Consider these 2 claims
1 the big bang was caused by God
2 the big bag was caused y an unknown natural mechanism
If I understand your view, there is no evidence for none, so why do you pick option 2 over option 1 ?
Naturalistic explanations only require that nature exists, and we know that it does. Supernatural explanations for nature require that both nature and an unseen, insufficiently evidenced supernatural realm exists.
You are familiar with Occam's parsimony principle, but in the past, you've had trouble applying it. This is similar to
a discussion we had last year regarding resurrection. I've corrected some spelling errors here for the sake of legibility, and will continue to do so throughout this post and into the future if you don't mind:
Me: Violating the laws of physics is not known to occur.
You: Well, we are stuck with that problem in any case, all the naturalistic explanations for the “bed rock facts” that have been proposed, involved things that have never been observed, so whether if you want to propose a natural explanation or a supernatural explanation in either case you are stuck with something extraordinary that has never been observed.
Me: resurrection is always at the bottom of any list of candidate hypotheses
You: Why is the resurrection at the bottom of candidate hypothesis? why don’t you provide such hypothesis and explain how is that better than a resurrection
Me: because it violates the known laws of physics and requires the existence of gods and supernaturalism, both major violations of Occam's parsimony principle.
You: Other alternative explanations also violate Occam's Razor, ¿do you have one in mind that doesn’t? But even more important, O.R. is not the only nor the most important criteria to determine what is the best explanation.
That last sentence from you is incorrect.
If you mean undecided about whether a supernatural realm exists in addition to nature, I can make an argument why that is an incoherent claim
and have previously (also
here) but let's stipulate to that possibility for this discussion. Undecided (agnostic, that is, neither affirming as true nor asserting untrue) isn't the same as 50-50 as already explained by me and at least one other poster. I hope you saw and remembered that, because I don't feel like explaining it again.
I highly recommend learning to use RF's search function, which was also already explained to you. It's how I found the three RF links above.
If you need me to, I'll describe it again, but that will be the last time. If you knew how, you could find my posts on that topic immediately without having to scroll through the pages of any thread. Do you remember how to do that?
Well, I think there is evidence for angels, so I'll say that the odds are more than 50%. As for green feathers, there are millions upon millions of different attributes that angels could have. The probability that they have exactly green feathers are low because of the many other possible things.
This is similar to
@TagliatelliMonster 's argument reposted by
@Pogo and the reason why insufficiently evidenced claims are rejected.
Also, there is no evidence for angels stronger than the claim that they exist. Furthermore, if you're going to claim that they are supernatural, you're making an unfalsifiable claim. No odds such as 50-50 can be placed on such things, but we can remain agnostic about them.
both non-belief and disbelief in leprechauns will result in identical behaviours -- we will act as if they don't exist.
Agreed, and this answer's
@leroy 's question, "if you can't rule gods in or out, why atheism?"
speculation without evidence == indoctrination.
Does "==" mean equals? If so, those are unrelated words describing unrelated processes. Speculations precedes indoctrination where both are involved. Indoctrination is a method of imparting ideas that doesn't involve education, which, unlike indoctrination, relies on evidenced argument rather than pure repetition.
God didn't emerge; He just EXISTS. Belief in a first cause, intelligent and eternal, is more logical than a sudden change in the middle of a lawless void.
If the phrase first cause is meaningful and applicable here, belief in an unconscious first cause is more logical than a conscious one according to the argument I just presented regarding parsimony. The only intelligence we are aware of evolved from unconscious matter. Though they may exist, currently, we simply don't need gods for any explanation. And if a god exists, there is no reason to assume that it didn't evolve into being.
You take care.