dik909 wrote:What terms would you like me to define ?
What kind of evidence exactly do you need to know that the Rubikon crossing did happen? Proper debates start with a definition of terms, which you seem to refuse, as your reply to the definition of evidence required to proof god was answered by the, surprise, softest definition of evidence you can find, that is applicable to sociology, law or history, but not to observable physical interactions.
After all, I did already give the scholarly definition of 'evidence' which I go by.
Then we can end the discussion, since the god hypothesis has been disproven over and over and over again by that definition of evidence. Unless you want to define our god as not interacting with our universe at all, at least after about a Planck time after the big bang, but in that case being agnostic is the only sensible position about that time frame, since we don´t have much in the way of data, nor do we have scripture from back then. A god that hides outside our reality isn´t worth discussing, since we can not know one way or the other. That is why most atheists are agnostic.
I asked you one set of questions - which you did not answer. Please, the questions stand: given your response on what you consider to be 'evidence,' I would like to know what 'evidence' you have for, etc.
It is hard to nail jello to a wall. I know that, once i give you evidence, you just focus on whatever i haven´t given you. So i want to know exactly what evidence you need to accept the Rubicon crossing happend, and we can than apply that standard to your believe in a God, or more appropriately Jesus existence, since you moved the goal from a physical to a historical question.
That is where your goal post moving comes in. I have noticed apologist using your approach of refusing to even set up a goal for a couple of years now, and in lack of a better term, it is goal post moving, maybe we should call it preemptive goal post moving to define the term more properly.
You asked what kind of evidence would proof God, i don´t even know what God exactly you are referring too, i can just guess you are talking about the God of Muslims, Jews and Christians. Since that God is a) supposed to still exist and b) is supposed to interact with our physical reality, his existence is testable and therefore requires scientific evidence.
And to set the record straight: You asked for the kind of evidence required, you failed to provide that evidence, you try to change the definition of evidence. Most likely because you are well aware that no scientific evidence for God exists. If i am wrong about, please do provide.
tommy1808 wrote:Btw, what is your definition of God
Maximally supreme being. And yours ?
That is not a definition. Maximally what, compared to what, measured in which units? Supreme? What does that mean? Those terms don´t even have a context independent dictionary definitions....
And what do you mean by "being", the dictionary basically gives me two definitions: a) the nature or essence of a person, which could just refer to a part of god, not his whole existence and b) a real or imaginary living creature or entity, especially an intelligent one.
So, he is a great, awesome imaginary friend? Your definition of God only makes sense if you are an agnostic theist, which you, correct me if i am wrong, don´t seem to be.
The "creation" of our universe, whether a god of any kind did it, whether it is just naturally occurring or some engineering team in another Universe has figured out how to make universes after all, happen in about one Plack time. The Christian God needed six whole days, so even if he existed he is obviously neither maximum or supreme in any sense, since we have evidence that the Universe was created about 5.2 x 10^39 power quicker than the Christan God claims to have done it. Quite obviously that God would need to have a more capable, and hence more supreme, superior. So, if you are talking about the God i think you are talking about, he is neither maximally nor supreme. That would however match the definition of Manon from "The Craft", which the authors have admitted is made up.
So what god do you keep referring to?
My definition of God? A superhuman being or spirit worshipped as having power over nature or human fortunes. Explicitly including the imaginary properties of a being in the dictionary. And considering the complete lack of any evidence, by your and my definition, god is imaginary.
there's a reason that academic philosophers don't dwell upon such things)
Yup, the reason is because the question is pointless.
Once again, I have not asked you for further/greater "evidence" since you have not responded to me in the first place. You seem to be evading, though. I hope that is not the case.
once again, you are trying to change the definition of "evidence" in the very posting you´ve asked those question and you did not only do that, you also changed the nature of the question along those lines:
Question we are disusing: Is it true that someone just fired a gun at, and hit, that normal car over there?
Well, in that case there should be evidence in the form of bullet holes in the car. There are none.
No amount of eye witnesses will change the conclusion from "No, no on did that" to "Yes".
Question you want to move the discussion to:
Is it true that someone fired a gun at, and hit, that normal car over there 100 years ago?
The car has of course been disposed of, so we can not look at that.
Are there eye witness reports?
Are there police reports indicating that happend?
Do we have a receipt for a car having been disposed, saying something along the lines of "Car has bullet holes".
Are there other reports that someone shot at a car from that time frame?
How many people even had guns at the time in that place? Notice how that changes the probability of the event happening if i say 2000 years instead of 100?
and so on....
You will only ever end up with a probability it happened, and that usually doesn´t end up to be 0 or 100%.
What is the "natural explanation" for the Laws of Logic which your purported rationality presupposes ?
Traditional logic, think Aristotle, or modern logic? And applied to what kind of problem? Laws of logic don´t have to be true in a scientific context, something Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem supposedly proofs, but that is definitely mathematics above may head. Way above.
A philosophers will just say that, the truth of an argument is not related to its validity, so i am not sure if that anyone is even claiming that the laws of logic alone can lead to truth.
What is the "natural explanation" for the origin/cause of the Big Bang ?
We don´t have a 3 sigma answer to that yet, but all indications are that the Big Bang is just a quantum fluctuation and as such doesn´t need or have a cause. Retrocausality in relativity, that would even allow the Universe to cause the big bang it came from itself, works out fine mathematically, but we can´t test that and probably won´t be able to devise a test for that for quite some time.
So, there are many possible natural explanations, but we don´t know which or if any of them is correct yet. We also have no reason to think there are no natural causes for it, and even if we will never find anything, that just means "we don´t know". I don´t know, and you don´t know either. Not knowing is fine, unless it causes you to give up looking.
What is the "natural explanation" for the Cambrian Explosion ?
I wasn´t aware that a 50 million or so year long emergence of complex living things needs some special "natural explanation" beyond the natural explanation for everything from the first self-replicating whatever it was with high enough copying fidelity. Mutation and specification rates in that time frame are the same than before and after the "explosion", and complex life predates the Cambrian, so there isn´t anything special about that timeframe, aside of the fact that living things got large enough for us to relatively easily find fossiles.
The theory of evolution predicts that, once a new niche for life opens up, and multi cellular life opened up a whole lot of new niches, it is going to be filled by competing adaptations, many of which will die out or find a different niche. And that is exactly what we see in the Cambrian explosion, which is perfectly naturally explained by the theory of evolution.
I could go on & on, but I don't want to overload you, so please seriously engage with these few questions first.
How about you share your scientific proof of god first?
Forgive me, but, what ? Is that supposed to be a coherent statement ?
I just pointed out that any god that interacts with our reality is already ruled our by your standard of evidence.
Um, okay. Relevance ?
Eyewitnesses and scripture have zero relevance for reality unless other data points support the claim.
Since that story has better historical evidence than any religion i am aware of, you need to believe in Egyptian magic if you believe in any god.
What exactly is your source for "Christians hijacking the story of Marcus Aurelius in Czechia" ? And where exactly was the story interpolated ??
It is attributed to Apollinaris, but we only no about it from quotes in Eusebius writings, so good chance it was just made up, and Tertullian, who claims he learned about it in a letter from Marcus Aurelius himself, remember that guy that thought Christians to be traitors. Eusebius also quotes him, but we have Tertullian writings from before Eusebius.
(PS - Where in Czechia are you ?
some couple of hundred km away.
Kind of like how you rely on the eyewitness testimonies of the aforementioned Aurelian events in Czechia to make your point ?
Nope, i can go and look at the autograph and the inscription. I don´t believe in Egyptian Sorcerers.
My friend, no offense, but your words betray a gross ignorance of Historical Methodology; by your own statement, the overwhelming majority of classical history must be dismissed.
Which is exactly the point i was trying to convey. Even with some hard evidence much has to be dismissed, without hard evidence even more so.
best regards
Thomas
