A 6 Day Creation

[JoeyKnothead]

From Post 961 here:

There is now more evidence than ever before about 6-day creation.

For debate:

Please offer evidence for a literal six day creation of the Universe.

Please remember that in this section of the site the Bible is not considered authoritative.

[Tcg]

The universe is convincing evidence for the existence of God, I must have said that a hundred times, so as you can see I do regularly present evidence, what more do you want from me here?

Not even close. The universe is convincing evidence of the universe. Suggesting it is the work of God or god or gods is an unnecessary and unfounded complication. The universe is. End of story.


Tcg

[Sherlock Holmes]

The universe is convincing evidence for the existence of God, I must have said that a hundred times, so as you can see I do regularly present evidence, what more do you want from me here?

Not even close. The universe is convincing evidence of the universe. Suggesting it is the work of God or god or gods is an unnecessary and unfounded complication. The universe is. End of story.

Tcg

If I said "fossils are convincing evidence of fossils", would that negate the claim "fossils are evidence for evolution"?

Of course it wouldn't, it is a vacuity to say "X is evidence of X" it is either meaningless or else always true in all cases, so carries no epistemological value, hopelessly vacuous.

You cannot decide on my behalf what I find to be convincing or not, evidence is convincing if and only if I personally find it convincing, that you might not find it convincing is irrelevant to me. You ask for "convincing evidence" and all I can do is present you with what I regard as convincing evidence, this is what atheists ask of me and this is what I do. That you are not convinced is not my problem to solve, the problem lies within you.

As I asked elsewhere what do we decide when we offer something as evidence to two people and one agrees that it is and the other disagrees, says it is not evidence?

All evidence is subjective, everything we perceive is subjective, all human experiences are subjective experiences, there is no absolute, objective definition of what constitutes "convincing" evidence.

God is not a "complication" at all, the unexplained presence of a functioning law based system is the real complication, that's how I perceive this anyway.

[brunumb]

The universe is convincing evidence for the existence of God, I must have said that a hundred times, so as you can see I do regularly present evidence, what more do you want from me here?

HUH? Surely you jest. The universe is no more evidence that God exists than pink sparkles is evidence that unicorns exist.

[Sherlock Holmes]

The universe is convincing evidence for the existence of God, I must have said that a hundred times, so as you can see I do regularly present evidence, what more do you want from me here?

HUH? Surely you jest. The universe is no more evidence that God exists than pink sparkles is evidence that unicorns exist.

All we can say here is that you and I have different criteria for what is evidence.

[brunumb]

You cannot decide on my behalf what I find to be convincing or not, evidence is convincing if and only if I personally find it convincing, that you might not find it convincing is irrelevant to me. You ask for "convincing evidence" and all I can do is present you with what I regard as convincing evidence, this is what atheists ask of me and this is what I do. That you are not convinced is not my problem to solve, the problem lies within you.

Here is what I struggle with. You claim you were a former atheist and you used to argue against the existence of God and for the theory of evolution as fact. Then, somehow your awareness of the existence of the universe convinced you that God exists. How did such compelling evidence get overlooked for so long while you were peddling atheist ideas? A consequence of your new belief must have been that all the arguments you previously used to support evolution must therefore be wrong. They were no longer compelling whereas the simple acknowledgement that the universe exists was compelling evidence for God. Hmmm. Not seeing it at all.

[Diagoras]

[Replying to Sherlock Holmes in post #82]

You cannot decide what I find to be convincing or not, evidence is convincing if and only if I personally find it convincing, that you might not find it convincing is irrelevant to me.

An interesting mindset. If I was convinced of something that someone else was dubious of, I like to think I'd find their views relevant and would listen to them to check for possible unconscious biases on my part.

As an example, my wife once helped to dissuade me from replying to an email from my 'cousin', which I later saw was a cleverly worded scam. Her being unconvinced by the email evidence proved to be highly relevant to me.

As I asked elsewhere what do we decide when we offer something as evidence to two people and one agrees that it is and the other disagrees, says it is not evidence?

This sounds like science. The obvious answer is: weigh the evidence. Repeat the experiments (perhaps each should try to replicate each other's work) and attempt to falsify both hypotheses. It may be the 'answer' lies somewhere in-between two ideas, or that they are both wrong. "More evidence!" shall be the refrain.

All evidence is subjective, everything we perceive is subjective, there is no absolute, objective definition of what constitutes "convincing" evidence.

Although I'm NOT suggesting you try this, jumping off a tall building might provide 'convincing evidence' for the theory of gravity....

I kept this quote, but unfortunately don't recall who said it first - it may well have been a member here:

The pragmatic reason to believe anything is true at all is to use that information to guide our actions. Sooner or later, the truth of a claim is measured by its power to inform our decisions under the expectation of predictable outcomes. Decisions based on true beliefs will manifest themselves in the form of experiences that were correctly anticipated. Decisions based on false beliefs will eventually fail in that goal.

I’d additionally comment that your claim ‘All evidence is subjective’ is better suited to the Philosophy forum rather than here. I’m not sure how it particularly relates to a six-day creation, so I don’t feel compelled to pursue the tangent further.

God is not a "complication" at all, the unexplained presence of a functioning law based system is the real complication, that's how I perceive this anyway.

By ‘law’, I’m assuming you mean physical law. So you at least acknowledge that physical laws exist, or are at least sufficiently convinced to make that statement.

As an explanation for what we observe about the universe, physics could be equally described as either elegantly simple, or bafflingly complicated. If you’re concerned about what’s objective or subjective, you might want to restate your point here.

[Diagoras]

When I was a teen and as it was quite clear that I wasn't a Christian, one of our youth pastors asked me why that was. I explained that from my POV, the faith made absolutely no sense at all. He basically said that if I just "opened my heart to God" the "holy spirit" would somehow make it all make sense. I had the same reaction as you.....I furrowed my brow and asked "So I have to believe it first, and then it will make sense?" He actually said yes. So I asked why should I do that with just Christianity? Why not believe Mormonism, Islam, or any other religion first and then see if it starts to make sense?

He just stared at me for a few seconds and said "But we have the truth", which prompted me to ask if he'd ever tried believing in another religion. He shook his head at me and walked away.

That's an exceptionally perceptive attitude. I'd have loved to have that level of critical thinking in my teens!

for making such a good point.

[JoeyKnothead]

Stop the endless procrastination man, it seems that just asking you a question that you really don't want to honestly answer is an "insult" in your world. Get a thicker skin, stop complaining and step up and robustly defend what you say please.

As before. I'll not support claims I don't make.

For those interested, Duolingo offers a great app for learning the English language.

[Sherlock Holmes]

You cannot decide on my behalf what I find to be convincing or not, evidence is convincing if and only if I personally find it convincing, that you might not find it convincing is irrelevant to me. You ask for "convincing evidence" and all I can do is present you with what I regard as convincing evidence, this is what atheists ask of me and this is what I do. That you are not convinced is not my problem to solve, the problem lies within you.

Here is what I struggle with. You claim you were a former atheist and you used to argue against the existence of God and for the theory of evolution as fact.

Yes.

Then, somehow your awareness of the existence of the universe convinced you that God exists. How did such compelling evidence get overlooked for so long while you were peddling atheist ideas?

That's the key question I think. It was very slow and very gradual (many years) change of mindset. I basically started by stepping back, being less outspoken and took more time to listen, to hear what the other party was saying without immediately compartmentalizing them. Up until then my reaction with theists was to listen to a few basic words from their argument and then "lookup" a standardized response I'd developed and just blurted that back, often "blinding them with science" by elaborating some specific point where I happened to have a deepest insights.

Well I began to listen more, just listen and try to understand how they were perceiving things, I made an effort to see things as they did, not by believing in God or anything, but by trying to identify the fundamental differences between me and them.

Finally I began to realize that my answers were to a large degree, a form of faith in their won right, after all my strengths were physics, engineering, electronics with some decent mathematics not genetics, fossils etc yet I spoke of evolution with confidence of an expert which I was not, I realized I was arguing from a position of personal faith in evolution.

A consequence of your new belief must have been that all the arguments you previously used to support evolution must therefore be wrong. They were no longer compelling whereas the simple acknowledgement that the universe exists was compelling evidence for God. Hmmm. Not seeing it at all.

Well I realized that the term "evolution" as used popularly in books, TV documentaries and so on, represented a large number of distinct claims, chained together, and that each of the underlying claims could be critiqued individually, not only as some "averaging" or "accumulation" of all of them.

I realized that people who defended evolution often, themselves were guilty of what I had been "not reading the Bible at all", that is few I met had ever read Origin of Species, few I met had ever dug down into the fragmentary and discontinuity of the fossil record and so on, these defenders - as I had once been - argued based mainly on what they'd been told, over and over, often subliminally, reinforced year after year after year in TV shows and magazine articles, the very thought that such ideas could be wrong was laughable, not because of the compelling evidence but because of the incessant societal repetition of the claims of evolution.

This is what I now refer to it as indoctrination because it is, repeatedly telling people over and over that X is true, with our without supporting logical arguments, does amount to indoctrination, doubt was and is actively discouraged with silliness like "evolution is a fact" and other standard chants and mantras.

Ultimately I had to abandon that way of thinking, when I became more open minded, much less defensive of evolution I was able to see - when listening to advocates (as I had once been) - that these people were not open minded, they were uninformed or dismissive of things that undermined evolution, their entire mindset was frustration at anyone who did not share their beliefs.

[Sherlock Holmes]

[Replying to Sherlock Holmes in post #82]

You cannot decide what I find to be convincing or not, evidence is convincing if and only if I personally find it convincing, that you might not find it convincing is irrelevant to me.

An interesting mindset. If I was convinced of something that someone else was dubious of, I like to think I'd find their views relevant and would listen to them to check for possible unconscious biases on my part.

As an example, my wife once helped to dissuade me from replying to an email from my 'cousin', which I later saw was a cleverly worded scam. Her being unconvinced by the email evidence proved to be highly relevant to me.

Right so at some point you became personally convinced sufficiently to not reply to the email, what is this proving?

As I asked elsewhere what do we decide when we offer something as evidence to two people and one agrees that it is and the other disagrees, says it is not evidence?

This sounds like science. The obvious answer is: weigh the evidence. Repeat the experiments (perhaps each should try to replicate each other's work) and attempt to falsify both hypotheses. It may be the 'answer' lies somewhere in-between two ideas, or that they are both wrong. "More evidence!" shall be the refrain.

We're not talking about science at all. Were talking about reasons that a person regards as justification for adopting some position. Science is helpful when discussing a system already known to be naturalistic, governed by laws of nature and so on, but why do you assume all such questions can be reduced to scientific questions? I don't assume that, I used to but don't any more.

As soon as you do that (as many do) you impose your beliefs (all question can be reduced to scientific question) upon the very thing you seek to understand, you rule out the answer "The universe is evidence of a mind, God" bot by logical reasoning at all, but by the presumption that the universe does have a scientific explanation. which is a belief, faith.

All evidence is subjective, everything we perceive is subjective, there is no absolute, objective definition of what constitutes "convincing" evidence.

Although I'm NOT suggesting you try this, jumping off a tall building might provide 'convincing evidence' for the theory of gravity....

Yes, it might or might not, you won't know for certain until you attempt it.

I kept this quote, but unfortunately don't recall who said it first - it may well have been a member here:

The pragmatic reason to believe anything is true at all is to use that information to guide our actions. Sooner or later, the truth of a claim is measured by its power to inform our decisions under the expectation of predictable outcomes. Decisions based on true beliefs will manifest themselves in the form of experiences that were correctly anticipated. Decisions based on false beliefs will eventually fail in that goal.

I’d additionally comment that your claim ‘All evidence is subjective’ is better suited to the Philosophy forum rather than here. I’m not sure how it particularly relates to a six-day creation, so I don’t feel compelled to pursue the tangent further.

OK we won't then.