Evidence and the Burden of Proof

[Don McIntosh]

Ever since Antony Flew introduced the concept of "presumption of atheism," it has become a more or less accepted rule of Christian-atheist debates (like the ones that take place here) that the Christian bears the burden of proof. On the definition of atheism as a mere "lack of belief," this seems fair enough: the burden of proof lies "on the proposition, not the opposition." Flew himself was careful to point out that this should be a procedural rather than substantive principle, so that when properly applied in a debate, the presumption of atheism presupposes nothing about the strength or weakness of the Christian position.

To my knowledge, however, Flew never mentioned what should happen to the burden of proof once a Christian undertakes to not only accept that burden but to meet it (or claim to meet it) by providing various forms of evidence. It seems to me that once evidence is brought in for examination, the burden of proof shifts. An atheist at that point can no longer claim to simply lack belief because there is "no evidence." To rationally maintain lack of belief (or continue to assert irrationality of belief), good arguments have to be made against the evidence that has been provided.

I take it that evidence confirming Christian theism includes:

1. Cosmological evidence suggesting an absolute beginning (of both space and time) of the universe.
2. The apparent fine-tuning of life-permitting physical constants regulating the universe.
3. Numerous instances of specified complexity (or "functional complexity" or "irreducible complexity") in nature.
4. General human awareness of transcendent or "objective" moral rules.
5. The historical origin, worldwide dispersion and persecution, and subsequent physical restoration of the nation of Israel, in keeping with the prophetic message of the Old Testament
6. The miraculous ministry of Jesus Christ, historically attested in thousands of early manuscripts, derived from originals dated to within a generation of his death and purported resurrection.
7. The birth of the early church, in Jerusalem, on the preaching of the resurrection, and in the face of violent persecution.
8. The remarkably sudden, complete conversion of Saul of Tarsus, formerly a leader in the earliest efforts to destroy the Christian movement.

It should be noted further that by "evidence," I mean the stuff of inductive inferences: objective data that increase the probability of a belief or proposition being true. I do not mean a sound deductive proof (though such a proof would amount to extremely strong evidence that Christian theism is true!).

Questions for debate: When Christians are challenged to provide evidence for their beliefs, and in response they freely provide various forms of evidence, do they still bear the sole burden of proof in the debate? Or do skeptics rather take on a burden of proof of their own, to show that the evidence provided is not "really" evidence, or for some reason is not admissible, not strong enough to warrant serious consideration, etc.?

[Divine Insight]

The burden of proof is entirely upon you to support your claims.

The burden of proof is on me only until my opponent appeals to an opposing belief, which of course you do below with your appeal to evolution.

Evolution is not an opposing belief to the claim of an unexplained invisible boogieman designer.

Evolution is a scientifically verified fact of reality.

The fact that you do not understand evolution is no one's problem but yours.

As to the rest of your reply I really don't have time to bother reading it right now. You are clearly in denial about what is being claimed and who has the burden of proof for their claims.

Evolution doesn't require a "designer".

You say,

I don't recall saying anything about an "unavoidable conclusion." I said, and maintain, that design appears to be a better explanation than evolution for certain biological systems. The evidence provided is the irreducible complexity of those systems, i.e., systems in which a specifiable function depends on a particular arrangement of a large number of parts and in which removal of one of the parts disables the function.

And I've already explained why your explanation fails. There are no "irreducible" systems in biology. All that claim amounts to is an ignorance of how evolution actually works.

So you are jumping to conclusions based on false premises. That's what you are doing wrong.

And now that I have revealed the error of your logic, we're done here.

[Guy Threepwood]

[Replying to post 1 by Don McIntosh]

Anthony Flew became a skeptic of atheism did he not?

so he debunked his own assertion

As an a-materialist, I lack belief in materialistic explanations for life and the universe. period. So the burden of proof lies entirely with materialists.

framing a belief as a disbelief of the alternative does nothing to change the belief, it only seeks to obscure it, why?

blind faith is faith which does not recognize itself as such.

[Guy Threepwood]

[Replying to post 18 by rikuoamero]

My attic and basement are not habitable, only the middle floors, therefore my house must have spontaneously materialized for no particular reason..

But the creator of the universe, be that God or the flying spaghetti multiverse, is not restricted by resources, the scale and wonder of the universe exists by virtue of mathematical algorithms, right?

So if you could create a tiny 'space saver' Truman dome solar system- or for the same 'price' a vast awe inspiring beautiful cosmos that draws inhabitants up and out of themselves...

which would you choose? which would be more consistent with a grand designer or bizarre accident?

[Divine Insight]

framing a belief as a disbelief of the alternative does nothing to change the belief, it only seeks to obscure it, why?

Atheism is not a belief in materialism. Atheism is simply a disbelief in the existence of any Gods. Especially in the mythological Gods that humans have clearly invented.

Atheism does not proclaim materialism. It can simply be a statement that we don't yet have any evidence to answer these questions.

Theism is a claim to have an answer to a question that has not yet been answered.

So theism is basically supporting a conclusion that has no evidence to back it up.

Atheists don't need to claim to know the answer to the true nature of reality.

So who's being more honest?

If you don't know the answer to a question why not confess that you don't know?

Why claim to know an answer that you can't know?

[Guy Threepwood]

[Replying to post 24 by Divine Insight]

Atheism is not a belief in materialism. Atheism is simply a disbelief in the existence of any Gods.

Exactly, and a-materialism is not a belief in God, it's simply a disbelief in the existence of any materialistic explanations for life and the universe.

[Divine Insight]

[Replying to post 24 by Divine Insight]

Atheism is not a belief in materialism. Atheism is simply a disbelief in the existence of any Gods.

Exactly, and a-materialism is not a belief in God, it's simply a disbelief in the existence of any materialistic explanations for life and the universe.

That's very true.

But theism is not merely a-materialism.

If you ask me if I believe in "materialism" I respond by simply saying that you would need to provide me with detailed definition of precisely what "materialism" even means before I could answer the question.

I have no clue what "materialism" even means. As far as I'm concerned it's an antiquated notion that is a left-over from Classical Newtonian thinking that the world is made up of tiny particles like miniature billiard balls that have properties such as mass and charge, etc.

My understanding of modern physics goes far beyond those primitive ideas.

So I don't know what "materialism" is supposed to mean in today's physics.

Also, claiming that there is a "non-material" world is just as meaningless. After all, if you can't define precisely what is meant by a material world, then how could the term "non-material" world have any meaning?

In the study of modern physics these kinds of terms aren't even required. All that needs to be addressed are concepts like "observable" or "measurable". What causes something to be observable or measurable is irrelevant. The only important questions is whether or not it can be observed or measured. If not, then it's a meaningless concept.

In other words, all I bother to address are things we can actually say something meaningful about.

And that does not include non-observable, and non-measurable "Gods".

I can however, address self-contradictory mythologies as that is a well-defined area of obvious self-contradictory claims.

So theology I can rebuke based on its own dogma. The notion of invisible gods are meaningless since they are non-observable and non-measurable.

To claim that any gods exists demands a "burden of proof".

[shnarkle]

[Replying to post 8 by Don McIntosh]

Miracle reports are evidence of miracles whether miracles abound in all religions or not. In other words, if a resurrection was epistemically not probable at all before the time of Jesus, it became epistemically at least slightly more probable when reports of a resurrection were issued by intelligent, credible witnesses with nothing to gain and lots to lose (their lives for example) by making up the reports.

There's a fertility rite that has been conducted by a group of people whereby they take a human being and attach them to a pole which is then carried by two people out to the fields where the guy attached to it drips blood over the field as he's being swung back and forth on this stake.

Up until only recently each and every victim attached to this stake dies, but one year the guy didn't die, and ever since then it is in no way a foregone conclusion that those who are attached to this stake will die.


My question concerns this idea that Christ's resurrection is somehow the primary tenet that Christians were being persecuted for. When I look at the historical accounts, there are other reasons for the locals wanting to get rid of them including, but not limited to: their communist ideals which effectively made using local currencies pointless, their radical selfless love; picking up unwanted orphans, discarded newborns, their openly devoted and expressed treasonous loyalty to another kingdom etc. Everything they did seemed to result in rapid growth as something looking much like a cancerous growth within, and to the body politic.

Here's another problem. The crucifixion of Jesus was an event that the two on the road to Emmaus claim to be something much more notable than the run of the mill crucifixions. It was quite the event in Jerusalem, yet one would expect the following resurrection to garner even more publicity, no?

The fact that the risen Christ appears only to his followers indicates to me that the resurrection is something more than the resurrection of a physical body which Christ himself openly points out is nothing to him. Christ's teachings point to something much more scandalous and incredible than a bodily resurrection, but the terminology seems to limit it to the resurrection of one's physical body.

In other words, it doesn't matter if the ruling elite understand what they're actually saying; at least not to them. Those ruling over them are being presented with their unconditional love, and those who can't comprehend what they're saying and doing, there's no hope for them. There's no explanation necessary.

The early church wasn't just pointing out that Christ was resurrected, but pointing out that Christ was alive in, with, and through them. They took Christ's own title "the way" and applied it to themselves.

This isn't even something that the modern day church would consider, and most likely would condemn anyone who did apply it to themselves no?

I find it incredibly ironic that as much emphasis is placed upon the bodily resurrection, the earliets gospel writer simply asks his readers to peer into an empty tomb where there is no body.

[rikuoamero]

[Replying to post 23 by Guy Threepwood]

My attic and basement are not habitable, only the middle floors, therefore my house must have spontaneously materialized for no particular reason..

It's clear that you don't know what the word 'habitable' means.
I mean non-hostile to life (or in our case, human life). You can go into your attic and basement (presumably) and not be killed by the conditions there-in.
However, if we assume for the sake of argument that our planet was designed by an intelligent fine-tuner/designer, then quite clearly it was not for the sake of humanity. More of the earth is hostile to human life than is non-hostile. Sure, humans have spread all over the land, but far more often than not, that's by altering the environment or using tools to withstand it.
Try seeing if you can live in the ocean. You can't. You'd need to be in a submarine, which is a tool designed to emulate our natural, liveable environment (at least in terms of gaseous oxygen and pressure) and to protect against the wider environment of the large body of water.
Try living in the Sahara desert, buck naked and no tools of any kind. You can't.

If the fine tuner fine tuned our planet for our sake, why is it we humans have to alter the fine tuner's design in order to live?
Either the fine tuner screwed up in his own design, and we're fixing his mess; the fine tuner had some other purpose in mind; or there is no fine tuner.

But the creator of the universe, be that God or the flying spaghetti multiverse, is not restricted by resources, the scale and wonder of the universe exists by virtue of mathematical algorithms, right?

God is unrestricted by resources? Not my claim.

So if you could create a tiny 'space saver' Truman dome solar system- or for the same 'price' a vast awe inspiring beautiful cosmos that draws inhabitants up and out of themselves...

Do you call the designer of this "Truman dome" a "fine" designer, all the while the very reason you call him a "fine" designer is apparently absent from the rest of the universe, which you assert he also created and designed?

[Don McIntosh]

[Replying to post 5 by Don McIntosh]

A large set of extremely precise (in terms of statistical significance) life-permitting physical constants, on the other hand, would still count as fine-tuning, or evidence of fine-tuning, and fine-tuning (for most observers) still counts as evidence favoring theism.

It's the "fine" I'm having problems with.

Let's say I'm an architect, and I say to you, I'm a genius at building habitable homes, wonderful homes for families. I say to you I've got a plot of of land that is currently uninhabitable by humans (as in, if you live there, you'll die) and that I can turn it into comfortable homes for humans.
At the end of the day, I come back to you, tell you to look at what I've built, only I've done a your God. One house out of the thousand I've built is actually able to be lived in by humans. All 999 other homes will kill you should you stay in them.
The majority of this planet is inimical to human life. Try walking into the ocean. You can't live there.
If you're still talking about life in general, you've still got the problem of the vast majority of this universe being (at present) hostile to life. We haven't discovered life anywhere else.

I think that's a good point. This is why I maintain that the fine-tuning argument doesn't go far enough. Instead of simply arguing that the universe is fine-tuned for life, we should say that the earth is further fine-tuned for life, and that the structure of organisms is fine-tuned for life even further. (When I say "life," I do mean primarily human life, yes. But I also mean the amazing diversity of creatures, fish for instance, that live where humans cannot.) The fine-tuning argument needs to incorporate not only physical constants and quantities but localized fine-tuning: specific atmospheric conditions, specific functionally dependent biological arrangements, etc.

On this revised view the fine-tuning of physical constants and quantities is a necessary but not sufficient condition for the flourishing of life on earth. But then it's still a critical, highly specified condition needed for life to flourish, and still evidence in favor of theism.

As for hostility to life elsewhere: imagine for a moment that the universe was as immense as ours, but teeming with life throughout. The evidence for fine-tuning would actually be diminished, because we would have good empirical grounds for thinking that the flourishing of life is itself a simple law of science, no more remarkable than, say, the gravitational attraction of bodies with mass.

As for the vast stretches of uninhabitable space that constitutes most of the observable universe, think of it like this: There is only one observable universe. Even if there exists an infinity of external universes they are unobservable in principle. That being the case, we have no reference class or sample space against which to actually measure the logical or theoretical probability of fine-tuning.

Then why do you argue in favour of it? You've just admitted you can't do it, yet here you are...?

Well, the range of possible values of the constants is still immense; but it's not (necessarily) measurably improbable. This is what some critics have called the "normalizability" problem. Because the upward bounding set of life-prohibiting values for the constants is potentially infinite, the logical probability of fine-tuning is potentially zero rather than just really, really low. There's still good reason to suspect divine intervention even in that scenario, I think, but it's clearly problematic for anyone who proposes to argue in terms of probability per se.

Even then there are answers to the normalizability problem, as McIntosh (no relation) points out:
https://appearedtoblogly.files.wordpres ... tyff-1.pdf

Besides, as mentioned above, the apparent fine-tuning of physical constants is only one part of my argument from design, as a necessary if not sufficient condition for life.

the more improbable the flourishing of life appears to be apart from the deliberate design work of some external agent.

Apparently you haven't heard of the Law of Large Numbers. I can't remember who said it, but I did hear a while back something along the lines of "Have tries in the billions, and even that thing that is normally only one in a thousand will become commonplace"
In other words, if we, for the sake of argument, say that only one in one million galaxies will have a star capable of supporting life, and only one in one million stars will have planets capable of supporting life, and only one in one million planets capable of supporting life will have life...then we have millions of planets with life (and that's just if we think in terms of life like on our own planet) throughout the universe.

I've heard of the law of large numbers, but not how you stated it. Normally it means that the average of a random variable approaches its expected value (not an unexpected value) as the number in the sample increases. So the more times I flip a coin, the closer the actual percentage of heads that comes up gets to .5.

I agree, though, that it seems reasonable to postulate that given enough time and enough random trials, "the improbable becomes probable." The problem is that even a naturalistic scenario like this seems to cry out for some sort of managing intelligence, someone to ensure at minimum that the trials keep running. It's not as if an unwitting, entropic universe would spend all its time trying out endless combinations of elements, molecules, atmospheric conditions, etc., so that life might emerge.

It's like you're on a beach, seeing a peculiar shaped rock, and wondering at the shape of it, and thinking it MUST have been shaped by a fine tuner, and all without either bothering or being able to look at all the other rocks around you.

Note first that the context of the OP concerns evidence rather than logical necessity, in other words inductive rather than deductive arguments. I am not arguing that theism MUST be concluded from observations of fine-tuning data. (I do think there are some powerful deductive arguments for theism, but my list is provided for anyone who asserts that there is simply "no evidence" for theism.)

But let's say I were to discover a rock on the beach that is shaped into an intricate series of pipe-looking segments, so that when I blow air into a hole at one end, sounds matching the first eight notes of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony comes out the other side; or a giant rock with long strings of bumps on it that later turned out to be the Preamble to the Declaration of Independence in a mathematically coded version of Braille. These would be strong evidence for design, in that they are complex, specifiable, and tied to a particular function that would not otherwise be expected. Furthermore, those features would make them unlike any of the countless rocks I have seen over the course of a lifetime.

[Don McIntosh]

[Replying to post 1 by Don McIntosh]

Anthony Flew became a skeptic of atheism did he not?

so he debunked his own assertion

Or someone actually met his burden of proof.

Ironically, what prompted him most to rethink the issues and turn to theism (some would say deism) were arguments from fine-tuning in physics and from intelligent design in biology.

As an a-materialist, I lack belief in materialistic explanations for life and the universe. period. So the burden of proof lies entirely with materialists.

Ha! And to reference earlier discussions in the thread: as an a-evolutionist, I do not claim to know that evolution is false; I merely lack belief that evolution is true.