Science and Evidence

@revenant You're not human, right? :-)

@revenant [quote]It is just not possible to have evidence for everything.[/quote]

I think we have to keep in mind what evidence really is. I gave the definition as "the available body of facts or information indicating whether a belief or proposition is true or valid" which basically means evidence is the data we use to determine whether or not we think something is true. Having or not having evidence doesn't determine whether or not something is real in the true sense or true in the real sense it just means we think it might be. If we cherry pick what we call evidence that negates the conclusion and just makes us ideologues.

I don't like to have to keep using that word but it really is the crux of the matter.

[quote]Humans have only so many senses and vastly inferior to those of animals. We do not see everything, we do not hear everything, we do not smell everything.[/quote]

Are we not men of science?! Kidding. You make an excellent point.

[quote]We are also talking about non existence of appropriate instruments or tools. Those might be devised later on.
Humans are so arrogant and biased..[/quote]

Indeed. We certainly are.

@val70 I am a fallen angel...😉😇11🤫

@revenant You're not. I'm that and I haven't seen you there yet. Sorry, need to wax the tail 😈

@AkioTsukino
[quote] I think we have to keep in mind what evidence really is.[/quote]
No, I think it’s more of a matter to how it’s applied. Evidence supports a fact or belief. But it depends on the quality and quantity of the evidence , and what can affect it. You seem to be generalizing science as a whole. Without recognizing it’s diversity.

@DocSavage [quote]No, I think it’s more of a matter to how it’s applied.[/quote]

Exactly!

[quote]Evidence supports a fact or belief. [/quote]

Correct. Evidence, for example, for or against god. You shouldn't say evidence is lacking and so you don't believe or disbelieve because if the evidence is lacking you have little to believe. Or "know."

[quote]But it depends on the quality and quantity of the evidence , and what can affect it. You seem to be generalizing science as a whole. Without recognizing it’s diversity. But it depends on the quality and quantity of the evidence , and what can affect it. You seem to be generalizing science as a whole. Without recognizing it’s diversity.[/quote]

See, that is where the argument of science minded atheists get it wrong when personally criticizing my approach to the debate. When they talk about faith they are obstinate in their ignorance. Have almost no idea what they are talking about. Yet they judge faith from that ignorance. Even if I correct them there isn't any debate, it's just an unscientific approach to the Bible or faith. And I don't think to myself "These bozos are in charge of science?!" No, I think these bozos shouldn't be allowed to represent or even speak in defense of science. My argument isn't against science, it's against ideologues using science to try and justify their uninformed opinion of faith.

When I say to them, look, science got that wrong, they shouldn't be so defensive. Being wrong is part of science and theology and anything human. Being wrong should be your teacher. But the ideologue is dependent and therefore oblivious to their own misguided faith.

@revenant If there is no evidence for something, it need not be accepted as true.

@AkioTsukino
[quote] My argument isn't against science, it's against ideologues using science to try and justify their uninformed opinion of faith[/quote]
No it isn’t. Your argument is nothing but an attempt to get attention. You classify both science and faith in a generalized, superficial term. The two are in no way on par with each other.
After following your post for a while, you’ve made absolutely no statement on the validity of faith, or the unreliability of science. You praise faith for its unreasonable beliefs, and criticize science because it doesn’t give you the answers you don’t really want.
You blame Atheists for mocking faith, which you, yourself call corrupt and ignorant.

@LeopoldBloom and I find that absurd. If you do not look for something, you will not find it. If you are unaware of the existence of xyz, you will not look for it even.

@LeopoldBloom [quote]If there is no evidence for something, it need not be accepted as true.[/quote]

@revenant [quote]and I find that absurd. If you do not look for something, you will not find it. If you are unaware of the existence of xyz, you will not look for it even.[/quote]

Okay, this is much longer than I had planned. HEY! It's isn't my verbosity it's my curiosity and this stuff is paradoxically simple and complicated, redundant and essential. The shortcut to the conclusion is to go down to the separation in the text.

This is really the most fascinating thing to me, and I think it always has been. Thirty years ago when I became a believer at 27, I had no one to talk to about my beliefs. All of my family and friends were and still are atheists and they just didn't want to hear about it. They thought it was ridiculous just as I had always thought. But that had been the only thing that I did know about it. That it seemed ridiculous.

So, when I got online and discovered all of these public forums where this debate was taking place between believers and unbelievers (back then, in the mid to late 1990's there were many more than now) I always gravitated to the unbelievers. I had no interest in debating doctrinal disputes which actually is much more challenging, but I couldn't figure out why that is. I only recently figured out that it's because (I think) that they, the unbelievers, have this really weird way of looking at things. And it fascinates me like some mechanical anomaly that doesn't compute.

First of all there is an appeal to authority that you would think would be more prevalent in believers. But then there is this weird way of looking at "evidence." It's not what you might think. I used to think that this was just their way of saying "my beliefs are better than yours because yours are silly, and mine aren't because 1.) you can't prove yours and 2.) mine can be explained." And you would assume that they are so enamored with science because that is the basis for their discovery. But that isn't actually true. Science investigates the unexplained. It tries to explain the unexplained. We know this works, but why or how does it work? If something is explained science is done with it, no more need of it. And science can and has had some pretty strange explanations.

So then I thought, well, it's confirmation bias. The tendency to interpret new evidence as confirmation of one's existing beliefs or theories. I thought that they used science as confirmation of their disbelief, as a sort of crutch because they are afraid of the unknown, or looking silly. They need concrete answers - to think there are concrete answers and then conversely there are silly people. I'm not silly. It's groupthink and a false sense of intellect and comfort to them.

But then I noticed that they really didn't think that way. They really didn't care about evidence as defined as "the available body of facts or information indicating whether a belief or proposition is true or valid." You can see this by their refusing any evidence that contradicts their misinformed opinion, not only about God, the Bible, spirituality and the supernatural, but also secular events like the holocaust, 9/11, the Covid pandemic. If evidence were really important to them, they would, like me, eventually say "hold on a minute" when spiritual, or at least secular knowledge - the science - didn't compute. Didn't add up. But they don't. At all. In fact, they become not only dogmatic about those things but also will ignore the real evidence as defined above either not to look silly or wrong which no science minded person should fear.

What they really mean when they say "evidence" is accepted explanation or ideology (the science of ideas and ideals, especially one which forms the basis of economic or political theory and policy) and narcissism (thinking very highly of oneself, needing admiration, believing others are inferior).

[sep]

The result is that they will deny rather than explore evidence unless it confirms their belief out of fear. The problem with all of this is that it isn't anything new. And more importantly, after living half of my life as an unbeliever and the other half as a believer I can safely say nothing about it is any different one from the other.

I'm afraid that the only conclusion I can draw is that these unbelievers are - well - human! Not unlike ourselves.

I know. I know. This is a remarkable discovery, but I should have known all along. Bastards.

@AkioTsukino You're literally describing believers, not atheists. I've noticed the same thing about you guys - confirmation bias and a tendency to fall for conspiracy theories that match your own preexisting beliefs.

Having participated in many religious discussions, I'm aware of the "evidence" that believers present, along with the refutations. Part of the problem is confusion between evidence and conjecture. When we ask for proof of God's existence, an honest theist will say that there is none; God's existence can only be inferred from observations, which could also lead to the opposite conclusion. This is why the Bible says people are saved by faith, not knowledge. Kierkegaard said that if a man succeeded in proving the truth of Christianity beyond any possible doubt, by doing so he would have destroyed it, because he would have made faith impossible. No one has faith that 2 + 2 = 4. Knowledge is a different form of understanding than faith.

Another mistake theists make is to accuse atheists of having "faith" in science. What they're doing is confusing faith with trust. I don't have faith that the theory of natural selection is true; I [b]trust[/b] that the people who have studied this are on the right track, and the academic systems that vet them are rigorous. It would be like you trusting that your pastor attended a legitimate seminary and his explanations of the Bible are in line with your denomination's positions.

And of course people we disagree with are human. We need to remember that so we don't start killing each other over these disagreements.