16 Apr '12 01:28>1 edit
Originally posted by whodey
I simply await for you to add to my list or reasons. You have yet to do so.
As for evidence, like it or not evidence in a court of law is eye witness testimony. Why do you drag science into the fray? You imply that judges and jurys are incompentent in their decisions if they do not use science as the basis for their verdicts. This is absurd.
"The simplest is that one should believe nothing on blind faith.
Belief should be based on evidence.
Until there is evidence for gods (or anything else) then one should not believe in gods
(or anything else not supported by evidence).
I HAVE presented you with another reason for your list.
Juries are often incompetent but that is not at all what I was saying.
A court of law uses a lower standard of evidence than is permissible in science.
We are discussing the nature of reality and not whether or not a person has committed a crime
and thus we are operating in the realm of science and are bound by it's higher standards of evidence.
I would also reiterate and restate what I implied earlier.
As Pierre-Simon Laplace said "The weight of evidence for an extraordinary claim must be proportioned to its strangeness."
Which was popularised by Carl Sagan as "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence".
Claiming that a person stole your car is not an extraordinary claim and does not require extraordinary evidence.
Claiming that there is an omnipotent god who created the universe IS an extraordinary claim and DOES need
extraordinary evidence.
And then we have the very meaning of the word evidence.
Evidence for a proposition must be either only explicable by that claim or be probabilistically most likely to be explained
by that proposition. The strength of the evidence for a particular proposition being how likely it is that that proposition
explains the evidence vs any and all other explanations.
In this instance the strength of eyewitness testimony or personal experience for god would be the probability that
that testimony is due to the existence of god vs the probability that the testimony is explained by something other
than god (anything from hallucinations to space aliens to simply lying).
For personal experience and eyewitness testimony the probability that they are explained by god is VASTLY lower than
the combined probability of every other possible explanation.
Thus, eyewitness testimony or personal experience can't be considered to be evidence for god as god is not even close to
being the most likely explanation for that testimony or experience.
Even if you are the one doing the experiencing or witnessing.
There is currently no evidence for god because there is no fact or observation that we have for which the best or most likely
explanation is that a god exists.