If I were to posit that I saw a man shoot another man in the local grocery store, how inclined would you be to believe this event really occurred?
If I were to posit that I saw a jug of milk levitate off the shelf of the grocery store and levitate through the aisles of the store, would you be more inclined or less inclined to believe it really occurred than the man shooting another man.
Now if I were to modify #2 to add that I not only saw the jug of milk levitate through the grocery store, but that 500 other people witnessed it, would you believe it really occurred any more so than you would believe a man shot another man in the grocery store if I told you I saw that?
If I asserted that I own a car, you would only need to hear my claim of such to believe it is true.
But if I asserted that I own a nuclear warhead, you wouldn’t believe this to be true based only on hearing my claim.
Why the difference?
It seems to me that Christians don’t recognize that they don’t have the substantial evidence to support the substantial claims which the Bible makes. So it raises the question of why one would believe something for which there isn’t enough sufficient evidence to match the size of the claim.
perhaps some specific instances of faith are virtuous. the kind of faith christians are talking about when they say faith is a virtue…that’s not one of those instances.
Please keep in mind this isn’t about whether or not people have faith. This is about whether or not Christians have enough evidence to believe God exists. If you read through my OP, you’ll get the idea of what I mean by “enough evidence to believe”.
Do human beings have enough evidence to believe God exists, or believe God doesn’t exist?
So long as the question is about “those people over there” it will likely remain a shallow one. If we rephrase the question to, “Do I have enough evidence to believe whatever I believe?” then we’re in more promising territory.
I think that a uniform and lawful reality being described as uncreated and a mere product of chance is a claim of considerable size for which atheists have no evidence.
occam’s razor is what separates the god hypothesis from the alternative. however, it is a tool much misunderstood. Simplicity is the offending word: what does simplicity mean? Does it just mean “the explanation with the least words”? It’s not so hard to see why that’s fucking stupid.
Modern thinkers, as explained in the article linked, judge simplicity by the length of the shortest computer program required to simulate it.
A computer program that simulates the laws of physics is far simpler than a computer program that simulates the immensely complex intelligence of something like a god – an intelligence, mind you, that’s intelligent enough to come up with the laws of physics himself.
The simplest explanation is that we just don’t know.
There is ample evidence to support this simple explanation, such as the widely agreed upon fact that we don’t even know how big reality is.
If we don’t know how big reality is, we have no idea what the size of our sample is. Is the known universe 85% of all reality, or maybe .00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001% of all reality. We have no idea.
Thus, we don’t know what the value of our sample is. The known might be a useful sample of all of reality, or it might be an immeasurably small fragment, and thus worthless as a guide to the larger picture. We have no clue.
Even if we were to declare the known universe to be all of reality, we know very little about the known universe. We didn’t even know most of it was there until recently.
A serious investigation of religion doesn’t begin until that moment when we are mature enough to look in the mirror, face the facts, and say them out loud.
No no they don’t but then that is why it is called faith and belief, if they had enough evidence it would be called knowing and understanding. See how easy that was.
Actually we do and we know it quite precisely in as much as we know how old the reality we are in is to a very precise value, we just don’t know if our universe is all there is.
Although the words, “I don’t know” are highly admirable, you might want to consider limiting your use of “we”.
I would challenge you on that.
What makes you think that “we” know to such a precise degree?
I hope you are not so naive to be talking about the Big Bang speculation.
It’s a theory it has evidence and yes I believe it currently is reasoned enough to estimate the universes age. If not then other competing theories need to man up and overturn the consensus. No one gives a shit about almost rans or for that matter claims against science that are based on an opinion. Basically there is something more than faith, which is more than can be said for God of course at least in an objective sense. But then that is a faith, it’s easy this whole defining shit thing.
Which is, interestingly enough, exactly the stance that the vast majority of non-theists take. I don’t know a single Atheist or Agnostic who claims to know how the universe began. I don’t have enough protrusions on my body to count all the Christians that do claim to know.
