Quote:
Originally Posted by Our House
Where is it?
I'm not talking about evidence for a god or a supreme being. We've all seen those arguments before. Unfortunately, they say nothing about your particular religion and can equally apply to every conceivable religion. All of the specific "evidence" seems to be conveniently bundled up in your particular religion's holy book. For example:
Is there evidence for the Christian God anywhere but in the Bible?
Is there evidence for the Muslim God anywhere but in the Koran?
Is there evidence for the Jewish God anywhere but in the Torah?
etc. etc.
If the answer to these is "no", then there is ZERO (non-circular) evidence for your religion's god. And if you think this is false, post an argument for your particular god without appealing to your holy book.
The reconciliation lies in what a believer considers to be evidence. If by "evidence" you mean empirical evidence (ie that there's no other kind) then there isnt very good evidence for any specific religion. Some are ruled out, others have mild evidence for them (imo) but not enough to justify belief on their own.
I think that non-empirical evidence is valid, just weaker (and always trumped by empirical evidence). For example, I consider that I have evidence that I am conscious even though nobody else can veryify that fact directly, you just have to take my word for it. (At the moment we dont have a theory able to determine what is conscious and what isnt - if someone thinks we can, change the example to "I know what it feels like for me to see red".) If there was some empirical evidence that contradicted that, I believe it would be rational for you to deny my consciousness (no matter how strenuously I objected).
Another point I would make is that, in asking for one specific conception of God, you appear to be requiring that the evidence completely specify a unique god - that there can be no speculation and that in order to believe in a specific god I have to be led there 100% by the evidence. This may be a misunderstanding on my part, so happy to retract that if I've missed the point. However, if I'm right, I think it is unreasonable since when forming views on other topics we are allowed to have a conception which is constrained by evidence, yet not uniquely specified by it.
I do the same with my beliefs about God - I think there is some (weak and subjective) evidence for his existence - I think a rational skeptic shouldnt pay any attention to my opinion on that, I think it
is rational for me to maintain a belief given such scant evidence, providing I test it against empirically justified beliefs. If my spiritually-derived belief tells me something which contradicts a logically deduced or experimentally derived fact - I think it is irrational to keep holding onto the faith-based view. It should be modified to be consistent with what science and logic tells me about the world.
Another point (since I'm in a rambling mood) is that I dont think we choose beliefs - we discover that we hold them. Belief-forming is a complicated process, evaluation of evidence belongs more in the analysis and defence of a belief than in its formation (in my view, anyhow). Consequently, I discover I believe in God, I look at that and realise that the only reason I can possibly find is a personal, spiritual experience. I can think of a whole host of reasons which are "better" explanations - yet despite quite a bit of effort, I still believe it's caused by God. What am I supposed to do then? I think it's perfectly rational to accept the world the way it seems to me, analyse what evidence there is - see what it shows, look at the logical consequences of that and see if it contradicts what we learn about the world empirically.