Mac, a follow up question to your definition. What is “proof”? And can something which can’t be proven, or hasn’t been proven, have “evidence” supporting it?

I prefer the definitions given in the Stanford Philosophy Encyclopedia. Anything that “enhances the reasonableness” of something. Or anything that “can make a difference” to what it is reasonable to believe in.

Yes I agree that the issue is in what constitutes evidence. I have no doubt there are plenty of things I’d consider to be evidence of God, that you would say are not evidence for God at all. Take the origin of the universe as just one example. Plenty of intelligent people look at this as evidence for God, and plenty of intelligent people say it is not.

But I disagree on the burden of proof. There is a burden of proof on whoever is making a claim. If the sceptic says “The natural world is all that exists”, then they are making a claim and there is a burden of proof on them to show that claim to be true. If you say “There is no evidence for God” then you have a burden of proof as well.

Which religions are “relatively more successful at reconciling the reality of existence and human experience than Christianity” and why are they more successful? How successful are they?

AJ, Plenty of Christians talk about God in terms of their answered prayers and their spiritual experiences but they do not talk about him in terms of the everyday workings of the world. They create a divide between the workings of God and the workings of the world. I doubt there’s anything about fundamentalism that necessitates thinking that way, it’s just that fundamentalists do seem to think on those terms. It implicitly backs God into a corner where he never placed himself.

So you believe faith encourages people not to think? For me, it's quite the opposite.

I disagree, Trav

>>If you say “There is no evidence for God” then you have a burden of proof as well.<<

What evidence could I produce to support a statement that there is no evidence? Evidence of a non-existence of evidence can only be non-existent.

Pericles, You could try to show a pattern by identifying things that are most commonly given as evidence for God* and showing that they are not evidence for God at all. This would support the idea that there is no evidence for God, or minimal/negligible evidence for God. It wouldn't prove it, but it would provide some support for it.

Some things may not be able to decisively be proven, but this doesn't mean there is no "burden of proof"- burden of proof simply means you're obliged to provide support for your view.

*eg: The Origin of the Universe, The Contingency of the Universe, Fine Tuning, Objective Morals.

Trav,

Here I must agree with Pericles, although in general I am of the same worldview outlook as you.

In my opinion, the frequent use in English of the word “evidence” when speaking about worldviews (even just philosophy of science!) is probably of David Hume provenience. For instance, German and Slavic languages cannot distinguish between the words “proof” and “evidence”. In English one has circumstantial evidence, convincing evidence, etc. whereas in serious debates the word “proof” (never circumstantial, equally convincing for everybody) should be preserved only in the context of formal logic or mathematics.

Evidence can be convincing only with respect to a particular context, e.g. to the jury in a court trial. The same for “burden of proof” (in mathematics you can ask for the proof of the existence of something as well as for the non-existence of something, not in real life). Today (in distinction to Hume’s days) the word “evidence” is ambiguous also in a philosophy of science (theoretical physics) context.

There is plenty of “convincing evidence” for the existence of God, meaning convincing to e.g. a Christian, and one cannot expect an atheist to accept it as equally convincing to him/her since then he/she would cease being an atheist.

One can provide arguments in favour of the one or the other fundamental position but they are very seldom convincing for somebody of the opposite worldview orientation, because that would mean conversion or loss of faith, a fundamental change of one’s entire worldview outlook. These things happen, but are only indirectly, usually a posteriori, related to this or that evidence that used to be non-convincing becoming suddenly convincing or vice versa.

Trav,

I’m not interested in how some Christians talk, in this case.

<<Plenty of Christians talk about God in terms of their answered prayers and their spiritual experiences but they do not talk about him in terms of the everyday workings of the world.>>

Only what they believe, and having been a church-goer, Youth Group leader and avid attendee of my church’s Bible study group every week in the twenty-something-odd years that I was a Christian, I have never known of any Christian who does this…

<<They create a divide between the workings of God and the workings of the world.>>

Unless something bad happens, of course. Then it’s suddenly the fault of humans because God granted us more free will than even he has himself. For some reason, it was important to him that we be able to commit evil deeds, when not even he himself can this due to his nature. Apparently the inability to do wrong would make us like robots, but not him.

<<So you believe faith encourages people not to think?>>

Absolutely. You even gave a good example of this yourself. I didn’t just pull that remark out of thin air. It was inspired by your attitude towards seeking an answer regarding "[h]ow God’s will interacts with ours".

Faith is not a starting point for any objective inquiry; it’s the surrender of the mind. Faith is the excuse people give when they don’t have a good reason to believe something. Christians even unwittingly admit this when they incorrectly refer to an atheist’s lack of belief as a ‘faith’; or when they assert that an atheist must necessarily believe that the universe came from nothing and then label that imposed belief a ‘faith’.

As for your evidences, they're easily discredited anyway:

The Origin of the Universe: God-of-gaps fallacy.

The Contingency of the Universe: Special pleading fallacy.

Fine Tuning: Assumes the laws of physics are mutable; ignores how uninhabitable the universe is (including much of our own planet); based on false probabilities that we couldn’t possibly calculate given our sample size of 1.

Objective Morals: Euthyphro dilemma.

Actually, Trav, after seeing a post from George and then re-reading my post, I should probably clarify that I have never known of any *fundamentalist* who does what you describe (hopefully you would have assumed that that's what I meant anyway given that fundamentalists were what we had been discussing).

There are plenty of Christians who "create a divide between the workings of God and the workings of the world", but they're not the types who "talk about God in terms of their answered prayers and their spiritual experiences", and they're certainly not fundamentalists. They're the more educated and "sophisticated" Christians who wouldn't dare speak of their prayers or their spiritual experiences, and they certainly wouldn't place their god close to the "workings of the world" because they realise how vulnerable these ideas are to criticism. Particularly when it comes to free will and the problem of evil.