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Why are atheists / agnostics being asked what form of evidence they would accept when the burden of proof rests upon those making the positive claim in the first place?
It's not about what evidence we would accept.
It's about what evidence you have.
Pony it up and we'll discuss it.
Ah, but she wasn't making a claim. She simply asked a question.
Your show-me-the-evidence conversation has been done to death on R&S, and ya know what? You can go there right now and start the conversation all over again, and you'll get takers! But Katzpur won't be one of them, as, you know, stated in the first sentence of her original post here.
I have no clue as to what evidence would make me believe. I certainly wouldn't say I need this or that to happen. What if this and that does not happen however something I did not know about happened and convinced me?
Green grass, trees and the stars are not sufficient evidence nor is the claim that something cannot be made if nothing but the God made everything out of nothing convincing.
Maybe Mars being replaced with a planet we can thrive on.
The first reply in this thread was flawless and you conveniently ignored it.
Yup.
OP, if you won't volunteer to answer the atheist/agmnostic equivalent to your own question, why do you think the rest of us should spend any time on it?
Do you really think we've never wrestled with this question ourselves???? And come up with "I can't even imagine" every time????
It would be really nice if religious people respected atheists/agnostics enough to assume that we have, you know, actually thought about these kinds of questions.
What is God? The concepts are far too many to even catalog, and in many cases unique to a particular individual. It's sort of like asking how one could prove that a specimen is a goblin or a dragon - and I'm not being facetious.
The problem is even worse than that, however, as God - unlike goblins or dragons - is commonly held to be utterly supernatural, a vague entity than transcends ... well, everything ... in large part specifically to avoid requests for proof. Or even, for that matter, evidence.
Which brings me to my last point. Proof? I'd happily settle for compelling evidence. The existence of Alfred the Great cannot be proven. The existence of Scarlet O'Hara cannot be disproven. Are dodos really extinct? Prove it. Yet we can all make sound determinations that yes he existed, no she did not exist, and yes they are extinct.
That's it. I have no answers to the question. Sorry.
Given the prevailing standards of proof accepted by Christians, some unknown people wrote down stories about a Hebrew mystic alleged to have lived and died many decades earlier, all of this taking place in a pre science age and in region where superstition was the norm.
So, I'll start by saying.....a lot more than that.
Katz, you made it rather difficult for us by specifying the ancient Abrahamic god of the old testament. I have doubts that the modern day Christian God is the Abrahamic god. Christians talk about God being love and being their 'personal God'.
Having said that, for me proof would be easy, undeniable and unambiguous. I have this white box next to my bed holding my son's ashes ...... God would know what to do.
It would not only convince me but also a whole bunch of other people who knew and loved him.
Personally for me to believe, I'm gonna need an miraculous appearance before my eyes. Additionally, I'm gonna need to witness a undeniable and REPEATABLE miracle. Something along the lines of raising the dead back to life or curing terminal cancer....before my eyes. Also, I gone to need the correct answers to some questions (personal facts) that only a God would know about me.
The first reply in this thread was flawless and you conveniently ignored it.
The first reply was not a reply at all. It was a question. Look, you and I have never spoken before, but just so that you know, I'm not trying to convince anyone of anything, so it won't do anybody any good to try to back me into a corner. I'm not even in the room.
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