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Old 05-20-2012, 09:32 PM
 
Location: where you sip the tea of the breasts of the spinsters of Utica
8,298 posts, read 14,135,741 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Boxcar Overkill View Post
I understand, but the point remains.

Personal evidence is not strong evidence.
It's strong to ME, but not to you. There's nothing I could say that would convince a rational atheist adult that any of my cherished experiences could be considered evidence to HIM.

Let me take an over the top example: Say that I prayed and God appeared to me in a pillar of fire, threw a few boulders and cars around, and told me to repent or whatever. Let's say that four other people witnessed it and signed an affidavit about it. This would be perfectly convincing to me, but it would mean about as much as a UFO abduction would to you. You would say something like: this is a hoax by all of you, or maybe you were all stoned on acid, or it was mass hysteria.

Strong evidence to me, nothing much to you.

And since I'm not trying to convince anyone (remember I believe God is a mystery that is optional to solve), the personal evidence is fine by me. You go party with your secretary, while I gaze at my navel (if only I were skinny enough to do so!)

By the way, give her an orange - she loves oranges. Or maybe it's orange juice. Hard to tell from this distance.
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Old 05-21-2012, 01:12 AM
 
7,801 posts, read 6,355,453 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Woof View Post
I'll refer you back to an earlier post. What you mean to say is that there's no universally accepted evidence.
I said what I meant to say. I do not require you to pretend I meant something else.

What I am saying is that it is up to the person making a claim to tell us what the evidence is, not the other way around. Evidence to me is a process, not a thing and the process goes as follows:

1) State clearly your claim.
2) List clearly the things that support that claim.
3) Explain exactly how that listed in 2 supports that claimed in 1.

However when I ask for evidence from theists they generally make the process as follows:

1) State a vague claim.
2) List some stuff and run.

If the best you can do is come to the forum and tell us all that your evidence is enough to satisfy you then you have said precisely nothing. Similarly you have said precisely nothing if your argument is simply "Everything is complex... therefore god".
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Old 05-21-2012, 03:21 AM
 
3,636 posts, read 3,416,937 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by MysticPhD View Post
I understand your concerns, Box . . . but they all revolve around the utility of the evidence for others. For the individual who is sincerely vetting their experiences . . . it is the ultimate evidence
However having a nice feeling one day and deciding that feeling must be god is not really evidence. Nor is engaging in decades of confirmation bias and self vindication anything even remotely similar to "sincerely verring experiences".
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Old 05-21-2012, 04:28 AM
 
Location: S. Wales.
50,083 posts, read 20,587,076 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Woof View Post
It's strong to ME, but not to you. There's nothing I could say that would convince a rational atheist adult that any of my cherished experiences could be considered evidence to HIM.

Let me take an over the top example: Say that I prayed and God appeared to me in a pillar of fire, threw a few boulders and cars around, and told me to repent or whatever. Let's say that four other people witnessed it and signed an affidavit about it. This would be perfectly convincing to me, but it would mean about as much as a UFO abduction would to you. You would say something like: this is a hoax by all of you, or maybe you were all stoned on acid, or it was mass hysteria.

Strong evidence to me, nothing much to you.... (personals deleted
Extraordinary evidence as they say. If you had a vision of God as a pillar of fire, nobody could reasonably take that as hard evidence. Now, if four other people signed an affidavit to say they witnessed it, that would probably do for - say - something like a car accident, though if it were your case, you'd probably be spitting blood if your lawyer just accepted that as fact without cross- questioning the 'witnesses'. Do you see where I'm going?

While Mormonism is now going through having to deal with the Abraham papyrus, Joseph Smith got some witnesses to sign affidavits. Under the clean hands principle, when someone's claim to be able to translate ancient Egyptian is shown to be spurious, it is reasonable to ask just how J Smith got these people to sign a paper. I'm not saying that they were lying, but I'm saying that questioning is what we have to do, especially in respect of extraordinary claims and even where there is still a pair of clean hands.

The point of this rigmarole is to explain what I am going to say next - that your argument that we are being unreasonable in not accepting your experiences as valid by using the argument that we would not accept the signed affidavits of four witnesses to a miracle is actually unreasonable in itself.

Let me take the example of the Fatima apparitions. This is the nearest thing to a Marian miracle attested and documented by as many people as you could wish. It was regarded by me as the best support for miracles as the Shroud (not the Bible ) was regarded by me as the best evidence for a crucified Jesus.

So for myself, it is not fair to say that I regard it as no more than a UFO abduction - though it may say something about you and your reasoning that you appear to mention those as an obvious delusion but expect us to accept your personal experiences as valid.

I may say that I was researching Barney and Betty Hill (q.v) and take it a good deal more seriously than I do the Fatima miracle (1) since a study of the latter event (which results were posted here) show that it is ...let me be careful in my selection of wording...a load of codswallop. Especially in the light of the recent Knock apparition which was just the same and certainly Not Real.

So the reason I go into length and detail is to explain that your argument about skeptics not accepting signed affidavits is actually a bit of self - justification on your part and a biased view of the way evidence is correctly evaluated.

This is an important matter because the second biggest false reasoning of theists (after equivocation) is bifurcation -such as 'believe or not' -and the weight of evidence is consistently, perversely and irrationally sidelined as unimportant when or as compared to Faith.

(1) No it was NOT a UFO.

Last edited by TRANSPONDER; 05-21-2012 at 04:47 AM..
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Old 05-21-2012, 06:43 AM
 
130 posts, read 152,640 times
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Faith means having trust in someone. So when a person has faith in God, it simply means they trust God, and His promises. So, faith is based on reasoning and evidence.

There's plenty of evidence for God's existence. Just look at the history of Israel, the evidence for Jesus, etc. There's one mountain in Saudi Arabia called "Jabal al-Lawz", that could very well be Mt. Sinai. Unfortunately, I don't believe the Saudi government will let anyone study this mountain (someone correct me if I'm wrong), so we can't go in and confirm anything special about the mountain other than how it looks from pictures.

http://www.estatevaults.com/bol/Mt.%...al_al_lawz.jpg

If you notice at the top of the mountain, it has a notable dark top. Yet if you were to look around this mountain, it is the only one with this feature. It would be hard to explain how this came to be naturally (as if it did come about naturally, surely other mountain tops would contain the same feature). Yet in Exodus, it talks about how God descended upon Mt. Sinai in fire. (Which would leave a scorch mark)

There's also a huge rock not far from this mountain peak that appears to be split in two, and there appears to be signs of erosion coming from the middle, flowing down to the ground. Now, I suppose rain could have done this, but this is another lonesome feature in this area. This rock is quite noticeable.

http://www.messianic-literary.com/Horeb1.jpg

Actually, the split in the rock is so big, you could walk right through it. It is supposed this could be the rock where God split, to give the people water. Here's a depcition of it...

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_AAZZV-P04U...ockofhoreb.jpg

I sorely wish the Saudi government would let a team of archeaologists go in and examine these things. I believe they will one day. Ultimately, these are just some evidences of God's history with Israel. Science has also proven that given enough concentrated wind on a body of water, it could part it.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/s...-happened.html

And here is a documentary showing what was going on in the sky doing Jesus' birth and death on the cross....


The Star of Bethlehem Explained: Frederick A. Larson - YouTube
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Old 05-21-2012, 06:44 AM
 
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Oh look yet ANOTHER poster who thinks "X is very difficult to explain" means it must be evidence for god. Great.
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Old 05-21-2012, 06:57 AM
 
130 posts, read 152,640 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Nozzferrahhtoo View Post
Oh look yet ANOTHER poster who thinks "X is very difficult to explain" means it must be evidence for god. Great.
If you're not referring to my post, okay. Yet if you are referring to my post, have you not read what I wrote? I didn't say Jabal al Lawz was Mt. Sinai, only that all of it's features, including the split rock a distance away from it, all match up to the description of Mt. Sinai. I want scientists to go in, and do some research there. Stop with your automatic responses, or else you might be embarrassed by the info that is being put out.
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Old 05-21-2012, 07:05 AM
 
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The "automatic response" is just to throw your hands up when something gets complicated and say "God dunnit".

By all means if you think something is worth studying then send people up there to study it. Let us see what results. However I am remarkably unimpressed when I hear a line like "It is hard to explain X naturally" followed by an attempt to explain it away using god(s).
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Old 05-21-2012, 07:11 AM
 
130 posts, read 152,640 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Nozzferrahhtoo View Post
The "automatic response" is just to throw your hands up when something gets complicated and say "God dunnit".

By all means if you think something is worth studying then send people up there to study it. Let us see what results. However I am remarkably unimpressed when I hear a line like "It is hard to explain X naturally" followed by an attempt to explain it away using god(s).
Okay, answer me this however, how do you feel about the link I gave on wind splitting the red sea? It has been proven that enough concentrated wind on a body of water could part the water. We are told in the Bible that an east wind blew on the red sea all night long, and by the next day, the waters were part.
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Old 05-21-2012, 07:14 AM
 
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Which link? Three links were to pictures only. Another link was to a news paper, not a science journal, but that link was broken and did not open any article. And the last link was a you tube video.
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