You just have this ability to only see things as Black or White. The world is NOT black or white. There are NO absolutes. Absolutes happen in math class.
What in the world makes you think there is 'no" evidence for God or gods?
**Anecdotal evidence is evidence from anecdotes evidence collected in a casual or informal manner and relying heavily or entirely on personal testimony. “I feel God in my heart.” How can you possibly demonstrate that I am wrong. My evidence stands… (for me!).
Analogical Evidence : Comparison With a Known Situation. One of the weakest types of evidence in writing, analogical evidence compares something that is not certain or known with a situation that is known. Then, the text draws conclusions based on that comparison. “Everything has a cause, therefore; existence has a cause and God is that cause.”
Character evidence is a term used in the law of evidence to describe any testimony or document submitted for the purpose of proving that a person acted in a particular way on a particular occasion based on the character or disposition of that person.
“Do you really think the disciples would have suffered such horrible deaths for a lie?”
Circumstantial evidence is evidence that relies on an inference to connect it to a conclusion of fact—such as a fingerprint at the scene of a crime. “Bethlehem exists, Paul wrote about Jesus, Tacitus talks about Jesus, he must be real and the son of god who died on the cross for our sins.”
There is plenty of evidence for the existence of God if you only open your heart and close your mind and your eyes. There is no good evidence. By ‘good’ I am referencing evidence that can stand against critical inquiry and independent verification of facts. The evidence that is available is the very worst kind available. Stories, traditions, personal testimony, unsubstantiated claims of the miraculous, and all things unsupported by reliable, repeatable, observable, measurable, rational or even logical evidence.
I include ‘rational and logical’ as all apologetics I am aware of, are based on fallacies.
That misses Boomer47’s point I think. Both he and I disbelieve that a human can survive their own physical death in any meaningful way, but that is obviously a lack of belief, and epistemologically carries no burden proof. What you posted was a belief that nothing exists after death, which does carry an epistemological burden of proof, as a belief is the affirmation of a claim.
It’s a line you have crossed often in the past, he’s trying to help you see that you’ve strayed passed it again, by claiming to believe a contrary claim to the belief of an afterlife, rather than simply disbelieving that claim.
It’s a very important distinction, and a lot of theists will correctly identify your unevidenced belief as having no rational basis, and thus, at least in their eyes, lending some credence to their own belief.
A belief requires evidence.
Not believing something requires no evidence.
To suggest otherwise is an argumentum ad ignorantiam fallacy.
Logically, nothing can be either “proved” nor “disproved” because of a lack of evidence.
I can logically demonstrate that a bear is not inside a cave based on a lack of evidence. A lack of evidence, is in fact, evidence of absence, when evidence should be reasonably and logically expected.
Everyone in town tells me that there is a man eating bear living in a cave on the mountain. I check around, No one under the age of 80 has ever seen the bear. The three people in town who are over 80 love to tell stories about the bear carrying off children who do bad things in the night. Sometimes campers swear that they hear the bear when they are out in the woods. They can hear him walking and breathing near the camp.
I decide to go and look for the bear and find the cave. I look around the cave and see no bear prints in the soft dirt. I toss some rocks in the cave, they echo and nothing happens. I look for droppings and find none. I listen intently for movement or breathing and hear nothing. I decide to step up my investigation.
I go to town and get a chicken and some wild blueberries. I place them on a dish outside the cave and set up camp fifty yards away. In the morning the chicken is gone, but all I see are dog tracks. The berries have not been touched. The tracks come from the forest and go back into the forest. No indication of bear at all. Hmmmm. I decide to investigate further.
I start a fire in front of the cave and place green pine needles onto it. Wow, a whole lot of smoke… I funnel the smoke into the cave as I check the mountain to see if there is another opening anyplace. No smoke comes from anywhere, This appears to be the only opening.
Still no sign of a bear. Okay, I go out and buy a trail camera. I set it up so that it faces the cave. I watch the mouth of the cave for a year. At no point do I ever see a bear enter or exit from the cave. I check the camera monthly and never find footprints or scat. No indication of a bear at all.
Based on the complete lack of evidence, I am fairly certain that there is no frigging bear in that cave. I load my shotgun and venture into the cave with three other well armed men. We find nothing at all. No indication of a bear. None.
There is no bear in the cave, based on a complete lack of evidence.
There was a tiger instead and Cog got eaten up, shotgun, camera and all and the three octogenarians in the village shit and pissed themselves laughing for days…sorry, couldn’t resist…my bias for old people is showing yeah?. Squawk fucking squawk!!!
Imagine it’s an invisible bear, that you can only detect through prayer…
Logic can’t infer any claim to knowledge about unfalsifiable claims. However it would be absurd to believe them all, and obviously capricious bias to believe some and not others.
Also your claim is based on a quite a bit of evidence, albeit circumstantial. Personally I’d be content to disbelieve the bear existed, if the only evidence for it is hearsay, and of course we know bears do exist, we can’t say the same for deities.
Awwww shit! Invisible bears? You could be stepping in invisible bear poop and not even know it. Imagine walking around all day as you smear invisible bear poop all over everything. Damn, I wish I could fling some of that poo.* I would never get caught. How can you polish and invisible bear poo? How would you know if it needs polishing? Wow! Mind blowing. Damn! This site is really useful! I never thought of that before! mumbling to self “invisible bear poo/”
I’m a weak philosopher so may explain my point poorly.
Claims about god(s) come under the broad heading of metaphysics. The question of the existence of a bear does not.
The non existence of a bear in a cave can be demonstrated by simply going into the cave, or by say sending in a mobile camera. IE the claim is falsifiable. That the demonstration is difficult is irrelevant. As far as a I’m aware, there is no way to demonstrate the non existence of god. IE the claim is unfalsifiable.
I’m unable to change my position. IE that the existence or non existence of god(s) can only be demonstrated with empirical evidence.
Boomer, think about it… Were the bear invisible and noncorporal, our steps to indicate “existence” would be no different. Either the bear which is metaphysical, manifests in reality or it does not. If it does not manifest in reality it is exactly the same thing as being non-existent. Once again, absence of evidence, where one expects to see evidence, is evidence of absence.
The best example for God I can think of are the prayer studies. God is supposed to answer prayers. We can study prayers. We have studied prayers. There is no indication what so ever that God is answering prayers. The evidence does not support the claim. But if god were answering prayers we should be able to see some statistical difference between prayer and chance. There is none.
Absence of evidence tells us that a road of inquiry has led us to a dead end and we no longer need look in that direction. Close enough roads and the point of looking becomes superfluous, at least until a new area of possible exploration comes along.
Currently we have 2000 years of closed roads regarding all things Godly, magical, supernatural, spiritual, and metaphysical. All of these avenues of exploration into the existence of God have led absolutely nowhere. Certainly, this complete lack of evidence, where some kind of evidence should be expected, skews the predicted final results towards the non-existence of God or gods.
How would your mind survive the physical death of your brain? Until someone offers some credible evidence for that, beyond wishful thinking and archaic superstition, I simply don’t believe there is anything to find out.
But!!! Once you leave your physical body “you” don’t need those things BECAUSE you enter a different dimension of “being ness” where these things can exist AND you get the added bonus of all previous lifetime memories and a full understanding of the universe. You don’t need a brain to process your thoughts, silly …
