What evidence?

[Vera_Ljuba]

I agree with your last point 100%.

Thank you.

The point about prayers you make here isn’t as it happens germane (by no means weakening your overall point). Individuals may OR MAY NOT have a slot machine attitude and that needn’t matter to anyone else. If we think God has answered that’s for us, it was never intended to convince you.

I am sure you know the expression: “acts speak louder than words”. Many believers like to bring up “answered prayers” as evidence for God. The overwhelmingly unanswered ones are not to be mentioned in “polite” company.

 

[Vic_Taltrees_UK]

… Many believers like to bring up “answered prayers” as evidence for God. The overwhelmingly unanswered ones are not to be mentioned in “polite” company.

There are ones that haven’t been answered yet. And those that aren’t going to be answered. And those to which the answer will be no.

And some of all those kinds, we shan’t understand till another time.

 

[minkymurph]

Gnostism is about knowledge (aka justified belief). It’s justified belief because we can not tell, yet, how that experience was not part of the reality we all experience verse some computer program for example. Its the only reality we understand regardless if it is a computer program or actual reality. We can’t tell a difference.

Theism is about belief or what you’ve been convinced of about experiences of reality, about the knowledge of reality.

Ex: I am currently experiencing gravity, so I have knowledge of the experience of gravity. Now what causes gravity in a repeatable way, that explanation about the experience of gravity is what I believe about gravity.
So knowledge is our direct experiences of reality and belief is what we use as an explanation for those experiences.

So you can be:

1. Gnostic theist - Knows that a deity exists through an experience of an event they attribute to the supernatural and are convinced/believe that the supernatural realm exists. - god intervenes in our reality. (The positive statements “to know X” and “to believe X” needs to be justified and defended since the default position is to not know something or to not believe something till a justified reason is presented.)
2. Agnostic Theist - Does not know that a deity exists since they have not experienced an event that they would attribute to the supernatural but are convinced/believe that the supernatural realm exists. Typical clockwork theist - god put everything into motion and does not intervene. (The positive statement, “to believe X” needs to be justified and defended since the default position is to not know something or to not believe something till a justified reason is presented.)
3. Gnostic Atheist - Knows that no deities exists since they have not experienced any event that they would attribute to the supernatural and are not convinced/does not believe the supernatural realm exists. (The positive statement, “to know X” needs to be justified and defended since the default position is to not know something or to not believe something till a justified reason is presented.)
4. Agnostic Atheist - Does not know that the supernatural exists since they have not experienced any event that they would attribute to the supernatural and are not convinced/does not believe the supernatural realm exists.

Agnostics Atheist - this is the default position everyone is born to. They have not experienced an event of the supernatural to know if its there and they haven’t been convinced/believe through arguments that the supernatural is there either.

So agnostic and atheist are not mutually exclusive. They can be both/and.

I always thought the agnostic position was nothing is known or can be known of the existence of God. As such one cannot know whether there is a God or not. Even if one has a supernatural experience there is no way of knowing it was God. By contrast, have some atheists not stated they know for certain there is no God and the supernatural does not exist?

 

[minkymurph]

I always thought the agnostic position was nothing is known or can be known of the existence of God. As such one cannot know whether there is a God or not. Even if one has a supernatural experience there is no way of knowing it was God. By contrast, have some atheists not stated they know for certain there is no God and the supernatural does not exist?

I have also heard some atheist’s imply they have a dislike of agnostic’s as in their view they sit on the fence rather than man up to stating they are an atheist.

 

[Russell_SA]

I always thought the agnostic position was nothing is known or can be known of the existence of God. As such one cannot know whether there is a God or not. Even if one has a supernatural experience there is no way of knowing it was God. By contrast, have some atheists not stated they know for certain there is no God and the supernatural does not exist?

You are right in everything you presented there.
Making a statement about knowing something is a Gnostic statement
So that person would be gnostic (knowing) or agnostic (not knowing) about the topic being discussed.
The person making a belief claim, aka what they have been convinced of, are making a theist claim. Like jury members. They were not there to know what actually happened, they are only at the trial to be convinced or not convinced about the topic being discussed. So by default, they are atheistic to the defendant being guilty. The defendant is, by default, innocent until the jury is convinced that the defendant is guilty. So the jury starts off as atheistic about the defendant’s guilt and then becomes convinced that the defendant is most probably guilty, making the jury theistic about the person’s guilt. Little muddy there but not sure how to clarify it better. If you can improve on my example let me know.

 

[Russell_SA]

I have also heard some atheist’s imply they have a dislike of agnostic’s as in their view they sit on the fence rather than man up to stating they are an atheist.

Yeah I know, like Jim Jeffery’s standup comedy. He doesn’t distinguish between the two, but most of the atheists I know will distinguish between the two.
Clock work theists are also agnostic as well. They claim to have never actually experienced an event that they attribute to a deity, so they don’t have a knowledge claim about the deity’s existence. However, they are convinced through logical reasoning that there most likely is a deity, just that it doesn’t actually interact in our reality. So the clock-work deity: it set everything into motion at the big bang and sits back and sees what comes out of it, never interacting.

 

[mkoopman]

Gnostism is about knowledge (aka justified belief). It’s justified belief because we can not tell, yet, how that experience was not part of the reality we all experience …

Agnostics Atheist - this is the default position everyone is born to. They have not experienced an event of the supernatural to know if its there and they haven’t been convinced/believe through arguments that the supernatural is there either.

So agnostic and atheist are not mutually exclusive. They can be both/and.

Brainwashing not knowledge and especially not knowledge systems in the vein of frames or rulebased constructs.

Young children often know God and relate naturally to that Guardian Angel who was given to them by God. Our pride grows and the enemy comes and changes our true understanding to an adult reality where the unborn are not babies but “non-persons,” in legal reality. No wonder SCOTUS tells us we can be whatever make believe construct we desire for ourselves. Life is an agnostic tea party with our imaginary friends because our great statesman have such deep knowledge.

Cultural prejudices and false academic images and models lead to declaring agnostic views as the default. Truth exists and virtuous living leads to the freedom to know what exists in absolute reality which includes experience of both concrete and spiritual reality. We transcend material existence in our relationship with our Creator.

 

[ThinkingSapien]

Is the Atlantic Ocean agnostic atheist then?

The -ist suffix usually indicates that the word is being applied to a person. There’s no ambiguity about its lack of ambiguity to non-persons. It’s also implied that a person to which it is applied is capable of thought. So I would not try to apply the word to someone in a coma, someone that is brain dead, or otherwise not capable of having a thought on the matter.

 

[minkymurph]

You are right in everything you presented there.
Making a statement about knowing something is a Gnostic statement
So that person would be gnostic (knowing) or agnostic (not knowing) about the topic being discussed.
The person making a belief claim, aka what they have been convinced of, are making a theist claim. Like jury members. They were not there to know what actually happened, they are only at the trial to be convinced or not convinced about the topic being discussed. So by default, they are atheistic to the defendant being guilty. The defendant is, by default, innocent until the jury is convinced that the defendant is guilty. So the jury starts off as atheistic about the defendant’s guilt and then becomes convinced that the defendant is most probably guilty, making the jury theistic about the person’s guilt. Little muddy there but not sure how to clarify it better. If you can improve on my example let me know.

Can’t run with your comparison to a jury. To my knowledge the term ‘atheist’ refers only to belief in God or gods and thus in my view has cannot be applied to anything else - but I nit pick.

Using it as a comparison jury’s do not lack a belief the defendant exists. Nor do they lack a belief something happened - for instance someone was murdered. They do not lack a belief sufficient evidence exists in order to charge the defendant with the crime. If there was not sufficient evidence they would not be charged. They do not consider the defendant innocent. They presume the defendant is innocent. What this means is the trial proceeds as if they are innocent. A jury may obliged to acquit yet in fact be convinced in their minds the defendant is guilty. Thus, the conclusion they are obliged to reach based on evidence is not what they belief to in fact be true. Thus, the jury are not ‘atheists’ but rather agnostic’s at the outset of a trial.

I say this as to me the distinction between the average agnostic and the average atheist is in general the average agnostic approaches consideration of the existence of God from a neutral position - whereas by contrast the atheist approaches it from a partisan position - strongly supports the view there is no God from the outset.

 

[tonyrey]

TMany believers like to bring up “answered prayers” as evidence for God. The overwhelmingly unanswered ones are not to be mentioned in “polite” company.

The opinion that not all prayers are answered proves nothing nor are there relevant statistics. A prayer may** seem** to be unanswered but it is impossible to know whether a miracle would be in everyone’s best interest. Death, for example, is not the worst evil.

 

[tonyrey]

Can’t run with your comparison to a jury. To my knowledge the term ‘atheist’ refers only to belief in God or gods and thus in my view has cannot be applied to anything else - but I nit pick.

Using it as a comparison jury’s do not lack a belief the defendant exists. Nor do they lack a belief something happened - for instance someone was murdered. They do not lack a belief sufficient evidence exists in order to charge the defendant with the crime. If there was not sufficient evidence they would not be charged. They do not consider the defendant innocent. They presume the defendant is innocent. What this means is the trial proceeds as if they are innocent. A jury may obliged to acquit yet in fact be convinced in their minds the defendant is guilty. Thus, the conclusion they are obliged to reach based on evidence is not what they belief to in fact be true. Thus, the jury are not ‘atheists’ but rather agnostic’s at the outset of a trial.

I say this as to me the distinction between the average agnostic and the average atheist is in general the average agnostic approaches consideration of the existence of God from a neutral position - whereas by contrast the atheist approaches it from a partisan position - strongly supports the view there is no God from the outset.

And often attacks religion into the bargain!

 

[Russell_SA]

Can’t run with your comparison to a jury. To my knowledge the term ‘atheist’ refers only to belief in God or gods and thus in my view has cannot be applied to anything else - but I nit pick.

It does. In my analogy, I applied the words “atheist” and “theist” in place of the phrases “to not believe” and “to believe” in my example.

Using it as a comparison jury’s do not lack a belief the defendant exists.

That’s missing the point of the analogy. The analogy is about where people start out with the default position of not believing and must become convinced. The jury, obviously, do not have a lack of belief that the defendant exists or does not exist, but only a lack of belief that the defendant is guilty of the event they are being accused of. In the case of a deity, it is being accused of existence just as a different defended is accused of murder, not paying taxes, what ever else. That is the default position, “presumed innocent until the jury is convinced the defendant is most likely guilty”.

So to make the trial analogy more clear, the defendant is “the idea that a god exists”. By default, the position is not to believe a claim someone is making until there is sufficient evidence presented by the side making the positive claim. We all do this, some kid claims that his dad can throw a ball around the moon, someone claims the earth is flat, someone claims X. The default position is to not believe them until they convince you. You have not direct knowledge of that event, so you are agnostic if it actually happened. So you must become convinced that what they are presenting is the best, most-likely, explanation for what happened, aka: what you believe about what they are claiming to have happened. So the default position the jury is taking on this trial is the atheist position, that the idea of a deity is not the case until the prosecution presents their reasons why “the idea that a god exists” is guilty of existence instead of the default position of “not guilty of existence”.

Nor do they lack a belief something happened - for instance someone was murdered.

You can have a lack of belief about anything, even murder. If there is no body and no evidence of foul play for example. Where the case is indistinguishable from someone just walking away from the situation and went into hiding. Or that someone’s claim of magic or the supernatural is indistinguishable from ignorance of a natural explanation.

They do not lack a belief sufficient evidence exists in order to charge the defendant with the crime.

The amount of evidence is irrelevant for the prosecution to make the assertion of X. Take the kids bragging about their dads again, My dad can through the ball around the moon. My dad can show the earth is flat. Etc. Just that if the prosecution’s goal is to sway the jury, they need to understand what it would take to most-likely win that case instead of what they feel personally about the case and what evidence it took for the prosecution to believe X about the defendant. As a jury member, it’s not on the jury to assume what the prosecution has for their case, it’s only up to the jury to give feedback to the prosecution for why they succeeded or failed in convincing the jury to believe what the prosecution is presenting.

If there was not sufficient evidence they would not be charged.

Yes they would, look at the book, To Kill a Mockingbird for example. All the prosecution needed for that case was a white woman to point to a black man and say he did it to win that case. The amount of evidence is irrelevant for someone to make an assertion. You can find people everyday, live and still walking around that you can go talk to, that claim to have been abducted by aliens or that the supernatural is real. The only evidence of that is their testimony for example.

They do not consider the defendant innocent. They presume the defendant is innocent.

I don’t really see a significant difference between these two semantic points.

 

[Russell_SA]

What this means is the trial proceeds as if they are innocent. A jury may obliged to acquit yet in fact be convinced in their minds the defendant is guilty. Thus, the conclusion they are obliged to reach based on evidence is not what they belief to in fact be true.

Acquitted just means the jury found the defendant not guilty; aka the prosecution did not meet its burden of proof for the claim they were accusing the defendant of. The jury may believe this person was involved but not guilty to the particular charge the prosecution is presenting or believe this person has the capacity to do the crime but not convinced they defendant actually did this particular crime. Such as a murder charge. They may believe the person didn’t commit the murder but may have assisted in the cover-up. Or they may believe that this person could have committed the murder, but there is not enough evidence that this particular person committed this actual murder. Such as every paid hitman on trial. You have to connect the facts to this particular person instead of the idea that this person may have murdered in the past, but that’s not what this case is about. It’s about this person committing this actual murder. So yes, the jury may not believe this person is innocent of murder, but that they can’t conclude that the defendant is guilty of this particular murder since there wasn’t enough evidence to link this person to this particular crime. Maybe she was out of the country at the time of the murder, etc.

Thus, the jury are not ‘atheists’ but rather agnostic’s at the outset of a trial.

They are atheist, are not convinced, that the hitman defendant committed this particular murder she is being accused of even if they are theistic, are convinced, that she has the capability of committing murder before and that they are convinced she has committed murder before. But that’s not what this trial was about. It was about a particular murder, not that she could and has been a murderer.

I say this as to me the distinction between the average agnostic and the average atheist is in general the average agnostic approaches consideration of the existence of God from a neutral position - whereas by contrast the atheist approaches it from a partisan position - strongly supports the view there is no God from the outset.

So you seem to use the word atheist as I would use the words Gnostic Atheist and you use the word agnostic as I would use the words Agnostic Atheist. Ok, just as long as we understand each other. I just see a difference between the two labels since these groups tend to point out that distinction and that seems important to them instead of the labels that outside members use on them.

 

[Russell_SA]

The opinion that not all prayers are answered proves nothing nor are there relevant statistics. A prayer may** seem** to be unanswered but it is impossible to know whether a miracle would be in everyone’s best interest. Death, for example, is not the worst evil.

Sounds like the “argument of evil” presentation:
The idea of necessary evil due to god’s plan kind of removes the need of a devil and free-will and now the devil and “free-will” is just part of god’s plan. Just as the argument goes, you lost the battle but I’ll win the war. So people that are being punished in hell for not believing in a deity due to the evils they’ve had to experience and applied their “free-will” to analyze that situation and concluded atheism is the best result since a loving god would not have allowed their lives to go down that road and would have protected them, but it didn’t. Their lives turned out no better than if they lived in a world without a deity protecting them, so they concluded there actually is not jesus taking the wheel. That deity allowed and directed terrible events to happen to those people. So are they are just collateral damage so that everyone else can be in heaven? Who needs a devil with a deity like that?

 

[tonyrey]

Sounds like the “argument of evil” presentation:
The idea of necessary evil due to god’s plan kind of removes the need of a devil and free-will and now the devil and “free-will” is just part of god’s plan.

The idea that evil is totally unnecessary has no rational foundation. It implies that a perfect world is possible, an assumption that requires justification.

Just as the argument goes, you lost the battle but I’ll win the war. So people that are being punished in hell for not believing in a deity due to the evils they’ve had to experience and applied their “free-will” to analyze that situation and concluded atheism is the best result since a loving god would not have allowed their lives to go down that road and would have protected them, but it didn’t.

A false interpretation of hell which is a state of self-inflicted isolation as the result of pride and presumption.

Their lives turned out no better than if they lived in a world without a deity protecting them, so they concluded there actually is not jesus taking the wheel. That deity allowed and directed terrible events to happen to those people. So are they are just collateral damage so that everyone else can be in heaven? Who needs a devil with a deity like that?

An earthly paradise is an infantile fantasy! In a Godless universe there are no such things as “terrible events” because everything is the product of Chance and Necessity. In a word (used by Camus and Sartre) “absurd”…

 

[Russell_SA]

The idea that evil is totally unnecessary has no rational foundation. It implies that a perfect world is possible, an assumption that requires justification.

So this deity is both devil and deity now? I believe that is a logically grounded conclusion from your statement. So people that have to endure those “evils” that other people do not have to endure, are logically justified in concluding this world is godless, if they were sold on the identifying factors of a deity as being all loving and all powerful and eternal. The events in their lives are a direct contradiction to those qualities. Now they are being punished forever for their response to what their deity did to them.
Good and evil are the emergent properties of higher intelligent beings that are forced into limited shared resources with other higher intelligent beings. This is why it’s not good or evil when a volcano takes out a landscape of plants and rocks. You don’t need a perfect world to have a good-enough world. A world where everyone have the resources they need to thrive. Such as access to food. You don’t need all the apples in the world to feed yourself, only just enough to feed yourself. Any more apples after that is just excess. Same with psychological well-being. There is levels of evil that is unnecessary for us to thrive as people and still have conflicts to overcome. You don’t need to have rape and genocide, for example, to direct human flurishment. Anyone of us is more ethical and moral than this deity for allowing those evils in it’s justification of “You’ll win the battle but I’ll win the war.” approach.

A false interpretation of hell which is a state of self-inflicted isolation as the result of pride and presumption.

There are many other sects of Christianity that would fundamentally disagree with you on this and would state the same thing you are asserting as truth as well. How can we tell who’s right on this never-never land scenario?

An earthly paradise is an infantile fantasy! In a Godless universe there are no such things as “terrible events” because everything is the product of Chance and Necessity. In a word (used by Camus and Sartre) “absurd”…

There are terrible events in a god-less universe since in this reality without a deity, good and bad are referenced to human well-being as I understand it. We can reach a good-enough paradise which is perfect for me. As long as everyone has access to what they need to thrive, any more access is just bonus. Best way to reach that would be through family planning so that our species can live within the means of this planet. In August of this year, we reached the limit of what this planet can renewably provide for our species. But it seems the catholic religion’s practices and teachings are fundamentally against this and are getting in the way of our species living within those means which is causing fighting over these limited resources. Thanks for being a direct causal link to this issue that is causing the misery of millions all over the world.

 

[minkymurph]

It does. In my analogy, I applied the words “atheist” and “theist” in place of the phrases “to not believe” and “to believe” in my example.

That’s missing the point of the analogy. The analogy is about where people start out with the default position of not believing and must become convinced. The jury, obviously, do not have a lack of belief that the defendant exists or does not exist, but only a lack of belief that the defendant is guilty of the event they are being accused of. In the case of a deity, it is being accused of existence just as a different defended is accused of murder, not paying taxes, what ever else. That is the default position, “presumed innocent until the jury is convinced the defendant is most likely guilty”.

So to make the trial analogy more clear, the defendant is “the idea that a god exists”. By default, the position is not to believe a claim someone is making until there is sufficient evidence presented by the side making the positive claim. We all do this, some kid claims that his dad can throw a ball around the moon, someone claims the earth is flat, someone claims X. The default position is to not believe them until they convince you. You have not direct knowledge of that event, so you are agnostic if it actually happened. So you must become convinced that what they are presenting is the best, most-likely, explanation for what happened, aka: what you believe about what they are claiming to have happened. So the default position the jury is taking on this trial is the atheist position, that the idea of a deity is not the case until the prosecution presents their reasons why “the idea that a god exists” is guilty of existence instead of the default position of “not guilty of existence”.

You can have a lack of belief about anything, even murder. If there is no body and no evidence of foul play for example. Where the case is indistinguishable from someone just walking away from the situation and went into hiding. Or that someone’s claim of magic or the supernatural is indistinguishable from ignorance of a natural explanation.

The amount of evidence is irrelevant for the prosecution to make the assertion of X. Take the kids bragging about their dads again, My dad can through the ball around the moon. My dad can show the earth is flat. Etc. Just that if the prosecution’s goal is to sway the jury, they need to understand what it would take to most-likely win that case instead of what they feel personally about the case and what evidence it took for the prosecution to believe X about the defendant. As a jury member, it’s not on the jury to assume what the prosecution has for their case, it’s only up to the jury to give feedback to the prosecution for why they succeeded or failed in convincing the jury to believe what the prosecution is presenting.

Yes they would, look at the book, To Kill a Mockingbird for example. All the prosecution needed for that case was a white woman to point to a black man and say he did it to win that case. The amount of evidence is irrelevant for someone to make an assertion. You can find people everyday, live and still walking around that you can go talk to, that claim to have been abducted by aliens or that the supernatural is real. The only evidence of that is their testimony for example.

I don’t really see a significant difference between these two semantic points.

The difference is highly significant in at law. In a legal sense presumed innocent dies not mean the jury do not believe the defendant is guilty.

The jury in To Kill a Mocking Bird were by no stretch of the imagination ‘atheists’ in my view.

What is believed and what can be proven are two very different things.

 

[tonyrey]

The idea that evil is totally unnecessary has no rational foundation. It implies that a perfect world is possible, an assumption that requires justification.

Only if you deny the existence of free will - which implies that everyone is irrational…

So people that have to endure those “evils” that other people do not have to endure, are logically justified in concluding this world is godless, if they were sold on the identifying factors of a deity as being all loving and all powerful and eternal. The events in their lives are a direct contradiction to those qualities. Now they are being punished forever for their response to what their deity did to them.

Only if you deny the existence of free will - which implies that everyone is irrational…

Good and evil are the emergent properties of higher intelligent beings that are forced into limited shared resources with other higher intelligent beings.

If good and evil are emergent properties they are merely human conventions.

This is why it’s not good or evil when a volcano takes out a landscape of plants and rocks. You don’t need a perfect world to have a good-enough world. A world where everyone have the resources they need to thrive. Such as access to food. You don’t need all the apples in the world to feed yourself, only just enough to feed yourself. Any more apples after that is just excess. Same with psychological well-being. There is levels of evil that is unnecessary for us to thrive as people and still have conflicts to overcome. You don’t need to have rape and genocide, for example, to direct human flurishment. Anyone of us is more ethical and moral than this deity for allowing those evils in it’s justification of “You’ll win the battle but I’ll win the war.” approach.

You are assuming good and evil are not emergent properties!

A false interpretation of hell which is a state of self-inflicted isolation as the result of pride and presumption.

There are many other sects of Christianity that would fundamentally disagree with you on this and would state the same thing you are asserting as truth as well. How can we tell who’s right on this never-never land scenario?

Differences of opinion do not invalidate the fact that a state of self-inflicted isolation is the result of pride and presumption.

An earthly paradise is an infantile fantasy! In a Godless universe there are no such things as “terrible events” because everything is the product of Chance and Necessity. In a word (used by Camus and Sartre) “absurd”…

There are terrible events in a god-less universe since in this reality without a deity, good and bad are referenced to human well-being as I understand it. We can reach a good-enough paradise which is perfect for me. As long as everyone has access to what they need to thrive, any more access is just bonus. Best way to reach that would be through family planning so that our species can live within the means of this planet. In August of this year, we reached the limit of what this planet can renewably provide for our species. But it seems the catholic religion’s practices and teachings are fundamentally against this and are getting in the way of our species living within those means which is causing fighting over these limited resources. Thanks for being a direct causal link to this issue that is causing the misery of millions all over the world.

All your statements imply that good and evil are not emergent properties and are therefore self-contradictory…

 

[Russell_SA]

The difference is highly significant in at law. In a legal sense presumed innocent dies not mean the jury do not believe the defendant is guilty.

Everyone starts off at a default position of not believing what someone is about to present until that person presenting their belief meets the burden of proof for the listening audience. The other way around is to assume everyone believes every idea possible before someone presents their case which is not ever the case in reality. So by default, the jury members do presume the person on trial is innocent of the charge put to them until the prosecution presents their reasons for why the prosecution believes the defendant is guilty. It’s not a “legal” sense to presume someone is innocent unless that jury member already has a bias towards people that look like that defendant. Oh she’s white and privileged, so she must have done it or had been involved. The assumption is that the jury selection removed people of bias so that everyone starts off as having no assumptions either way about the defendant. They don’t believe she is guilty though because, again, the default position is to assume the defendant is an innocent person. Just as the case for god being charged with “existence”. The default position is to not believe god is guilty of existence until the prosecution makes their case for why god would be guilty of existence. This is so basically obvious that I’m going to assume that you are just trying to be argumentative and ignoring what I am actually presenting and just wasting my time with this response and everyone else reading this.

The jury in To Kill a Mocking Bird were by no stretch of the imagination ‘atheists’ in my view.

I was pointing out an example where the prosecution only needed very little evidence to present their case. You were talking about the idea that someone being a defendant must have a justified amount of evidence against them for the prosecution to charge them with a crime. So the example in the story was where the prosecution needed only someone’s testimony to charge the defendant and no actual evidence at all. The point was to show that the amount of evidence needed for someone to believe something could be very little for the person believing it and would be not be enough for other people. You know this is what I was presenting, so I don’t know why you keep wasting my time and the readers’ time with these absurd responses.

What is believed and what can be proven are two very different things.

I seem people using those two words in our culture as interchangeable. Ex: Person A believes X. Person B asks them to prove why that is the case, why that is justified to believe that. That’s all I see that as being. If they can’t prove their case, aka justify that belief to the audience, then the audience will not be swayed to believe their conclusion is valid.

 

[Russell_SA]

Only if you deny the existence of free will - which implies that everyone is irrational…

How are natural disasters a choice of free will? How is distributing limited resources around, but still not enough to have people survive, a choice of free will? How is cancer, larva that eats the retina of children’s eyes, drought and blight in crops, people being too ignorant to solve their problems, free will?

Only if you deny the existence of free will - which implies that everyone is irrational…
If good and evil are emergent properties they are merely human conventions.

Belittling the experience of being human has no bearing on that experience. It’s like saying, being human can only merely run 13 mph. Yes, that is the case. Belittling it, does not change the case of that being part of the human experience though. Also, when you discover a truth about this reality that you don’t like doesn’t mean your invented solution to that problem actually exists or manifests in reality. How reality actually is, is completely independent from how you would like it to be or your imagined solutions to that problem. I don’t like volcanos taking out my village, so I’m going to invent a deity to appease so that the volcano doesn’t erupt even though I can not demonstrate in any way that deity is actually there at all. That’s really all that argument is that you presented. Your imagined deity to solve the free will problem and the problem of good and evil. You actually have to demonstrate that deity is any different than every other imagined deity through history to protect us from the dark.

You are assuming good and evil are not emergent properties!

No baby Huey - I’m pointing out different levels of good and evil. You can still have those in a world, just not that extreme. Just like growing up in your parent’s house. We’ve all experienced what life is like with someone looking after our best interests and yet we still have good and bad days. But, the lucky ones, didn’t experience child rape or their parents killing off your brother and sister just so that you can experience the full affects off “good” and “evil”. Since there is that extreme level of “evil” in the world, people that have to go through those events are justified in concluding that a loving/all-powerful/everywhere deity does not exist. There still could be a deity out there, but it doesn’t care for them, so they don’t believe in the first idea of the deity and would not want to worship or have anything to do with the deity that they’ve actually had to experience.

Differences of opinion do not invalidate the fact that a state of self-inflicted isolation is the result of pride and presumption.

To many of the religious, their religion does not teach that hell is what you are describing and they are backing this up with scriptural references for their justification. I don’t care what kind of hell people believe in because it’s just arguing over who’s better imagined never-never land is worse.

All your statements imply that good and evil are not emergent properties and are therefore self-contradictory…

Disagree. See I can make statements and then not explain why I made that statement. It’s quick and glib and dismissive and shows that you really don’t care about discussing the points and come to why people have different understandings on this topic. It’s cute but annoying.