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You cannot define what would constitute an evidence of God.
Of course we can. How about a universe NOT capable of supporting life, but it did anyway. With the stars in the heavens spelling out 'God did it'.
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Originally Posted by GoCardinals
And then you don't have the knowledge (as a human) to verify and validate the evidence.
Then we have no reason to believe. And that would be the fault of your god.
And you have no grounds to make a claim about a god.
But that is just another ad hoc excuse, as we do have the knowledge to come to a very good conclusion about the existence or none existence of a god.
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Originally Posted by GoCardinals
Here is an example.
You ask me to provide you with the evidence of an airplane.
And I tell you, "Man, forget the evidence. I will show you an airplane. So I take you to a hanger and show you an airplane.
Now, do you have a choice NOT to believe in the existence of an airplane?
No, I have to believe in the evidence I have just seen. So you are contradicting yourself when you said it was a choice.
Quote:
Originally Posted by GoCardinals
Now you ask a Hindu person, show me the evidence of God.
And he tells you, "Man, forget the evidence. Let me show you the God.
So he takes you to a temple and shows you a statue with a human head, an elephant trunk, 6 arms and 4 legs.
And tells you, here is God.
Now, do you have an excuse not to believe in the existence of God?
Yes. A man made statue is evidence for the belief in that god, not for the existence of it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by GoCardinals
So we come back to my original question - define to us, what will you constitute as an EVIDENCE of Abrahamic God?
If you say, stuff like, the entire world misery ends over night, or the water in my glass turns into wine (TRANSPONDER'S favorite) - or a ghostly figure appears in the sky, then are there two problems with it.
First, you are not asking for evidence. You are asking for miracles, and you should have some shame for it. Because those who believe in scientific evidence do not and should not believe and demand "miracles" as evidences, because you can't prove miracles with scientific knowledge. If you could, then it's not a miracle anymore.
Except miracles would be an example of a god. Evidence does not need to be scientific.
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Originally Posted by GoCardinals
Second, say, all world's misery ends over night, the water turns into wine and the ghostly figure appears in the sky. Tell us how are you going to verify and validate that it was all done by God and the ghostly figure appeared in the sky is actually God?
It would be very good evidence for a god. Much better than the evidence we have now.
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Originally Posted by GoCardinals
Perhaps this is why we are given the tools such as "intelligence", "Logic", "reasoning".
We should evaluate the signs based on the these tools during our quest, and then either reject or accept the signs. We are responsible for the choices we are making.
We were not given them, we had to invent them. Which is evidence against a god.
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Originally Posted by GoCardinals
Neither party has any evidence. Both have choices, opinions and believes.
No, we have evidence. It may be not conclusive, but it is very good.
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Originally Posted by GoCardinals
There are MANY things (besides religion) that you believe and have faith WITHOUT verifying the evidence by yourself. You are just not ready to accept it.
Here comes the example WITH evidence ...
Quote:
Originally Posted by GoCardinals
Here is an example,
The doctor prescribes you a certain medication that you never took before to address a certain condition.
You look at the ingredients.
Do you put the pill under a microscope and verify that it has it all what it the label states? Do you even have knowledge to know and then verify the chemical structure of different compounds in that pill?
And then do you participate in the manufacturer's trials to see if the medicine actually works? Do you participate in the FDA's approval process to see if it has passed the inspections?
Do you have a mouse lab in your basement where you could test the medicine by yourself before believing it works?
The answer is, NO, NO, NO, conclusively.
Why because, you have faith in the doctor, you have faith in the manufacturer and you have faith in FDA.
How did you develop this faith, it's a different story.
But you do PRACTICE FAITH without caring or verifying and evaluating the "evidence and claims" by yourself outside the religious doctrine. You can deny as much as you want, but Oh yes, you do.
Faith based on evidence. Doctors usually curing illness is evidence this drug will also work. Once again the pretense that all faith claims are equal.
Many atheists claim that the world wound be a lot peaceful place if there was no religion - well, perhaps so is the case with science
Ever since humans were clever enough to invent spears and arrows, war started becoming seriously dangerous.
Technology is definitely to blame for most violence between humans, and it's strange how atheists don't see this. By the way I AM NOT AGAINST TECHNOLOGY. I worked as a computer programmer, so please don't start that. But I try to face reality.
Religion in general doesn't cause wars, just the dogmatic and political aspects of religion.
religion is better equipped to address, for example, building and nurturing a relationship with the Divine; prayer; nourishing our soul; viewing and living every part of daily life as sacred and holy; reincarnation process and role; angels and other non-physical beings; partnership of an eternal non-physical soul housed within a temporary physical human body; understanding holy books; symbolism, allusion, exegesis, explication, imagery and hermeneutics. Those are a few examples.
I think those are good examples, areas where science has nothing to offer. When people worship science, they give up so much.
Why not just appreciate science for the kind of understanding it does provide, without saying nothing can possibly be true unless science has already discovered it.
The same could be said for astrology, tarot, fortune telling.
Exactly.
If you feel like you want to know more about astrology or tarot or fortune telling, then dig deeper into it and get the knowledge.
But if you have no interest in them and your intelligence, logic and reasoning does not sit well with what's called the signs in astrology, tarot and fortune telling, then you reject and dismiss them, and move on.
It is now, but it does look as if last century we often had the idea that science will provide all the answers. But even then, people often rebelled against this idea.
Now of course it is just used to dismiss valid arguments the religious do not like, or as a form of ad hominem.
It was assumed that science would easily come up with answers to the biggest questions. What is everything ultimately made out of? How does the brain work? How does DNA generate an organism? How are diseases related to genes?
As science advances, it runs up against the fact that reductionist analysis cannot explain complex natural systems.
The idea that science will NOT provide all the answers. I would say this idea became obvious when wonder drugs started to become not so effective. Penicillin, for example.
True, science will not provide all the answers. Every answer that is found leads to more questions. Short term solutions generate long term problems.
Ever since humans were clever enough to invent spears and arrows, war started becoming seriously dangerous.
Religion in general doesn't cause wars, just the dogmatic and political aspects of religion.
The bold part:
Wrong again. And it's over and over.
It's NOT the religion. It's the human nature.
Think about what you wrote above in blue, and compare it with what you stated afterwards.
From an Atheists point of view: There probably was no religion when man first invented spears - yet there were wars and fights that trigger the inventions for hurting and killing others quickly and effectively.
It's actually the human condition that we are fighting with and we blame religion.
In my opinion, there would still be many, many, many major wars among humans if there was no religion at all.
See what the good ole' Dr. Watson says at @2:00
Last edited by GoCardinals; 10-30-2018 at 11:28 AM..
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