Sometimes I feel like I must be posting in a foreign language. Is that not what I said?
I get the same feeling sometimes. Perhaps it is what you said - if so, forgive me. But what I seemed to be reading is that a person who believes (in or against a deity) has the burden of proof. My point is a bit more subtle - that they do not have the burden of proof
unless they intend to prove it to others, not to believe it themselves. One can believe in whatever they wish with no proof whatsoever. If they tell me that what they believe is true (there is a God, there isn't a God) and they want me to believe it too, then they have engaged the requirement to provide proof.
Ev-i-dence {noun} something that gives a sign or proof of the existence or truth of something, or that helps somebody to come to a particular conclusion
Evidence helps establish proof, but it is not proof. All proof contains evidence, not all evidence is proof.
The fact that when mommy and daddy stop providing you with an Easter Basket should be enough, but I suppose you could hide out and wait for a giant rabbit to come hopping down the bunny trail the night before could do the trick.
That would prove the existence of the Easter Bunny, but if he never shows, that doesn't prove he doesn't exist. That's why the concept is unfalsifiable. One simply cannot prove the Easter Bunny does not exist.
If you do not accept that as evidence then so be it.
It would be evidence if I waited and he did not show up, yes. It would not be proof.
I can't stop you from believing that the world started with just two people and that they were kicked out of a magic garden because they listened to a talking snake. But I can prove that snakes don't talk and I think science and history back up the fact that the world didn't just appear after 6 days with a single man... However... the fact that God supposedly created Eve out of Adam's rib may support that he endorses cloning and stem cell research.
You can indeed prove that snakes cannot talk. You can indeed prove that the world was not created in six days, and etc. One minor quibble - many geneticists seem to think that there was a literal 'Eve' if only in the sense that our DNA seems to show we're all descended from a single female at some point in the past. Genetic evidence seems to also support a 'choke point' in history in which humanity was reduced to at most a few thousand individuals, and we're all descended from them.
That does not disprove the literal truth of the Bible. A person intent on countering your arguments would say that you did not prove THAT snake could not talk. You did not prove that a 'day' that the Bible talks about during the creation was a 'day' now.
I'm not arguing those points, however. I happen to agree with you that the Bible is not literally true. However, I do not think anyone can prove that the Bible is or is not literally true. One has to make their own decisions - and evidence does indeed play a significant role in it, just as you say.
I'd call that "faith" because it can be. See above. Believing in something even when all the evidence points to something different is "faith."
Earlier I pointed out that at one time, the British Academy of Science stated categorically that rocks do not fall from the sky. All evidence said they did not. All learned men said they did not.
Now, rocks either fall from the sky or they do not. Right? And you and I would say that rocks do fall from the sky.
So, if a lay-person back then saw a rock falling from the sky and believed their own eyes, were they engaging in faith? The learned men of that time would say YES. We would say NO. But the belief of the man who saw the rock fall from the sky cannot be both YES and NO. It has to be one or the other. So did they engage in faith or did they not engage in faith?
That is why I say that faith has nothing to do with the literal facts. Faith is internal to the person. I say that the person who saw rocks fall from the sky when all science said it was not possible was engaging in faith, because they were acting in accordance with their own beliefs. I cannot not go back and revise history and say they were not engaging in faith because now we know they were right. They did not know they were right, and what they believed is dead and buried with them. I can't change their beliefs now any more than I can change how tall they were.
Exactly. But I could have sworn you were endorsing the existance of "God". My bad.
I believe in the existence of God as part of my Catholic religious beliefs. I know that God can be neither proven nor disproven to exist.
Yeah it does. Because examples from religeous texts can be falsified and provide evidence against that particular diety's existance.
Even if you can falsify a text, that does not falsify the existence of the deity in question. Evidence against? OK, you said you could provide evidence against, and I accept that.
If you want to put forth the effort, you can find out for yourself that oxygen exists. No amount of effort will prove your Christian God, or any other of man's invention, is real. Whereas I can point to parts of religious text and disprove what it says with both science and history.
That much is true, to some extent. There are also parts of the Bible that have been proven true - historically - after initially being declared untrue. Cities that were said not to exist turn out to have actually been there, etc.
I agree that I can, with effort, prove that oxygen exists. The statement was that oxygen was 'obvious'. Obvious means patently true, true upon initial examination, true without need of further explanation, etc. I said oxygen is not obvious, and I think I've shown that.
For example: It's not only improbable, but practically impossible for one man to gather every species of animal on the planet and shuffle them into a boat to ensure their survival. How did he get the polar bears? The penquins? The American wild-cat? They didn't even know America existed at that time...
It is probably not possible. That is not the same as proving it did not happen.
If you want to believe that, fine. But if you expect me too you have to produce some proof.
I agree that if I wanted you to believe that, the onus would be on me to provide some proof. I have not attempted to do so. Likewise, when you say that anyone who believes in the literal truth of the Bible is wrong, (which you have done) you also have to provide proof. Neither of us can, so attempts to convince the other of historical veracity would be futile.
experience, then should I not trust it?
