Evidence

[Trailblazer]

When the numbers are 95% they pretty much do exactly that.

In argumentation theory, an argumentum ad populum (Latin for "appeal to the people") is a fallacious argument that concludes that a proposition is true because many or most people believe it: "If many believe so, it is so."

This type of argument is known by several names,[1] including appeal to the masses, appeal to belief, appeal to the majority, appeal to democracy, appeal to popularity, argument by consensus, consensus fallacy, authority of the many, bandwagon fallacy, voxpopuli,[2] and in Latin as argumentum ad numerum ("appeal to the number"), fickle crowd syndrome, and consensus gentium ("agreement of the clans"). It is also the basis of a number of social phenomena, including communal reinforcement and the bandwagon effect. The Chinese proverb "three men make a tiger" concerns the same idea. Argumentum ad populum - Wikipedia

The converse of this is that if many or most people do not do it, it cannot be the right thing to do, and that is fallacious.

The Narrow Way

13 “Enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it. 14 Because[a] narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it. (Matthew 7:13-14 )

 

[TransmutingSoul]

And you Baha'i have presented the very best that you have, and it is inadequate for reasons stated. You have nothing better than what you have already presented, so what can we critics do but be unconvinced?

You either need to find more evidence, or admit that you have failed to present compelling evidence.

What are you going to confirm, that texts are texts? That Baha'u'llah was a mortal? That he claimed to communicate with a God? We know all this. What we don;t know if there is actually a God, or that is actually communicated with Baha'u'llah. The default is that no God exists, and that he invented the texts himself. That is the most likely explanation. Now convince us this model is wrong.

Claims that can't be verified are about the weakest evidence someone can provide. Thus if there are genuinely 'messengers from god' then I can only conclude that this god is extremely weak and ineffectual and probably not worthy of my attention.

OK, it was not good or compelling evidence.

That's OK, as that is all this OP is about.

In no way was I attempting to use the evidence to give compelling arguments with facts and proofs from the evidence.

The point being made was as to the amount of times a few people on RF keep saying a thiest has no evidence, when in reality there is a truckload of evidence.

The issue is many do not see the evidence contains facts or proofs.

I will give only one quick example as to prove a simple fact of character based on the evidence of a person.

It is evident that Baha'u'llah was a Kind and Generous Person, he was known as the "Father of the poor". This fact was evident to all those that knew Baha'u'llah, before he accepted the Bab and later gave a Message.

I am able to offer this as proof to you of the character of Baha’u’llah, as this statement is made by pursuing the Evidence available of the records of His life and one is able to offer facts and proofs from those records.

Regards Tony

 

[TransmutingSoul]

And of course, to stay on topic, which box do the Messengers' statements go into?

As the OP is offering.

That is Evidence.

Regards Tony

 

[Alien826]

Well, it's doing quite well for a mistake .. 600 posts so far.

Depends if you think 600 posts, mostly repetitive, is doing well.

 

[TransmutingSoul]

Claims that can't be verified offer no proofs whatsoever. Just because you happen to like the claim that's being made doesn't in any way make it true.

This OP is not about facts or proof, it is about Evidence.

Can we at least agree on what is Evidence?

Then once we determine what is Evidence, of people so desire, then facts and proofs can then be explored.

Regards Tony

 

[InvestigateTruth]

One hundred "books" is not all that impressive. Especially if they are all on the same subject and rehash a lot of material covered in other books. Also the term "books" can be very misleading. i have seen "books" of the Bible where one could write a hundred of them in a year. And what makes you think that he had no education? He was born to a rich family. Formal education may not have existed in its present form where he lived then. A rich family would hire their own teachers in the past. Odds are that his family did this.

There you go. You already made your investigation and conclusions.

 

[TransmutingSoul]

Depends if you think 600 posts, mostly repetitive, is doing well.

That is because people still negate what is valid evidence, yet the tide is turning, many now at least offer it is not strong or compelling evidence.

I see the OP has had a positive turn.

Regards Tony

 

[Subduction Zone]

This made me think, and I came up with this. What is evidence?

Often, the police ask members of the public to call in with what they think are sightings of some wanted suspect. They get thousands of responses, most of which are quite useless, but a precious few actually lead to the apprehension of the wanted suspect. Let's say the police then take all the responses and put them in a box labelled "evidence".

What I'm asking is how we determine what is evidence and what is not. Before the police start sifting through he responses, it's all evidence, at least potentially. After they complete their investigations, only the few that bore fruit were useful as evidence, so we could say that those were the only ones that should be called "evidence". What about those that were never investigated because the subject was already caught? What about those that could reasonably be evidence, but it was impossible to check for some reason?

Some categories seem to be emerging. Reports that seem on their face to be useful. Reports that are obviously unrelated. Those that pan out. Those that were never investigated at all. Let's put each type into separate boxes and undertake the task of coming up with a good label for each box, each having the word "evidence" as part of it. The unrelated ones can be called "not evidence". How about the rest?

And of course, to stay on topic, which box do the Messengers' statements go into?

To be "evidence" a claim needs to be able to be substantiated in my book. In the sciences the definition is clear. First one needs a testable hypothesis. If one can't do that then any claims go into the garbage category of "not even wrong". In the sciences showing that an idea is wrong is highly valuable. It allows people to see what concepts lead to a dead end. An idea that is "not even wrong" cannot have any evidence for it and it cannot even be shown to be wrong, meaning that there is no real way to learn if it is true or not. That is largely where religious beliefs go. That is why actual evidence would be nice. It could either confirm or refute a religion. But since believers only want to believe supplying evidence is the last thing that they want to do because it could show them to be wrong.

 

[TransmutingSoul]

There you go. You already made your investigation and conclusions.

From the Evidence.

Regards Tony

 

[Trailblazer]

Claims that can't be verified are about the weakest evidence someone can provide. Thus if there are genuinely 'messengers from god' then I can only conclude that this god is extremely weak and ineffectual and probably not worthy of my attention.

No religious claims can be verified.
Messengers cannot be *verified* to have spoken for God because because God cannot be verified to exist.

The fact that the Messengers have no effect upon you and other atheists who disbelieve in them has absolutely NOTHING to do with whether God is weak and ineffectual.

1. God is not weak becaue He chooses to use Messengers to communicate. God uses them because the all-knowing God knows that Messengers are the *best way* to communicate to humans.

2. God is not ineffectual because the Messengers have had an effect on the vast majority of humans. I am not saying that *proves* God exists, as nobody can ever prove that God exists. You want verifiable evidence, which is proof, but there is no such proof, so you will just have to continue disbelieving.

Obviously God does not want us to have proof that He exists, because if God wanted us to have proof God could provide it, since God is omnipotent. God only wants us to have evidence that must be believed on faith, because God wants our faith. Obviously, there is nothing we can do to *make* God give is proof since we are not omnipotent.

 

[Subduction Zone]

There you go. You already made your investigation and conclusions.

No! You made a bogus claim and it was shown to be worthless. Your claim was essentially a "So what?" claim. Even if true, and it looks to be false, it would not make a difference. You should not make such claims about others merely because they can reason logically when you refuse to.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Use the word Educators then.

They proved they are the greatest Educators of Humanity.

Regards Tony

Did they though? They had some good ideas. They may have been ahead of most of the people of that time, but I do not see much in the line of lasting education coming from them. What contributions to "education" did Baha make that his predecessors did not?

 

[TransmutingSoul]

To be "evidence" a claim needs to be able to be substantiated in my book.

That would be saying that in a court case, it is only evidence if they are innocent?

The evidence is provided so people can Judge and that is exactly what the OP is saying.

The Messenger
The Revelation
The Word

Are all submitted as Evidence so we can judge the Claim.

Regards Tony

 

[Trailblazer]

Depends if you think 600 posts, mostly repetitive, is doing well.

Maybe not, but it makes for a good party that keeps going rather than fizzling out.
and it gives me an opportunity to talk to my favorite atheists.

 

[TransmutingSoul]

Did they though? They had some good ideas. They may have been ahead of most of the people of that time, but I do not see much in the line of lasting education coming from them. What contributions to "education" did Baha make that his predecessors did not?

Ideas and virtues Billions have embraced, albeit it to various standards.

What other humans have attracted Billions of followers?

To negate this is really not reasonable and not logical.

Regards Tony

 

[Alien826]

There is no scientific evidence for religion, for obvious logical reasons. Religion is not science.

Just to muddy the waters a bit more, there is no reason why a scientific investigation could not be applied to religion. I think this may have been done, but I don't know how rigorous it was.

Hypothesis: Prayer has effects on Earth.
Method: Choose groups of sick people, and have them examined by doctors. Assign different groups of people to pray for the sick people. Make it as "double blind" as possible. For example, the sick people should not know about the prayers. All medical treatment given to the patients should be "placebo" and look the same as their regular drugs. Examine the patients again and note any changes.

I haven't set out all the methods to ensure that prayer could be the only factor, it should be obvious.

 

[Trailblazer]

To be "evidence" a claim needs to be able to be substantiated in my book. In the sciences the definition is clear. First one needs a testable hypothesis. If one can't do that then any claims go into the garbage category of "not even wrong". In the sciences showing that an idea is wrong is highly valuable. It allows people to see what concepts lead to a dead end. An idea that is "not even wrong" cannot have any evidence for it and it cannot even be shown to be wrong, meaning that there is no real way to learn if it is true or not. That is largely where religious beliefs go. That is why actual evidence would be nice. It could either confirm or refute a religion. But since believers only want to believe supplying evidence is the last thing that they want to do because it could show them to be wrong.

You do not have to think long and hard to figure out why the evidence for religion can never be the same as the evidence for science, but you do have to think.

 

[Subduction Zone]

That would be saying that in a court case, it is only evidence if they are innocent?

The evidence is provided so people can Judge and that is exactly what the OP is saying.

The Messenger
The Revelation
The Word

Are all submitted as Evidence so we can judge the Claim.

Regards Tony

All that you have done is to claim that evidence exists. You have not shown that any actually exists. And you have it backwards. In a court the prosecution has to prove that a person is guilty using evidence.

You are accusing the universe of having a "god". You need to provide evidence that your god is real and all that you have done is to claim that evidence exists. People have looked at your supposed evidence and are not impressed.

It would help if you define what you mean by evidence. And then you should quote specific examples that fit that definition of evidence. Until you do so you have not accomplished what you set off to do in the OP. You only provided claims of evidence, No evidence itself was provided.

 

[Subduction Zone]

You do not have to think long and hard to figure out why the evidence for religion can never be the same as the evidence for science, but you do have to think.

Have you not noticed that I have asked for a definition of "evidence" from the believers? None of them can seem to provide such a definition. As I said, I can do that easily for the sciences. It does not look as if anyone can do that for your faith. Which would mean that if you do not have a working definition that you definitely cannot have evidence.

Perhaps the claim of evidence should be dropped and instead logical arguments could be used.

 

[Trailblazer]

You just contradicted yourself again. You still don't see your error.

No, I did not, but since you are making the claim it is your job to provide the proof.
Just *saying* that I contradicted myself is not proof.

Similarly, a Messenger of God can *say* "I am a Messenger of God" but that is only a claim, it is not proof.