Incoherent statements are those that contradict themselves. The phrase married bachelor is a classic example. The concept is incoherent because it is internally contradictory. Evidence is whatever is evident to the senses. Both science and every individual with external senses and the ability to reason have access to everything that can be called evidence for anything. Private evidence is not about external reality, but about the body and brain. What believers have are (at most) compelling intuitions of a god. That's not enough to call sufficient evidence of a god to justify belief.
Intuition and reasoning about the things that we all can see is enough for me and others.
I have personal experience here. When I was a Christian, I mistook the euphoric feeling I got singing hymns and clapping hands in my first church headed by a gifted and charismatic preacher with the presence of the Holy Spirit. But the empiricist in me never died during the period of trying on the religion for fit, despite my efforts at suppressing the cognitive dissonance as part of the suspension of unbelief. I say this, because it was after a military discharge and a return to my home state that I discovered that the euphoria was not the Holy Spirit, since that feeling didn't follow me to California and the half dozen or so congregations I tried before realizing what hat happened and walking away from Christianity. That's empiricism. That's considering evidence.
Yes some people get carried away with feelings and want that to continue. Some throw out the baby with the bath water and then say that there was no baby.
I recently read another poster comment on believing by evidence and faith. That's also incoherent. Either one's evidence connects to one's conclusions and justifies belief, or it isn't enough to get you there and a leap of faith is required to get to one's (unjustified) conclusion. All beliefs fit one description or the other - justified or believed by faith - with none being both or neither.
Whether we believe in God and Jesus or say that they are not real, there is a leap of faith. The evidence I have connects to my conclusions and justifies my belief as much as evidence justifies lack of belief for you.
Science is indifferent to religion, and it's mission is unrelated to it. Science's only agenda is to understand how reality works. Religion tries to tell us that as well, but without sufficient evidence to justify its claims. Science is indifferent to its findings contradicting religious dogma. If the priests were correct, science would happily confirm that for them if possible. If science contradict scripture, that's not an issue for science, but it is for religion.
That sounds true, but science does not take into account at any stage that it might just be coming up with educated guesses that have little to do with the reality of what actually happened back then. (and I am talking about science's excursions forensically into the past) The presumption is that everything happened without God's input and without any full stop, science just pushes on with what are considered naturalistic answers, but which may be completely wrong.
Anything that impacts material reality (nature) is another part of that reality. If one wants to postulate the existence of entities that don't impact on reality, he is making an unfalsifiable claim of no explanatory or predictive value. Nothing that is said to never modify material reality can be called real itself, or relevant even if it in some sense were real, but causally disconnected from this reality. Consider the existence of another god ruling another universe but being unable to impact this one. The question of it's existence is irrelevant.
The believer wants it both ways. He wants to claim that his god has impacted material reality enough to make itself known to him, but is nevertheless undetectable. If your brain can detect it, it's not undetectable. So what are you actually detecting? Not something causally disconnected from your brain. I say what you are detecting is only your brain - a mental state - that seduces many to give it a name and project it onto external reality.
I see it differently. God is a part of reality but is not of the same material and so is not studyable by science.
God speaks to my spirit, Spirit to spirit, and my brain also gets in on the act and my body too because I am a whole.
If empiricism doesn't give an answer, that answer are unavailable, and by answer, I don't mean unfalsifiable metaphysical claims with no truth value (not correct and not incorrect, but rather, "not even wrong")
The answers are unavailable for empiricism, that is all. Plenty of questions have answers that are unavailable to empiricism. It does not mean that there are no answers. All people make up their mind about God without empiricism to say yay or nay.
You might like to think that you can think better and follow the only right way to check out reality, but I don't.
Do you consider that confirmation that biblical science is accurate? Are you aware of the places where science contradicts scripture? How do you feel about that? Do you consider the misses along with the hits? If not, you are committing the Texas Sharpshooter fallacy: "a logical fallacy based on the metaphor of a gunman shooting the side of a barn, then drawing targets around the bullet hole clusters to make it look like he hit the target. It illustrates how people look for similarities, ignoring differences."
I probably see less places that science might be said to disagree with the Bible.
This is the same topic. Are you aware of the archeological evidence that contradicts much of Exodus?
I am aware of evidence that contradicts and evidence that points to it being correct.
Most of the archaeological evidence wants the Exodus to have happened about 1250BC, and that evidence consists of a "lack of evidence for the Exodus and Conquest of Canaan.
The positive evidence for the Exodus and Conquest is about 200 years earlier, in the Biblical time frame.
