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Dear atheists I want very much for us all (including all theists of course) to get to a consensus in brief, plain, clear, simple words on what is evidence, but atheists as you are you are so impatient to go into the evidence for God's existence, even though we are not yet in possession from mutual collaboration of what is evidence in generic conception, and also what is the target of evidence, then most important the mechanism how evidence operates.
If you will start a thread on that concern from you part, then I will go there, but I fear it will be a useless exercise because from history we know that when people do not agree on concepts and procedures they rarely if at all possible come to any concurrence of minds, and instead they will settle matters by violence, and the ones most capable of violence will have their words prevail, even by genociding everyone else who wants to say something opposite.
So, from my part, unless the authorities decide otherwise, I will stay here and continue to write on my thoughts in regard to what is the concept of evidence, what is the target of evidence, and what is the mechanism of evidence by which evidence operates, all in their generic formulation.
That said.
Here is the short definition of Hueff of evidence:
An observation submitted in support of a proposition.
And here is my short definition:
Anything man knows leading him to know another thing.
I promised just some moments ago that my next message will be another example of what is evidence, in order to examine where is the evidence, where the target of the evidence, and what is the mechanism how evidence operates.
But in the mean time I have thought that as some people here said -- although I still maintain that there is a generic concept of evidence and principles of evidence generic ones also that apply to all cases of evidence in all fields of human inquiry -- I have thought that since atheists are already unruly with insistence that I produce evidence for God's existence, then if no one has any objections, would you want me to concentrate on evidence in regard to the existence of God, instead of evidence generically which to my present thinking is going to take a long examination and time to bring to fruition (hey what is that, fruition? search your dictionaries), I am willing to accommodate to you atheists otherwise you might self-terminate from sheer spontaneous combustion owing to unquenched excitation.
What do you say, atheists?
No, it is not my suggestion that we are going into the search for evidence for God's existence, I as the protagonist and you as the villains.
We are just going to examine whether at all evidence in regard to God is possible, seeing that some atheists are very vocal that it is impossible because God is not falsifiable.
See? that thinker has a correct concept of God, for unlike scientists and atheists, God is not falsifiable.
Anyway, I await your pleasure.
Remember, once you go into the possibility of evidence for God's existence which to you atheists is impossible (correct me though if I be mistaken), we have to come to the same concept of God, at least from your part the acquaintance of the concept, not the acceptance of the concept, for me of course it is the acceptance of the concept as corresponding to the objective existence of God.
Think about it.
I am going to take some hours off to work on my other thread on the cosmic worldview of atheists if there be one.
Remember, once you go into the possibility of evidence for God's existence which to you atheists is impossible (correct me though if I be mistaken), we have to come to the same concept of God, at least from your part the acquaintance of the concept, not the acceptance of the concept, for me of course it is the acceptance of the concept as corresponding to the objective existence of God.
Now we are back to my first post in this thread. I cannot begin to tell you whether the concept of god is falsifiable or not before you present a clear definition of what god is.
Evidence is an observation a person submits in support of a proposition, in this case that god exists. As long as a person can submit an observation that they think supports the case that god exists, then evidence exists. So, yes, evidence can be submitted for god's existence; i.e., it is not impossible for evidence to be submitted for god's existence. That does not imply that any of that evidence or the accompanying arguments has much of a chance at being deemed any good, persuasive, or convincing; it just means that someone could submit something as evidence.
So, evidence is an observation submitted as support of a proposition, often accompanied by arguments that show how the observation supports the proposition. Now what?
I see two main reasons why some people don't end up believing a proposition is true:
1) issues with the evidence; and
2) issues with the arguments.
Add 3) - the proposition is so poorly defined that it's impossible to tell if the evidence is for, against, or neutral towards the question. This is common for god claims. The god(s) in question are never defined and then "proven" by things like nature existing, babies being cute, or people falling in love. Sure, these things are facts, but until you can define a way such that the god is necessary for those bits of evidence to happen, it's just an ad-hoc attempt to throw stuff at the wall and see what sticks.
I guess this could be an extension to your item 2, but it's so common it probably needs a separate category.
Please just read your link and locate which witness exactly is testifying to what thing exactly, that is what I mean by an example of a witness' testimony.
OK, done. What's your point again?
Quote:
Please you yourself read your link and give me your account as per paragraph immediately preceding from me above for an example of a witness' testimony which is supposed to be an example of legal evidence.
Dear atheists I want very much for us all (including all theists of course) to get to a consensus in brief, plain, clear, simple words on what is evidence
I'm not sure where this "us" is coming from. From the posts here, everyone except you is clear on what evidence is. I'm not sure that the person holding up the train should nominate themselves to lead, so to speak.
Quote:
What do you say, atheists?
You're spending a awful lot of time telling us what you're going to be telling us rather than just getting to it. There's got to be a reason for you being so evasive but I guess we'll have to find out what that is.
Now is the time for all good men of this thread to collaborate.
Thanks, Hueff and KC.
I can see that as we are investigators of what is evidence, and also proponents and exponents, communicators, there are people who are obstructors.
We will leave the obstructors to themselves.
Now, with Hueff, notwithstanding our differences, we can communicate viably.
I am wondering, KC, what exactly do you want me to agree with you about, what is your beef with me?
I will leave you now, and talk with Hueff.
Hueff, you are asking me for a concept of God, here it is again, so let me know your objections.
For me the fundamental concept of God in relation to the universe where we reside in and are part and parcel of is the following:
Maker of everything that is not God.
I will just now say that we are going into the direction of what is evidence in regard to the existence of God, but please I am not into proving the existence of God, just into what kind of evidence should apply in the proving of the existence of God.
Is this evidence of why these threads exist?
Maybe his requirement is no phrases longer than 10 words and no words longer than 10 letters.
You know,one must consider what that 'man on the street' can comprehend.
Hueff, you are asking me for a concept of God, here it is again, so let me know your objections.
For me the fundamental concept of God in relation to the universe where we reside in and are part and parcel of is the following:
Maker of everything that is not God.
You obviously can define god however you want, but I do have a few observations about this one.
1) You used the word you are defining in its definition, which makes it rather circular. Perhaps you could replace "that is not God" with "except itself". But, that is just window dressing as it does not address the larger issues with the definition.
2) Your definition does not define what god is, only what it did. To illustrate the problem, imagine I defined gremlins as: Stealer of socks from the dryer. That tells me nothing of what gremlins are. Am I talking about biological animals, ghosts, animated lint balls? What are they made of? How big are they? Do they run or fly? How would I know I am looking at a gremlin if I caught one? How would I know if I saw something taking off with a sock that it is not a gremlin, or are all things that take off with socks gremlins, so that gremlins is more of a title than referring to a particular type of beings.
3) What about makers of art and makers of buildings? Even if a god exists and it made the universe, it did not make everything; because bees make honey and hives, and humans make door knobs and cars. There could be no god because no one being made everything.
4) It assumes that everything was made. If atheists are right, the universe was not made.
5) If we want to stretch the meaning of made and say that the multiverse made the universe, and the multiverse is itself not made, then would the multiverse be god?
6) How could we ever know whether a maker of everything exists? We would have to know it made everything, and how can we know that since we were not around when everything was made?
Last edited by Hueffenhardt; 07-26-2011 at 07:22 PM..
Add 3) - the proposition is so poorly defined that it's impossible to tell if the evidence is for, against, or neutral towards the question. This is common for god claims. The god(s) in question are never defined and then "proven" by things like nature existing, babies being cute, or people falling in love. Sure, these things are facts, but until you can define a way such that the god is necessary for those bits of evidence to happen, it's just an ad-hoc attempt to throw stuff at the wall and see what sticks.
I guess this could be an extension to your item 2, but it's so common it probably needs a separate category.
[/indent]You obviously can define god however you want, but I do have a few observations about this one.
1) You used the word you are defining in its definition, which makes it rather circular. Perhaps you could replace "that is not God" with "except itself". But, that is just window dressing as it does not address the larger issues with the definition.
2) Your definition does not define what god is, only what it did. To illustrate the problem, imagine I defined gremlins as: Stealer of socks from the dryer. That tells me nothing of what gremlins are. Am I talking about biological animals, ghosts, animated lint balls? What are they made of? How big are they? Do they run or fly? How would I know I am looking at a gremlin if I caught one? How would I know if I saw something taking off with a sock that it is not a gremlin, or are all things that take off with socks gremlins, so that gremlins is more of a title than referring to a particular type of beings.
3) What about makers of art and makers of buildings? Even if a god exists and it made the universe, it did not make everything; because bees make honey and hives, and humans make door knobs and cars. There could be no god because no one being made everything.
4) It assumes that everything was made. If atheists are right, the universe was not made.
5) If we want to stretch the meaning of made and say that the multiverse made the universe, and the multiverse is itself not made, then would the multiverse be god?
6) How could we ever know whether a maker of everything exists? We would have to know it made everything, and how can we know that since we were not around when everything was made?
7) You definition leaves open the idea that god was made by someone else. If god is the maker of everything except god; there could be another who made god as long as that being was not made. I'm not sure that you intended that.
Okay, then you give me your definition of God.
Ryrge
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Now is the time for all good men of this thread to collaborate.
