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Is there evidence your god beliefs are true while other god beliefs are false?

Beth, go back and read skepticgirl's explanation between "evidence" and conclusions or inferences drawn from the evidence. All god belief is base on hearsay... there is no direct evidence of anything except that people are good at inventing explanations for things they do not understand.

Read Edge. You sound like him. Is that your goal?
 
When plenteous preposterous prolix is perpetuated, I tend to pop Prilosec to pacify the profuse pain.
 
How many times must we fail to reject the null before we tentatively accept that there is no god (though of course future studies may prove us wrong and then we can change our minds)?

It's like homeopathy. Well designed studies in homeopathy fail to reject the null hypothesis, just like we have failed to reject the null hypothesis whenever we look for god. There is no plausible mechanism we have discovered by which homeopathy could work - again, just like god. So why is it that while both lack evidence for their existence and a plausible mechanism by which they could work, one is considered bunk and the other one considered deep and mysterious, and as rational to believe in as to not believe in.

There are some serious inconsistencies in that line of thinking.
 
I have evidence of love because I experienced love is circular? I have evidence of justice because I have experience justice is circular? How about I have evidence of rain because I experienced rain? Is that circular? Subjective experience is the most fundamental sort of evidence any of us can have. When you ask someone to ignore their subjective experience and accept instead another explanation, I think your alternative explanation must be very strong. Humans generally need strong evidence to accept that their underlying assumptions are incorrect and change the way they interpret the evidence of their senses is wrong. It can be done. The world is not flat as it appears? No, it's round became the accepted belief eventually.
More misconceptions on your part which I'm sure if I explain to you again won't make a difference, but for the sake of anyone reading the thread who is confused by this, I'll go over it again.

The subjective experience you label as love is evidence of an experience. We can observe an number of things which correlate with your subjective experience.

The experience itself can be looked at through brain activity both chemical and electrical.

The experience can be looked at as it relates to behavior, parental bonding, family bonding, mating and so on.

Together, the observations we make about behavior, and the subjective 'experience' you have are identified as part of human behavior and experience and we have given it a label, we've named your experience, love.

Parental bonding, family bonding, mating and so on exist. We have sufficient evidence of that. And emotion exists that accompanies parental bonding, family bonding, mating and so on. We understand emotions as part of consciousness, just as reasoning, memory, and interpretation of sensory input are part of consciousness. So we can say emotions exist.

The color red exists, it is a specific wavelength of visible light. One learns to recognize red and one learns to recognize the emotional experience we associate with parental bonding, family bonding, mating and so on that we have named, love.

Once again, no one here has said the experience does not exist. Nor have we said that one cannot reliably report that subjective experience or observed color. People can report their subjective experience which they interpret as "god". The experience is not being denied.

Take the same experiences, love and observing the color red. I can apply an electrical stimulus to your brain and if it triggered the right spot, you might experience a vision of the color red or you might experience the emotion you interpret as love. You could even experience the feeling you interpret as "god". None of those experiences would be evidence of red, love or god. Those experiences you felt or saw and interpreted when your brain was stimulated were not evidence of those things. Your experience was evidence of brain activity, nothing more.

Without all of our other observations the things you experienced, love, the color red and 'god' are all clear evidence you experienced something. Since there is nothing at all anywhere which is evidence your god experience is the result of real gods, all that experience is evidence of is that you had some brain activity. You cannot draw any other VALID conclusions from that experience. Because there is no evidence of anything more than brain activity. It would be invalid to draw a conclusion which the evidence did not support. You cannot claim you have an underlying premise the experience is evidence of gods because you have no evidence whatsoever to support that underlying premise.

All you are doing here Beth is proclaiming because someone believes something, the belief is evidence. It isn't that the experience is evidence. You are claiming the belief is the evidence.

As to the 'experience of justice' I don't have time to write a dissertation on the underlying psychosocial factors in moral convictions. People have criteria for making moral judgments and decisions. They are based on some group behavior that is genetically based as well as psychosocial influences in early childhood. Sociopaths, for example, don't empathize. Fetal alcohol syndrome has a sociopathic component. Abnormal maternal infant bonding can create sociopathic behavior and so on.

But what you experience as justice is just as explicable with external evidence as love is.
 
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... "I was acquitted of a crime I did not commit, which I explain as justice being done." This would be the correct construction right? And it seems reasonable to considered such testimonials as evidence. Not proof, but evidence in support of the idea that justice exists, (at least occasionally in our court system ;) )

Likewise, 'I was able to quit drinking after I was saved which I explain by god intervening in my life" would be the correct construction then? It seems equally reasonable to consider such testimonials as evidence. Not proof, but evidence in support of the idea that god exists.
I split this into 2 posts because the other would be too long. Few people read long posts.

Your moral convictions as I said, are developed through both nature and nurture factors. And no, there is no such thing as "justice" which exists outside of thought.

The second conclusion is classic, believing cause and effect without recognizing all the possible variables. You quit drinking and the belief in god may have impacted your quitting. That doesn't give you any evidence a real god intervened.

Re the gods exist being the initial assumption rather than no gods exist, do you use the equal initial assumption then that invisible pink unicorns exist, prove they don't?
 
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No. We do not have evidence for a god.

Proof, as you well know, has a mathematical connotation in this context that would require the evidence for mechanism to have an infinite amount of evidence to "prove" something.

Having infinite amounts of something is only practical in the world of abstract symbolic manipulation.

I wasn't using 'proof' in this context to mean the mathematical definition, just as in a previous post I presumed you were not using 'complete' and 'consistent' to mean the mathemathical definition. I was using proof in the sense that most people would not feel the conclusion was well-justified with such evidence.

More misconceptions on your part which I'm sure if I explain to you again won't make a difference, but for the sake of anyone reading the thread who is confused by this, I'll go over it again.
Sigh. You keep presuming I'm making certain mistakes or misconceptions and repeat the same information. That's not the case and I keep attempting to explain the difference between what I am thinking and what you think I am thinking without success. I will try to let it go after this. Thank you for your efforts at discussion.

Together, the observations we make about behavior, and the subjective 'experience' you have are identified as part of human behavior and experience and we have given it a label, we've named your experience, love.

Once again, no one here has said the experience does not exist. Nor have we said that one cannot reliably report that subjective experience or observed color. People can report their subjective experience which they interpret as "god". The experience is not being denied.

Take the same experiences, love and observing the color red. I can apply an electrical stimulus to your brain and if it triggered the right spot, you might experience a vision of the color red or you might experience the emotion you interpret as love. You could even experience the feeling you interpret as "god". None of those experiences would be evidence of red, love or god. Those experiences you felt or saw and interpreted when your brain was stimulated were not evidence of those things. Your experience was evidence of brain activity, nothing more.
People, in general, don't require this level of scientific justification to accept that when someone says there experienced 'love' 'justice' or 'red'. If someone says they bought a new red sweater, you don't ask them if they are sure it was 'red' and check the spectrum of light reflected by the sweater to verify it. I don't know why you expect them to insist upon such a high level of scientific corroboration for the experience of 'god'. Someone has an experience. They learn that other people with similar experiences describe it as 'god', so they assume that is the proper label for it and they assume, just as with love or justice or red that some outside stimulus which is labeled 'god' provoked the experience, i.e. that it wasn't entirely within their own head. That's not stupid or delusional or even poor logic. It's just based on the assumption that god exists and applying that assumption to their experiences.
All you are doing here Beth is proclaiming because someone believes something, the belief is evidence. It isn't that the experience is evidence. You are claiming the belief is the evidence.
No I'm not proclaiming or even claiming the belief is evidence. I'm trying to explain that for someone who starts with the assumption that 'god exists', it's quite reasonable for them to consider such experiences as evidence of the existance of god, just as experiencing justice or love or red would be considered evidence of the existance of those things.
Your moral convictions as I said, are developed through both nature and nurture factors. And no, there is no such thing as "justice" which exists outside of thought.

Justice is an intangible ideal, but I don't know that it doesn't exist outside of thought. How do you know this? Is justice something that when we stop believing in it, it won't exist anymore? Maybe, maybe not; while there are certainly some good arguments for your side, I am not as certain of this answer as you are. Just as with the question of the existance of other intangible ideals such as 'god' or 'mathematics', we cannot be sure that such concepts do not have an existance independent of our collective thoughts. We can only say that we cannot access such ideals outside of our thoughts.

The second conclusion is classic, believing cause and effect without recognizing all the possible variables. You quit drinking and the belief in god may have impacted your quitting. That doesn't give you any evidence a real god intervened.

You conflate evidence and proof here. It is, in fact, evidence. In fact, it is exactly the sort of evidence that a scientific researcher might gather in order to test the hypothesis. Cyborg wrote up a nice synopsis of the process, but didn't even touch on the fact that even if the data collected in a scientifically rigorous manner supported the hypothesis, it would still not be sufficient to prove the hypothesi. I agree that such evidence is not sufficient to justify the conclusion.

It is the claim that such experiences are not evidence that is wrong. I think that is an error that many skeptics here make, particularly in their efforts to convince believers of all sorts that they are mistaken. They dismiss personal accounts and testimonials as anecdotes and therefore 'not evidence' rather than dealing with them as evidence and showing that anedotal experiences and testimonials are insufficient to justify the conclusion they have drawn.
 
It is the claim that such experiences are not evidence that is wrong. I think that is an error that many skeptics here make, particularly in their efforts to convince believers of all sorts that they are mistaken.

They dismiss personal accounts and testimonials as anecdotes and therefore 'not evidence' rather than dealing with them as evidence and showing that anedotal experiences and testimonials are insufficient to justify the conclusion they have drawn.

hia Beth,
I guess its the level of evidence that is acceptable.

Even anecdotal evidence is evidence, but for the skeptic it's been seen to be not reasonable enough on the god issue anyhow. This might be down to the lack of objective evidence, which skeptics prefer to use anyway.

Subjective evidence ,ie anecdotal evidence, is way more likely to be accepted by most skeptics IMO, if supported by objective evidence.

I think it's just where one sets the bar on what you consider to be evidence at all, really....:)
 
Red exists... sweaters exist... the issue is not important. God however has not been shown to exist in any manner--nor has any conscious entity without a material brain. It would be a big deal if it existed. Actually evidence for all these people claiming to experience things they describe as god including "knowing his will" are big claims based on no evidence. If you you think "I bought a new red sweater" is comparable you are playing a very inane semantic game with yourself.

I don't care if someone bought a red sweater; I do care if there is any real reason to believe in a god.
 
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hia Beth,
I guess its the level of evidence that is acceptable.

Even anecdotal evidence is evidence, but for the skeptic it's been seen to be not reasonable enough on the god issue anyhow. This might be down to the lack of objective evidence, which skeptics prefer to use anyway.

Subjective evidence ,ie anecdotal evidence, is way more likely to be accepted by most skeptics IMO, if supported by objective evidence.

I think it's just where one sets the bar on what you consider to be evidence at all, really....:)


That's a good way of expressing that part of the issue. I also think that someone's baseline assumptions also play a role in how someone interprets their experiences and what they are 'evidence' for.
 
I wasn't using 'proof' in this context to mean the mathematical definition, just as in a previous post I presumed you were not using 'complete' and 'consistent' to mean the mathemathical definition.

I certainly intended it that way and since you never clarified what issue you had with it I can't really clarify it for you.

I was using proof in the sense that most people would not feel the conclusion was well-justified with such evidence.

Then let us be clear:

evidence: that which is presented in support of a truth
evidential statement: a formalisation of evidence in the form, "I experienced X which I explain with Y," such that we can examine the relationship between the experience and the explanation
evidence for: an evidential statement which has statistically significant support for its truth is "evidence for" it
informally proven: "evidence for" which reaches some threshold indicating a very high degree of certainty
formally proven: informal proof with a certainty of 1

So put simply you don't have evidence for something until you reach a certain degree of significance - you just have a conjectural statement.
 
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That's a good way of expressing that part of the issue. I also think that someone's baseline assumptions also play a role in how someone interprets their experiences and what they are 'evidence' for.

Thank you,
I agree about the baseline, however I'm taken with the notion that it isn't always fixed. May be it constantly shifts a bit.

Perhaps a basic understanding of the difference between objective and subjective evidence is perhaps one thing amongst many that can cause that sort of shift.

Perhaps it takes a willingness of the individual to want to know more to also raise that baseline, as gaining knowledge, as well as experience alters one's assumptions of reality
 

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