Because I know that nothing that could have been produced by a human being is evidence of more than that a human being wrote it. You also claim that the life of the messenger is such evidence. It is not, for the same reason.
I did previously and again just now. Evidence for an idea is a fact or finding that makes that idea more likely to be correct. What you have offered is not that. Storm clouds on radar suggesting rain? It just became likelier that it would rain today. Dark clouds amassing overhead? It just became even more likely. A messenger, perhaps via a fortune cookie, tells us it will rain. Unless one can correlate that receiving that fortune has been followed by rain more often than would be expected by chance, it is not evidence either way, evidence only that somebody predicted rain. I hope you can see why some of these things are evidence for rain and others not.
But take a look at your comment again. Add "to me." Nobody can prove it to you. That's not the same thing.
Again, to you. Nobody can explain it to you.
Here's a fallacy now. You've been given a list of logically possible alternatives as to why we haven't received compelling evidence for a god. Previously, without justification, you pared that down to one. Now you are acknowledging one of those possibilities again, even calling it logical, but then eliminated again without cause. Still, you call your conclusion logical and sound. No it is not.
And it is remarkable that you cannot see that. You can't see that your conclusion cannot be sound if you eliminated what you called a logical alternative without ruling it out first.
Until you can, you cannot be reached. You have to participate in the process competently. You would need to assume the receptive demeanor of an interested and prepared student, and that requires that you be able to recognize a sound argument, and be willing to change your opinion after reading one. You demonstrate repeatedly that that is not you. You don't recognize the validity of the arguments you read, and you commit logical fallacies in your replies.
There is never a burden of proof with a person unwilling or unable to understand the argument. The phrase implies that those skills named are present in the one evaluating the argument. There is no burden of proof if one wants to claim that the Pythagorean theorem is correct to someone that hasn't mastered counting yet. You just make the claim or say nothing. You can't do more, so you have no obligation to do more. You keep requesting that others show you your errors, then claim that nobody has demonstrated anything to you. That's you, not them.
EDIT: I just saw this image after posting, and thought of my burden of proof comment above. No offense intended. This is not you, but the problem is the same. Dad has no burden of proof here, because baby can't evaluate the argument:
No, it's not. For starters, you've said that the reason the evidence fails to convince the atheist is that the evidence fails to convince the atheist. That's not even on the list of reasons, much less the result of a proper analysis. It's a tautology and not a reason at all.
And no argument that assumes the existence of a deity can be sound until that existence is confirmed. A sound argument requires true premises. Your argument includes an assumed premise, and in this case, an unshared one, one rejected by all atheists. You could have improved your comment by making it conditional - "if a deity exists, then . . ."
Last edited:
