Quote:
Originally Posted by Mason Malmuth
The requirement of my conjecture is more than an extremely small probability event. It also needs to produce a lot of good, and that can be debatable. So a storm in 1814 that damages the British Army is not enough to possibly qualify. You have to also add in saving the United States (if you think this is something good for the future of mankind).
The bolded is why I don't think it is at all good evidence.
Firstly, saying only events which produce a lot of good qualify ends up being far too convenient. Looking at only "rare" hurricanes, they can either:
A) Produce "good" results.
B) Produce neutral results.
C) Produce "bad" results.
Ignoring the massive subjectivity of saying the world is better off because of this hurricane--which requires making a gajillion assumptions about how the world 'would have turned out,' along with assuming everyone shares the same values and so would call this outcome "good"--you seem to have set up the scenario so that it can only be neutral or positive for your interpretation of God.
A) If the outcome is good, your believer wants it to be considered as pretty convincing evidence of God. (I know you said "possibly" but if that's really the extent of your claim then it becomes pretty worthless. I could say every time I blink my eyes it's evidence that God does/not exist if I'm allowed to tack on a bunch of if...then...possiblies to it.)
B) If the outcome is neutral, your believer doesn't want it to be evidence either way.
C) If the outcome is bad, your believer doesn't want it to be evidence either way.
So it seems a bit too advantageous to set up this non-falsifiable test. I think the obvious rebuttal, which is what Kelvis was getting at, is that if we're going to say (A) is good evidence for a specific conception of God, then we should take (C) as good evidence
against this same conception. All three scenarios make sense if God doesn't exist, but it's difficult to get (C) to make sense with your "good-loving" God unless you start re-defining God to ridiculous lengths, and you just end up with Sagan's purple dinosaur.
Maybe I'm missing something obvious, but it seems this ends up describing a God who likes "good" but doesn't dislike "bad," which then doesn't seem to be the Judeo-Christian God, so who is making the argument?