Jamest is right!

[Animavore]

I don't get it. What type of evidence is there but observed evidence? Even for theists who claim to have had evidence for gods in the form of experiences their evidence has still been observed. Even if your evidence is anecdotal, something you believe based on something someone else has experienced, the evidence has still, apparently, been observed somewhere. Even Jesus, God himself if you believe it, performed miracles for people to see and know who he was because he seemingly thought highly of demonstrable proof.

[Xamonas Chegwé]

If you pluck evidence from your arse but never look at it directly, is it truly observed?

[Seth]

What utter nonsense. Your anthropocentric conceit is showing I'm afraid. What on earth leads you to the specious belief (a fairly religious one) that the existence of God, or anything else for that matter, is conditioned on our having comprehensible evidence of it?

I never claimed that it did. So hang your strawman back up in its cupboard. I have never claimed that the existence or non-existence of anything depends upon "our having comprehensible evidence of it"! It is perfectly feasible that things exist that we are unable to detect. However, having a little evidence does tend to tip the scales in favour of that thing's existence.

You said "The REAL test is, as always, what evidence do we have that there is a god in the mix? And the answer is, nothing but subjective anecdote and speculation."

First, whether God exists or does not exist has nothing to do with what we know about God, as you say. Because of that, our understanding (knowledge of evidence) about God is not a test of anything other than our knowledge and understanding. Perhaps you stated it imprecisely, but your claim implies that the "test" of God's existence is the evidence we have, which is why I said what I did.

Second, in order for your amended claim to be valid, it must be true that there is nothing but "subjective anecdote and speculation" available as evidence, a proposition you have failed to credibly support. You may believe what you believe about the nature of the evidence in favor of the existence of God, but your belief is every bit as much a religious belief as what you claim of the beliefs of others. In other words, you religiously discount or ignore evidence for the existence of God merely and only because it does not meet your personal standards of scientific supportability. The problem with your standards of proof is that your understanding of the nature of the universe is both finite and extremely limited, which means that you improperly discount both evidence of, and the possible existence of God simply through ignorance.

Like all Atheists, you have pre-determined your default position with respect to the existence of God, which is an a priori position that God does not exist and you're not going to bother examining any evidence that he does exist. This position amounts to a religious dogma.

Cosmologists are far more open-minded in that they are willing to entertain thoughts without accepting them in order to consider possibilities that might seem fanciful or impossible at first.

My position is that I neither believe nor disbelieve, and I'm willing to consider any and all evidence, even if it makes no "scientific" sense at the moment.

[Animavore]

If you pluck evidence from your arse but never look at it directly, is it truly observed?

You don't have to see something to observe it. A movement is felt. A loosening of bowels. The widening of sphincter. These are all observed phenomena.
Of course it is hard to tell by this evidence if there is anything more to the story than just shit. We need to hold the evidence in our hand and examine it more thoroughly.

[Svartalf]

You can see shit for what it is, once it's out, plus, it smells...

[Seth]

And aren't you an atheist, allegedly?

Nope. I'm a non-theistic Tolerist™

So it's just a coincidence that we both don't choose to believe in God? You got to that point via evidence, and we just stumbled there somehow?

I don't choose not to believe in God. I don''t choose to believe in God. I keep an open mind and watch carefully for, and carefully evaluate, any evidence pointing either way, and I refuse to draw faulty conclusions based on personal bias or inadequate credible information.

So, in other words, you are an atheist. Welcome to the team!

No, even according to your narrow definition of "atheist" as "one who has no belief in God" I'm not an atheist, nor am I an Atheist (who holds a positive belief about the non-existence of God, which is you and just about everyone else here...and every other Atheist I've ever encountered). Nor am I an Agnostic, because I think that ultimately mankind can know of the existence and nature of God, if any. Thus I am a "non-theistic" individual because my provisional position on the nature of God is that if God exists, God is not a "supernatural" being, but would instead be an entirely natural phenomenon, which means that belief in God is not "theistic" in nature, it is naturalistic or in other words, scientific.

It is perfectly clear that the existence or non existence of God is in fact, as Dawkins himself said, a purely scientific question.

[Seth]

If you pluck evidence from your arse but never look at it directly, is it truly observed?

You don't have to see something to observe it. A movement is felt. A loosening of bowels. The widening of sphincter. These are all observed phenomena.
Of course it is hard to tell by this evidence if there is anything more to the story than just shit. We need to hold the evidence in our hand and examine it more thoroughly.

I'm told the Germans spend a lot of time examining their own shit. I'm not so sure about the French. Perhaps they examine other people's shit more than their own.

[Seth]

No, the cause of atheism is an unwillingness to logically and rationally examine all the available evidence.

Atheists refuse to accept that 'evidence' can be anything other than of the observed variety. That's precisely why they're all fucking idiots.

So, evidence that can't be observed in a repeatable fashion is useful, is it? So, little Johnny's internal belief that a small purple hippopotamus lives in his garden and talks to him every night is a valid datum in describing the world we all live in?

Within it's sphere of influence, it most certainly is. If a UFO with an ET being visits someone on earth and then leaves, according to your metric the observation of that event is not "useful" merely because YOU cannot observe it repeatably, which is of course utter nonsense.

Our limited scientific understanding is not sufficient to explain the mechanisms by which a UFO with an ET inside might show up here on earth, but that's less than meaningless with respect to the occurrence of the event.

Likewise, just because science cannot observe and replicate a "miracle" performed by God in no way impeaches the evidence that the event was observed and did in fact occur.

One-off events are not necessarily repeatable, but that doesn't mean they don't happen. After all, you do, I believe, give credence to the Big Bang theory, which was a singular, non-repeatable event. You accept the theorizing about the Big Bang as valid scientific inquiry without solid scientific proofs, do you not? But you refuse to accept anecdotal reports about experiences with God as evidence towards a theory of God's existence. You reject such evidence outright because it's not "repeatable," but then again neither is the Big Bang.

Why is that?

[Xamonas Chegwé]

What utter nonsense. Your anthropocentric conceit is showing I'm afraid. What on earth leads you to the specious belief (a fairly religious one) that the existence of God, or anything else for that matter, is conditioned on our having comprehensible evidence of it?

I never claimed that it did. So hang your strawman back up in its cupboard. I have never claimed that the existence or non-existence of anything depends upon "our having comprehensible evidence of it"! It is perfectly feasible that things exist that we are unable to detect. However, having a little evidence does tend to tip the scales in favour of that thing's existence.

You said "The REAL test is, as always, what evidence do we have that there is a god in the mix? And the answer is, nothing but subjective anecdote and speculation."

I'll stop you there. This is NOT a claim for non-existence. It is a claim of paucity of evidence. It does not mean that god does not exist. But it does add him/her/it to the set of "things for which there is insufficient evidence to realistically assert the existence thereof without looking silly".

So, as I said before, hang up your strawman. It is not needed here.

[Seth]

You can see shit for what it is, once it's out, plus, it smells...

If a Frenchman shits in the woods and there's no one there to smell it, does it make a stink?

[Xamonas Chegwé]

You can see shit for what it is, once it's out, plus, it smells...

If a Frenchman shits in the woods and there's no one there to smell it, does it make a stink?

If a Frenchman is in the woods, you don't need to know if he's had a shit to know it stinks in there.

[Svartalf]

You can see shit for what it is, once it's out, plus, it smells...

If a Frenchman shits in the woods and there's no one there to smell it, does it make a stink?

If a Frenchman is in the woods, you don't need to know if he's had a shit to know it stinks in there.

You still ought to go out and check, you know that "knowing something" without checking the facts is not proper evidence.

[Animavore]

Thus I am a "non-theistic" individual because my provisional position on the nature of God is that if God exists, God is not a "supernatural" being, but would instead be an entirely natural phenomenon, which means that belief in God is not "theistic" in nature, it is naturalistic or in other words, scientific.

I suggested something like this to a supernaturalist on RatSkep recently and he accused me of trying to define the supernatural out of existence. I pointed out the paradox with the supernatural that once you have defined it and gain an understanding of it it switches side to the natural automatically. The "supernatural" can never be more than a placeholder because it doesn't define anything in a positive way. It is instead defining things by what they are not, ie; a known, natural process.

He suggested a definition for the supernatural be, "Anything which isn't reducible to mathematics." The implicit constinuation to that definition to me seems to be, "...until it is".

Same goes for other things like consciousness. If consciousness is some immaterial "stuff" then once detected and its relationship with brain understood then immaterialism disappears up its own arse. Immaterialists recently cried foul when I suggested they had a 'Hard Problem' too every bit as much as materialists. They seemed to think citing an immaterial cause is its own thing in no further need of explanation and they weren't answerable to questions like why does damage or separation of the material brain cause barriers to the flow of this immaterial stuff?

Supernatural and immaterial questions are very interesting to me, but in my experience the people who fight the hardest against seeking honest answers to the questions are not atheists, but theists themselves who have no interest in seeking answers and instead want to revel in the mystery (real or percieved).

[Brian Peacock]

If you pluck evidence from your arse but never look at it directly, is it truly observed?

I don't know, depends how much you've paid for it I guess - and no, I won't be visiting that particular dominatrix again.

[Seth]

You can see shit for what it is, once it's out, plus, it smells...

If a Frenchman shits in the woods and there's no one there to smell it, does it make a stink?

If a Frenchman is in the woods, you don't need to know if he's had a shit to know it stinks in there.

I doubt if the Frenchman thinks it stinks. Therefore you are stating a non-scientific religious belief.