Atheist humor

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When you see ancient texts it is of course a good assumption that they were written down by living things like humans. But there is no reason to trust that what the ancient texts say is true. Do you consider hieroglyphics evidence for the Egyptian gods?

Personal testimony is technically evidence, but it's not reliable evidence. At least with modern testimonies, we know that those people exist, and they promise to tell the truth. There are consequences for not telling the truth. We don't even know if the testimonies in the Bible were from real people. Certainly no contrasting testimonies were ever included. And they aren't testifying about mundane things, like who they saw and when. It's about complete upheavals of natural law. The evidence for that should have a higher standard.

When you say "witness statements from the Bible", do you mean that in a way that is analogous to the witness statements taken for legal reasons? To be held to that standard, the statements would have to be written in the Bible by the people who witnessed them, not a decades/centuries later transcription of a story passed down of an ancestor who witnessed them. There are probably chunks of text from the New Testament that hold up to that standard, but nothing in Genesis possibly could, for obvious reasons. Furthermore, even if a witness statement is accurately taken from a person and they are telling the truth, that doesn't mean they are correct about their interpretation. If somebody says, "I witnessed a miracle" and they are neither lying nor hallucinating, that is evidence that a particular thing was seen by them. It is not evidence that the thing is miraculous even if they think it is.

Consider the Noah's Ark story. It is not a witness statement per se but it can be entered into evidence (to continue your analogy) that catastrophic flooding did happen at one point because it is joined by other flood stories and physical evidence of past flooding. But even if all story+physical evidence was able to put a giant flood at a certain place and certain time, that doesn't mean God did it just because the people who heard about the flood (or even saw it) thought so. You have to think about what the witness statements are actually evidence of. Just because somebody says- and believes- that they saw something and they are sure it was caused by X does not mean they are correct that it was caused by X. But if enough people saw the same thing that is evidence that there was a thing to see even if they were mistaken in their assumptions of what caused it.

Last edited by Janissy on 13 Aug 2014, 12:40 pm, edited 1 time in total.

If hieroglyphics say they're right, that means Egyptian gods must be real

The translations do give evidence of things that were happening at the time but certainly not of any supernatural things (and supernatural things are described a lot). Rather, they give evidence of what the religious beliefs of those people were, which is quite different from evidence that those religious beliefs are true. If somebody carved a story about the god Ra, that is evidence there was belief in a god named Ra. But it isn't evidence that there actually is a god named Ra (but wouldn't we all just be hosed if there really is ).

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Dude: Okay Creationists DO atleast TRY to defend themselves with SOME kind of evidence (good or bad as it may be). We get it.
But whats this about "witnesses" from Bible?

According to the NT Mary had a conversation with Christ after he was put to death. So - Christians will cite Mary as a "witness" to Christ's resurrection. It is true that some Christians do that. Whether citing Mary as a witness makes any kind of logical sense as an argument is an open question because it is just verifying a story from the story itsself. But Mary would indeed be a "witness from the Bible".

But I have NEVER seen a Creationist cite "witnesses from the Bible" for Creation.

We arent talking about the New Testament, nor even about the shank of the Old Testament, both of which are set in a fully populated world. We are talking about the first five days of Creation when even the Bible itsself says that there were no humans around to "witness" anything. So who are these "witnesses" to creation that you're talking about?

Since we are so far down the rabbit-hole of circular reasoning anyway: God was a witness of Creation.

Yes, but Mary believed Jesus came to her as a vision, not in the flesh. The disciples disagreed on the facts.

The many people GOD speaks to directly, possibly some indirect contact with GOD, possibly miracle witnesses. GOD has told people GOD is the creator.

Imagine a Stargate episode where primitive people have written evidence of worshiping a GOD, often the team use that evidence to figure out which "system lord" is the "GOD" being worshipped. We can't dismiss evidence just because it is so-called primitive people reporting it.

It is evidence that certain people had experiences they attributed to God. But it's not evidence of God anymore than the modern alien witness stories are evidence of aliens. I don't think it's possible for humans to experience something without creating a narrative to explain the experience. It's the way we are wired. But that doesn't make the narratives true.

Using one fantasy story as an analogy to prove the other? In stargate they use the evidence to figure out what the primitives are mistaking for God, not verify the existence of an actual God, or Gods.

Okay- so though most of the Bible gives us hearsay about witness (not actual witnesses-just its word that there are witnesses)- you admit that there is isnt even that for the first five days of Creation. There is only hearsay about hearsay. So why not state it that way? To defend their position "Creationists present hearsay about hearsay from the Bible"? Rather than saying "Creationists present witnesses from the Bible."?

Many who live today claim to hear the voice of God. How can I know they're not lying or deluded?

There is a huge difference between legal evidence and scientific evidence. Witness testimony has been proven to be unreliable time and again, but it is still used in the legal system as there is often no other option.

The "evidence" used in probability mathematics for your argument is only the bits and pieces snipped out from the lkarger context. It does not count any more than if you isolated a few select streets' crime statistics as indicative of probability for every street crime probability.



Scientists don't create matter. I never said they did. I only said they have measured and observed it happening in a true vacuum. This has happened in the absence of energy, so it is not just an alteration of form. We may not know the how or the why (yet), but we know it happens.



1. You don't seem to understand how science works.

2. Everything you have cited as proof so far uses some bit of science taken out of context, so arguing that science is a lie would also completely eliminate all of your arguments.



If you agree, then why are you trying to use common sense as a supporting argument?



So anyone that can read and speak is credible enough to be an expert in the scientific field? Perhaps I am misunderstanding this statement.

Last edited by sonofghandi on 14 Aug 2014, 8:44 am, edited 1 time in total.

Is there any corroborating evidence? Every primitive society has their own unique set of beliefs. They can't all be true. Did God tell them anything people could not have known at the time? I've seen no evidence of that.

The probability argument is the reason physicists like Stephen Hawkings, physicist Paul Davies and many other physicists believe that the universe appears fined tuned for life.

"Physicist Paul Davies has asserted that "There is now broad agreement among physicists and cosmologists that the Universe is in several respects ?fine-tuned' for life ...the conclusion is not so much that the Universe is fine-tuned for life; rather it is fine-tuned for the building blocks and environments that life requires."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fine-tuned_Universe

This is a serious argument and the mathematics is serious evidence.

Stephen Hawking has noted, "The laws of science, as we know them at present, contain many fundamental numbers, like the size of the electric charge of the electron and the ratio of the masses of the proton and the electron. ... The remarkable fact is that the values of these numbers seem to have been very finely adjusted to make possible the development of life
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fine-tuned_Universe



I never cited anything as proof. I cited things as evidence. I responded to the assertion that creationists have no evidence.



Common sense tells me a creator is more like than nothing creating the universe. I would think that would be true of any reasonable person.



He does not have to be an expert in the field to read someone else's arguments.

Well, if you say the universe is uncaused you are essentially done (assuming you can prove it).
If you say it has been created by a Creator, you still have quite a bit or work left to explain what caused the Creator.

I think "common sense" is not enough to explain things. There are many counter-intuitive things. Because probability/statistics are counter-intuitive to people it is possible to make a profit with casinos. Most people devise gambling strategies that can only be mathematically disproven by experts, but at first glance they make sense. Often these strategies are based on wrong assumptions that seem at first glance to be "common sense".