There is evidence for God according to Atheist Philosopher

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AquinasForGod
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There is evidence for God according to Atheist Philosopher

Post #1

Post by AquinasForGod »

Question for debate: Do atheist just missunderstand what evidence means?

Alex O'Connor (Cosmic Skeptic) and atheist philosopher says there is evidence for God. He explains why in the first part of this discussion.



He is not the only one, though. Also, Joseph Schmid explains that there is evidence for God, even though he is agnostic.

Alex explains that evidence doesn't have to fully convince you in order to serve as evidence. Something serves as evidence even if it only moves you by 1% toward belief in God.

If you say, there is no "true" evidence for God then that is the no true Scotsman fallacy. Or if you say anything like that. No true evidence, not actual evidence, not real evidence, etc.

It is either evidence or it is not.

He says, an argument could be successful in the sense that it makes the conclusion more probably true than false.

He says, but another way an argument can be successful is if it makes a conclusion more probably true than sans the argument.

This means that if prior to the argument you thought the probability for God was 1%, then after say the fine-tuning argument, you raise that probability to 2%, then the argument was successful.

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Re: There is evidence for God according to Atheist Philosopher

Post #51

Post by TRANSPONDER »

AquinasForGod wrote: Tue Nov 29, 2022 1:46 pm [Replying to TRANSPONDER in post #42]

But there is no reason to accept natural metaphysics. If there were clear evidence that is the correct view of reality, then we wouldn't have so many bright philosophers, who are atheists that reject it.

This is why I brought up mathematical realism because there are a lot of atheists that accept it. They accept the idea that mathematics is outside space and time. Sir Roger Penrose is one of them, a mathematician and physicist.
"Sometimes it takes a layman to set these people straight." (Lucy van Pelt)

It doesn't matter what philosophers accept or reject. Philosophy is Theoretical and the mind experiment needs science to verify it, or it is merely hypothesis. Now philosophy does a good job of straightening out thinking, logically, but aside that I have seen not a few philosophers being apparently illogical, they are limited because science can clarify what they can only speculate about. From Aristotle to Nietzsche, they got into a mess because the science was lacking.
E.g If Nietzsche had known the DNA -instinct explanation of Morality, he wouldn't have spent an instant worrying about where morals would come from if God was Dead.

Bottom line here, Physics and the reality of a known physical universe is the validation of the natural/material, and metaphysics can play its' games and good luck to it.

Underlining the bottom line, with reference to the video, it was an interesting discussion and both of them weren't bad. I should have liked to be in the chat myself, but a lot of slips were apparently made. perhaps because a theistic approach was being considered, even by the atheist. An atheist philosopher or not, if she or he or it knew the arguments, they would no more have to consider the Theistic aspect than a maker of orrereys would have to include God in the mechanism.

Attaching to the underlining, mathematics may be outside space and time (I can get that) but don't waste our time implying that Either naturalist materialism is invalid because of that OR that by saying that ..'Hey, oooh, wow...God is outside of space and time, too" you can suppose that does a single, solitary, sub atomic thing to make the case for a god.

Name your own, and I still cannot recall an explanation of how you made the Leap of Faith from Kalam -god to Biblegod. As a former atheist who was familiar with the arguments (as I recall you said) you should not have been bamboozled by Anselm, Lane - Craig or any of the others. But then, maybe that's the problem with atheist philosophers, after all, a notable atheist professor of philosophy was bamboozled into sortagod - theism by the IC claim..

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Re: There is evidence for God according to Atheist Philosopher

Post #52

Post by TRANSPONDER »

Diagoras wrote: Tue Nov 29, 2022 5:52 pm
historia wrote: Tue Nov 29, 2022 6:54 am If cosmologists can posit certain properties for Dark Matter or (an even better example) the Multiverse without having directly observed either, why can't theologians posit certain attributes for God?
<bolding mine>

Scientists have accumulated several pieces of indirect evidence that supports a hypothesis of ‘dark matter’ existing. You don’t seem to have a problem with indirect evidence - see:
you wrote:By a "sufficient quantity of circumstantial evidence" I mean different types of evidence, not merely a lot of one thing. So, a cage at your house, elephant droppings in your yard, veterinary reports, eyewitnesses who testify to you keeping an elephant, etc., would all be "circumstantial" (i.e., indirect) evidence, which together could be sufficient to make the hypothesis more likely true than not.
Now, I should really have also bolded the part where you said, “posit certain properties”, because I’d argue that’s particularly relevant. These cosmologists aren’t simply deciding on properties that they like - they are constrained by the evidence they are steadily accumulating, so you have statements like, “It doesn’t interact with X so it likely isn’t Y.”

I suggest that where benchwarmer and I are at odds with your position is in the manner of theologists not constraining themselves in the same way.

The ‘multiverse’ hypothesis is - as you say - a closer analogy, since there’s even less evidence for it, and there are fewer constraints on it (unless maybe mathematically? I don’t know). However, for those reasons, it’s generally regarded as a weaker hypothesis, and is by no means accepted by all scientists.
Even more, apart from the apparent double standard of dismissing science because it uses indirect evidence, while piling up indirect eevidence and saying it makes a cumulative case, AND special pleading and strawman by ignoring that Dark matter, abiogenesis, the holographic universe and Something from Nothing are still hypothetical, though with a lot of indirect evidence and theism regards a god supposedly validated by fine tuning and the implausibility of infinite regression, as reliable, life -changing, worship and pray to and base your Life on Fact.

Aside from all that typical theist weighted scales, we have effectively science denial, where once it was just the 'opinion' of scientists it is now the 'mathematics' (a human invention) that is evidence of nothing and never mind the impressive number of validated hypotheses mathematics has come up with in the past.

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Re: There is evidence for God according to Atheist Philosopher

Post #53

Post by benchwarmer »

historia wrote: Tue Nov 29, 2022 6:54 am
If cosmologists can posit certain properties for Dark Matter or (an even better example) the Multiverse without having directly observed either, why can't theologians posit certain attributes for God?
Well, they can posit whatever they like, but are theologians positing these attributes based on observations of other things? i.e. I prayed for X, and X happened. My wife repeated the same thing the following week. Then my neighbor tried it. Every time someone prays for X, it happens! We can find no known source of this prayer answering, so lets posit there is a 'god' doing it until we find a better answer.

Cosmologists positing attributes of Dark Matter are only doing it based on observations. i.e. they see bodies moving in ways that can't be explained by any other (so far) observed phenomenon. So they hypothesize that perhaps X is responsible and they label X as Dark Matter. They are also open to being wrong and have no faith that requires them to keep Dark Matter as the reason if evidence to the contrary is observed. They are not basing their hypothesis on a faith position or god of the gaps type thinking. i.e. We don't know the answer, so let's claim it's Dark Matter.

So, it's not the same thing.

I may be willing to grant its the same thing if you grant that theologians are simply using 'God' as a place holder for observed phenomenon and they are willing to toss the idea of a 'God' if we discover the actual reason (assuming it's not a 'God') for whatever current gap they are filling.
historia wrote: Tue Nov 29, 2022 6:54 am A minor point of clarification:
benchwarmer wrote: Sun Nov 27, 2022 9:37 pm
historia wrote: Sun Nov 27, 2022 5:01 pm
But a sufficient quantity of circumstantial evidence could make the hypothesis more likely true than not.
On this we likely disagree. I'm glad you said "could", but even then, it's very dependent on the actual evidence. A large quantity of 'bad' evidence does not equal a small quantity of 'good' evidence. Nor does the quantity of circumstantial evidence increase the likelihood of truth. You are basically saying that if I showed you 1000 pictures of peanuts, each one in a different place in my house, it would start to build a good case that there is indeed an elephant present (assuming elephants actually eat peanuts in the first place)
That's not what I'm saying. By a "sufficient quantity of circumstantial evidence" I mean different types of evidence, not merely a lot of one thing. So, a cage at your house, elephant droppings in your yard, veterinary reports, eyewitnesses who testify to you keeping an elephant, etc., would all be "circumstantial" (i.e., indirect) evidence, which together could be sufficient to make the hypothesis more likely true than not.
Ok, thank you for that clarification. That makes more sense. Unfortunately, we don't have lots of different types of circumstantial evidence for any gods yet that also isn't evidence for some yet undiscovered natural phenomenon. We know history is full of people ascribing things to gods only for later generations to discover the real reason for these things.

In other words, the gaps for gods to fill is an ever shrinking domain. Today, it seems that most of the gaps may not even be a gap that needs filling other than our desire for answers for everything. For example, "What is my purpose?". I would answer that as "My purpose is whatever I choose it to be" whereas a theist is likely going to say "My purpose is whatever my god has destined for me". Some will insist that without a god, we can have no purpose thus creating their own gap to fill with their own desired, faith based answer.

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Re: There is evidence for God according to Atheist Philosopher

Post #54

Post by historia »

TRANSPONDER wrote: Tue Nov 29, 2022 7:19 pm
Even more, apart from the apparent double standard of dismissing science because it uses indirect evidence
Nobody is "dismissing science because it uses indirect evidence," TRANSPONDER. Here, as elsewhere, you seem to only have a loose grasp of the conversation, which is why I have a hard time taking your comments seriously.

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Re: There is evidence for God according to Atheist Philosopher

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Post by JoeyKnothead »

historia wrote: Wed Nov 30, 2022 11:58 am
TRANSPONDER wrote: Tue Nov 29, 2022 7:19 pm
Even more, apart from the apparent double standard of dismissing science because it uses indirect evidence
Nobody is "dismissing science because it uses indirect evidence," TRANSPONDER. Here, as elsewhere, you seem to only have a loose grasp of the conversation, which is why I have a hard time taking your comments seriously.
T's one of them ya gotta read a good bit of stuff to help understand the other stuff, but once ya've done that, your head gets stuffed. The good kind of stuffing, not that goop they put in cloacas on special occassions.

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Re: There is evidence for God according to Atheist Philosopher

Post #56

Post by historia »

[Replying to benchwarmer in post #53]

Apologies for reducing your entire post to one line here, but I'd like to bring you up to speed with my conversation with Diagoras, just so I don't just end up repeating the same thing to you both.
benchwarmer wrote: Wed Nov 30, 2022 9:39 am
So, it's not the same thing.
I'm afraid you're committing the same straw man argument that Diagoras did earlier (see post #24).

My argument is not that God and Dark Matter or the Multiverse are "the same." I'm saying they are analogous. Objecting to the analogy because the two things are not "the same" is just telling me you don't understand how analogies work.

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Re: There is evidence for God according to Atheist Philosopher

Post #57

Post by historia »

JoeyKnothead wrote: Wed Nov 30, 2022 12:03 pm
Whether we take comments serious or not, that don't really mean they're wrong.
But in this case he is flatly wrong. And not the first example of him attributing to me arguments I'm not making based on a simple misreading of the thread.

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Re: There is evidence for God according to Atheist Philosopher

Post #58

Post by JoeyKnothead »

historia wrote: Wed Nov 30, 2022 12:13 pm
JoeyKnothead wrote: Wed Nov 30, 2022 12:03 pm
Whether we take comments serious or not, that don't really mean they're wrong.
But in this case he is flatly wrong. And not the first example of him attributing to me arguments I'm not making based on a simple misreading of the thread.
There ya go. Point to the data. Then the fussing gets real good.
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Re: There is evidence for God according to Atheist Philosopher

Post #59

Post by historia »

Diagoras wrote: Tue Nov 29, 2022 5:52 pm
historia wrote: Tue Nov 29, 2022 6:54 am
If cosmologists can posit certain properties for Dark Matter or (an even better example) the Multiverse without having directly observed either, why can't theologians posit certain attributes for God?
<bolding mine>

Scientists have accumulated several pieces of indirect evidence that supports a hypothesis of ‘dark matter’ existing.
Yes. And natural theology is concerned with accumulating several pieces of indirect evidence (logical deductions, cosmological evidence, and so on), that supports belief in God.
Diagoras wrote: Tue Nov 29, 2022 5:52 pm
You don’t seem to have a problem with indirect evidence
Indeed, we use indirect evidence all the time in many areas of human inquiry.
benchwarmer wrote: Wed Nov 30, 2022 9:39 am
Well, they can posit whatever they like, but are theologians positing these attributes based on observations of other things?
Yes. Going back to the video in the OP: O'Connor notes that proponents of the kalam cosmological argument, after treating various philosophical arguments and cosmological evidence, posit various attributes for God based on that prior evidence.
Diagoras wrote: Tue Nov 29, 2022 5:52 pm
I suggest that where benchwarmer and I are at odds with your position is in the manner of theologists not constraining themselves in the same way.
Let's focus on this a bit more closely. What, exactly, do you (and perhaps also benchwarmer) mean by "the same way"?

Historians also don't constrain themselves in the "the same way" as scientists, since history (the discipline) doesn't follow the same methods as the natural sciences. Historians can't conduct or validate experiments on the past, for example. The nature of historical evidence and the epistemological foundations for history are also quite different from, say, astrophysics.

Does that mean history is just "word play," to borrow benchwarmer's phrase?
Last edited by historia on Wed Nov 30, 2022 1:11 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: There is evidence for God according to Atheist Philosopher

Post #60

Post by JoeyKnothead »

historia wrote: Wed Nov 30, 2022 1:01 pm ...
...Historians can't conduct or validate experiments on the past, for example...
This indicates that the findings of historians are open to suspicion, whether benignly so, or otherwise.
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