before, the problem has never been evidence. If it was that easy, there wouldn’t be atheists. The problem is getting them not to suppress that evidence. I know Kaninchen is not an atheist, but just take a look at the lengths she is going so she doesn’t have to deal with simple and strong attestation and history.

 

[Kaninchen]

I provided for this, actually: “wild conspiracies and skepticism.”

You are totally within your right to question the nature of the evidence and the methodology used to obtain it, but I think you will have a hard time doing so since it doesn’t get any stronger or simpler, respectively. It is like I said earlier, you would have to assert that someone like Almeida was paid or otherwise coerced, and that assertion could only be just that, an arbitrary and unreasonable assertion, especially given the evidence that squashes that possibility. Needless to say, of course you can question, of course you can. We’ve debunked the moon-landing, after all.

That’s rather a ‘spin’ answer - since I wasn’t making wild assertions.

In order to investigate, one would have to look at the whole business from the start, look at who was doing the investigating, look at the nature of the evidence collected and how it was collected.

Reading re-hashed books that re-hash books, that re-hash books and are committed to a particular perspective may be very satisfying but demanding that everybody accepts their conclusions is another matter altogether.

Now, since we’ve arrived at a ‘Oh, yes it is!’/‘Oh, no it isn’t!’ point, do we need to continue ‘Oh, yes it is!’/‘Oh, no it isn’t!’ for much longer?

 

[Kaninchen]

I’ll PM you. Like I said before, the problem has never been evidence. If it was that easy, there wouldn’t be atheists. The problem is getting them not to suppress that evidence. I know Kaninchen is not an atheist, but just take a look at the lengths she is going so she doesn’t have to deal with simple and strong attestation and history.

Now, what did I say, originally, about the dangers of arriving at ‘uncharitable’ situations?

 

[Windfish]

That’s rather a ‘spin’ answer - since I wasn’t making wild assertions.

In order to investigate, one would have to look at the whole business from the start, look at who was doing the investigating, look at the nature of the evidence collected and how it was collected.

Reading re-hashed books that re-hash books, that re-hash books and are committed to a particular perspective may be very satisfying but demanding that everybody accepts their conclusions is another matter altogether.

Now, since we’ve arrived at a ‘Oh, yes it is!’/‘Oh, no it isn’t!’ point, do we need to continue ‘Oh, yes it is!’/‘Oh, no it isn’t!’ for much longer?

Yes, I think we do. It is that important. It does not get any simpler, for example, than professional journalists on the scene who were predisposed to derision and doubt (I hope I do not have to reiterate this) but reported what they had every incentive not to, anyway. This is simple attestation by embarrassment. I am sorry, but to question THAT is tantamount to what I said earlier: “wild conspiracy and skepticism.”

 

[AntiTheist]

I’ll respond to the only good question that’s been posed:

Natural Enquirer:

You’ve tried to sneak this “crowd psychology” in a few times, and I tried to call you on it but maybe wasn’t clear enough.

To be clear, I wasn’t “sneaking” anything in. I was – as I explicitly stated – wildly speculating on a potential natural explanation for these mistaken reports about seeing the sun dance.

As far as I know, no crowd psychology phenomenon has ever produced anything analagous to Fatima. You haven’t shown one. The closest thing you’ve brought up was Copperfields Statue of Liberty trick, which seems wildly different.

Are you aware of any other such incidents?

I don’t need to produce other such incidents, partially because I’m not asserting this explanation as the answer to what actually happened. I am speculating that it’s a possibility. [Incidentally, people like to throw around the number 70,000, but I would want to question exactly how many first-hand accounts we actually have…but this is a parenthetical aside, because even if we had 70,000 accounts, the rest of my point still stands]

You seem to be avoiding the issue here. I’m claiming that the evidence for thinking that Fatima was a supernatural event is not sufficient to support that claim (although I do agree that it is consistent with that explanation – just as it is consistent with many other supernatural and natural explanations).

You can’t make the evidence sufficient by saying, “People said they saw it, so it happened!”

And this, by the way, is the point of invoking the Statue of Liberty trick…no amount of eyewitness testimony is sufficient to support a claim of an event that other evidence tells us for certain did not happen.

I will write that again because it’s important: no amount of eyewitness testimony is sufficient to support a claim of an event that other evidence tells us for certain did not happen.

The evidence does tell us that people thought they saw the sun dancing; but other evidence, evidence from the world outside of our minds, informs us that the sun did no such thing. So, here we have a large-scale mistake in perception.

What exactly is that sufficient to demonstrate?

No one has to offer any other explanations – “I don’t know” is a perfectly acceptable answer here – because a large group of people making an honest mistake isn’t sufficient evidence for the intervention of the supernatural.

And even if you could demonstrate that something supernatural happened, there’s still no way to demonstrate that the cause of this event is the supernatural being that you believe in.

Can we stop with the ghost stories now?

 

[Windfish]

My challenge to you was to find an alternative natural explanation. I have shown, unless you think otherwise, that all alternative explanations are inadequate and that only a miraculous explanation is possible given the evidence. From here, we simply note that it was the children who claimed to see the Virgin Mary (as per Catholic religion) during the previous months that predicted to the day, to the hour, to the second, to the place of the miracle.

You think you are proving something by saying it’s a “ghost story.” It’s not. It’s a historical event with vast historical evidence that you are obstinately suppressing. So yeah, as I wrote in length earlier, start with that “impossible” assumption. Work your way from there and the end point is still the same.*

*I mean, seriously, this is what I have found odd about this discussion with you. By virtue of what miracles are, they could always be labeled “ghost stories” (i.e., encounters of the supernatural), so I’m not sure what you think you are proving. In any case, this goes far beyond a “ghost story,” we have vast historical evidence which proved it happen, the same as with any historical event. OF COURSE you’re going to start with an impossible assumption, OF COURSE. That is what a miracle is. But, as I said, if you work your way from there, the end point is the same.

 

[Luke_K]

No, it does not. You are making a category error by confusing rational assumptions with something entirely different: premises of logical arguments that we make within a system built on the foundation of the rational assumptions.

So your premises are built on assumptions? What makes your assumptions so rational other than “it’s just silly to think the opposite”? Why can’t I make the rational assumption that my inner awareness of the Christian God calling me to himself is present to all other humans if they are only willing to accept it? It’s an assumption based on my personal experiences and reason, which are literally all I have to go by.

There are assumptions that we all make – assumptions like our senses revealing a universe in which other minds exist – and given those assumptions, we have constructed a system of reason and evidence whereby we evaluate claims made about the world. Within that system, you need premises that come from evidence.

But your system is illogical. Why is your premise, that true statements must have evidence in order to be considered true, itself exempt from evidence? It sounds like special pleading to me.

Our discussion – like all discussions about any claims about the external world – takes the rational assumptions as given starting points. In order to evaluate claims about the external world (which we’re assuming is external and not the Matrix), we need to use the system of logic, reason, and evidence that we’ve come up with. Fundamental to that system is proceeding from true premises.

Maybe you’re confused by the fact that the word “assumptions” is sometimes used both for what I’m calling “rational assumptions” and “premises of logical arguments” above.

Probably, but I’m also confused that you have un-evidenced premises based on un-evidenced assumptions, and how that works in your system that says a claim about reality, whether or not that claim is an “assumption” or “premise of a logical argument” needs evidence in order to be considered more likely to be true than false (which is all your system can say).

Or are you just saying that logical premises and assumptions are not part of the external world? If that’s the case, then your logic is just as likely to be true as my logic. If it’s not the case, then you must provide evidence for them under your system. Choose your poison.

So is that the end of this thread? I could have told you that 14 pages ago, but Marc Anthony is going to be so disappointed now.

The question is why should we believe in a God without empirical evidence supporting him, not whether it is possible to provide empirical evidence of God to someone who presupposes that there is no such thing as a supernatural cause.

I didn’t mean that there is no empirical evidence of him, only that it is impossible to provide any to certain people.

Which brings up an interesting point: if this god wants people to believe in him – and if he is in the business of giving miraculous experiences to some people (apparently only to isolated lunatics and crowds whipped up into an anticipatory fervor) – why on earth wouldn’t he perform a miracle like you indicate above?

Doing something like spelling out a message in the stars is completely within the power of the Christian god – and we could even measure the stars’ position and determine that they really are deviating from their courses in a way that gravity shouldn’t allow, letting us know that we really are witnessing a miracle: a violation of the natural laws that we can measure.

Don’t give me that “he wants to respect our free will” line – you are still free to choose to accept or reject god if you have evidence of him. Satan, from Christian mythology, has absolute proof that god is real, and yet he freely chose to reject him, so there goes that line of argument.

What you’re really asking is, why didn’t God stop with the angels? Everything that you wish he would do with humanity, he already did with the angels. They were created with perfect knowledge of God (as far as their nature would allow), perfect capability of accepting or rejecting him, perfect knowledge of what the consequences of their actions were, and each of their decisions affected no other angel. However, because of this there is no forgiveness for them. Once they made their immediate act of will, that was it.

Honestly, I don’t know why God didn’t stop with the angels. I don’t know why he made us the way he did. Maybe it’s because he wished to bring good even out of evil, as shown by turning the freely-chosen evil attempt to kill Jesus into the perfect sacrifice to atone for all of humanity’s freely chosen evil. There is no atonement possible if we were angels.

So there is your answer: I don’t know. But if we understood all of God’s actions, that would be a proof for atheism because it would mean our minds would be equal to God’s.

 

[tonyrey]

It does not get any simpler, for example, than professional journalists on the scene who were predisposed to derision and doubt (I hope I do not have to reiterate this) but reported what they had every incentive not to, anyway.

Now that is certainly a fact that requires explanation… Otherwise the sceptics base their scepticism on the assumption that miracles never occur.

Were the sceptics who witnessed the phenomenon also the victims of mass hysteria?! A simpler explanation is that in spite of themselves they were compelled to witness an extraordinary event which did not occur! The sun did not spin - for obvious reasons - but it was nevertheless an objective phenomenon that cannot be explained by** natural **causes. **What happens in our minds is as real as what happens beyond our minds - and not all that happens in our minds has a physical explanation. ** Inspiration and intuition are obvious examples but so are mystical experiences.

To reject miracles out of hand is also to ignore the purpose(s) for which they occur. In a word they are considered out of their context - which is inevitable because for the sceptic there is no rational context, just blind, purposeless events…

 

[Windfish]

Now that is certainly a fact that requires explanation… Otherwise the sceptics base their scepticism on the assumption that miracles never occur.

Were the sceptics who witnessed the phenomenon also the victims of mass hysteria?! A simpler explanation is that in spite of themselves they were compelled to witness an extraordinary event which did not occur! The sun did not spin - for obvious reasons - but it was nevertheless an objective phenomenon that cannot be explained by** natural **causes. **What happens in our minds is as real as what happens beyond our minds - and not all that happens in our minds has a physical explanation. ** Inspiration and intuition are obvious examples but so are mystical experiences.

To reject miracles out of hand is also to ignore the purpose(s) for which they occur. In a word they are considered out of their context - which is inevitable because for the sceptic there is no rational context, just blind, purposeless events…

Unless I have misread you, you are supporting me but saying that the sun “did not spin.” The thing is, if it was a beach ball or some other suspended luminous orb that they saw, they would have reported it, don’t you think? But no, they saw the sun! :bigyikes:

 

[NaturalEnquirer]

Natural Enquirer: To be clear, I wasn’t “sneaking” anything in. I was – as I explicitly stated – wildly speculating on a potential natural explanation for these mistaken reports about seeing the sun dance.

You’re right. I apologize for that choice of words.

 

[tonyrey]

Don’t give me that “he wants to respect our free will” line – you are still free to choose to accept or reject god if you have evidence of him.

If the evidence is coercive you are still free to reject God but not the existence of God.

Satan, from Christian mythology, has absolute proof that god is real, and yet he freely chose to reject him, so there goes that line of argument.

And so can we even if we believe in Him…

Seriously, why wouldn’t your god do this? Why does he provide – according to Luke’s own words here – no empirical evidence of his existence (when his existence is supposedly a fact about the world, claims about which require empirical evidence to support) and then expect people to believe in him?

There is plenty of empirical evidence: the power of the mind and free will, the reality of good and evil, the immense complexity of the universe and the exquisite marvels of nature…

Why does the only evidence he supposedly provides – supposed miracle events – not leave any trace of their occurrence in the world?

They do leave traces of their occurrence, e.g. inexplicable, instantaneous, physical cures and phenomena like the spring of water at Lourdes…

 

[Kaninchen]

Yes, I think we do. It is that important.

To you, obviously, it’s that important.

It does not get any simpler, for example, than professional journalists on the scene who were predisposed to derision and doubt (I hope I do not have to reiterate this) but reported what they had every incentive not to, anyway. This is simple attestation by embarrassment. I am sorry, but to question THAT is tantamount to what I said earlier: “wild conspiracy and skepticism.”

I don’t think things like this grow through ‘wild conspiracy’. I think the mechanisms and motivations are much more complex than that - that things develop a kind of ‘life of their own’ based on the beliefs, thoughts and needs of the people involved and the people who become involved.

 

[tonyrey]

Unless I have misread you, you are supporting me but saying that the sun “did not spin.” The thing is, if it was a beach ball or some other suspended luminous orb that they saw, they would have reported it, don’t you think? But no, they saw the sun! :bigyikes:

They certainly saw the sun spin but the apparition need not have corresponded to a** physical **event. What matters is that it was a real supernatural experience similar to that which St Paul, St Francis and others have had. It was not a hallucination like a mirage but a spiritual occurrence far more significant than any ordinary event. When the Apostles saw Jesus after His Resurrection they saw His glorified body not the physical one He had on earth.

 

[Windfish]

I don’t think things like this grow through ‘wild conspiracy’. I think the mechanisms and motivations are much more complex than that - that things develop a kind of ‘life of their own’ based on the beliefs, thoughts and needs of the people involved and the people who become involved.

In this case, however, you have no basis for what you “think” other than your commitment to skepticism. Again, it does not get any simpler, for example, than professional journalists on the scene who were predisposed to derision and doubt (I hope I do not have to reiterate this) but reported what they had every incentive not to, anyway. This is simple attestation by embarrassment. I am sorry, but to question THAT is tantamount to what I said earlier: “wild conspiracy and skepticism.”

 

[Kaninchen]

In this case, however, you have no basis for what you “think” other than your commitment to skepticism. Again, it does not get any simpler, for example, than professional journalists on the scene who were predisposed to derision and doubt (I hope I do not have to reiterate this) but reported what they had every incentive not to, anyway. This is simple attestation by embarrassment. I am sorry, but to question THAT is tantamount to what I said earlier: “wild conspiracy and skepticism.”

Which is why I was saying we’d reached the ‘Oh, yes it is!/Oh, no it isn’t!’ of totally irreconcilable positions.

 

[Marc_Anthony]

Which is why I was saying we’d reached the ‘Oh, yes it is!/Oh, no it isn’t!’ of totally irreconcilable positions.

Why are you making your position irreconcilable though?

Windfish’s decision is irreconcilable because he did the research and has already reached a conclusion based on all the facts (or at least, if you want to get really specific, what he believes to be all the facts).

You refuse to reconcile your position for what seems to me no good reason other than that you don’t want to admit the Fatima apparitions are real. But the least you could do is look up the facts and try and judge them for yourself, right? As opposed to what you’re doing now, which is refusing to believe the Fatima apparitions could possibly be true.

 

[Windfish]

Which is why I was saying we’d reached the ‘Oh, yes it is!/Oh, no it isn’t!’ of totally irreconcilable positions.

I just do not see what there is to reconcile, though. I mean, the previous example belongs to a simple category of evidence: attestation by embarrassment. That is it. Where is the basis for your distrust? In other words, my “Oh, yes it is!” has basis and your “Oh, not it isn’t!” does not.

 

[Kaninchen]

Why are you making your position irreconcilable though?

Windfish’s decision is irreconcilable because he did the research and has already reached a conclusion based on all the facts (or at least, if you want to get really specific, what he believes to be all the facts).

You refuse to reconcile your position for what seems to me no good reason other than that you don’t want to admit the Fatima apparitions are real. But the least you could do is look up the facts and try and judge them for yourself, right? As opposed to what you’re doing now, which is refusing to believe the Fatima apparitions could possibly be true.

There are an enormous number of questions being begged there - I’ve been talking about them in my posts, if you’d looked, whilst being very careful about what how I was saying what I was saying.