I know you say that to you terms like "natural" and "supernatural" are meaningless, but without having a proper definitions I can't give you a full answer.
- The "natural" can be defined as observable phenomena which follows a series of rules (hence the term "natural laws"). The "supernatural" can also be defined as observable phenomena, but it does not follow any kind of rules. Moses parting the Red Sea or Jesus rising from the dead would be observable but inexplicible.
- You write that both Occam and I resort to "special pleading" - we use one criteria for testing nature and another for testing God. But you too are resorting to special pleading when you say that in we need supernatural evidence to prove the existance of God. This was my main criticism from the start - namely why should God have to violate the natural laws He created to prove His existance?
- Even if we did discover something that can't be explained logically - how we determine that is actually is something supernatural, rather than a natural event we have yet to understand?
Let's first clarify something here. None of the evidence will ever be supernatural. The evidence will always be natural. A blind man healed without any natural explanation. The evidence is still natural (blind man, now not blind). Amputees healed without a natural explanation? The evidence is again natural (limbless to having limbs). Moses parting the waters. Again, the evidence is natural (corridor through a sea). That the explanation for this natural evidence may be "supernatural", whatever that may be, does not negate the fact that you are still trying to explain observations in the "natural" world.
Nobody is saying we need supernatural evidence. What people are saying is that we need evidence that cannot be explained by known natural mechanisms. Otherwise, why would we resort to God as an explanation?
And while, as I stated in my last post, it will indeed be hard to discern an act of God from an act of which we do not know the explanation yet, I have yet to see you give an alternative to this. Obviously you think we, as atheists, are wrong. But you have yet to give any hint on how to arrive at the (according to you) correct conclusion. Given what you state, what possible reason is there for us to accept the existence of god(s). How would we go about determining the existence of god(s), if not through observations that we cannot currently explain.
The idea that there is no God is not the null hypothesis - it's an assumption. And it's an assumption because if we think that God does not exist, we think that the only way to prove that He does would be for Him to something that goes against the way the world works.
I'm not saying that the fact the world exists automatically means that God exists - Christians have always recognized God as separate from His creation. I'm just saying that the old atheist argument that "God does not exist because there is no evidence for the supernatural" is tired and outdated. If there is some way to test whether He exists then we need a new argument.
And here you just go wrong. You would view the non-existence of anything else as the null-hypothesis. Of anything else, if I said that it existed you would find it completely logical if people asked whether I had evidence for that. Of everything else, this is how we treat evidence. New species seen? Show us the evidence, otherwise we assume at the very least the species does not exist anymore. Extinct species still alive. We only consider this true if we found evidence that this is the case. But with God, suddenly it is not. Why not? How is this not special pleading? In the paragraph above you obviously want to take the existence of God as the null-hypothesis. But that is contrary to logic and doesn't make any sense at all.
Let me become somewhat testy here for a moment. Again you state "Christians have always recognized God as separate from His creation." So bloody what? You state this as if this is some sort of cogent argument for, well, I have no clue for what actually. Why should anyone care what Christians have considered God to be. What is the evidence that we should actually take them seriously on this. And again, if such evidence does not exist, what possible reason do we have for believing them to be right?
Even if we did rule out naturalistic explanations, we could still argue that it happened in a natural way we have yet to understand, rather than attributing it to the supernatural.
Alternatively even if we did find a natural explanation for these "miracles" we would still have to explain how people living in the past had access to them. It's possible to heal the blind today using stem cellsm but a carpenter living 2,000 of years ago wouldn't know that.
This doesn't make any sense. If we found a natural explanation on how a blind man could spontaneously see again by a miracle, of course people in the past would have access to this "miracle". We wouldn't call a blind man healed through stem-cell surgery a miracle, since we know we did that ourselves. A
natural explanation would in a case like this would go something like this:
"Fictional case report
Patient C.A.N. Tsee was presented to us after experiencing bright flashes of light. Patient was scanned with MRI and shown to have a deterioration of nerve cells surrounding the visual nerves. Deterioration of nerves was progressing fast through the day. Tests indicated that surrounding nerves were blocking the functioning of the visual nerves, inducing blindness. With physical therapy, patient is suspected to fully regain visual function. Patient will be monitored to determine whether deterioration of the nerves will not progress beyond currently existing areas."
Something like that could just as well have happened in the past. Just like spontaneous remission of cancer (for example caused by the limiting of their own nutrient supply by the cancer cells because they block of blood and lymph vessels) would be happening to subjects in the past as well as in the present.
That is why the healing of amputees is a good example. We know of no possible mechanism that could cause the healing of an amputees limb. Especially overnight, now that would be impressive. By all standards, that is truly impossible. Not surprisingly, it also never happens.
So after again too much text, let me get to the actual point. Your basic position seems to be that atheists are wrong in asking for evidence in the form of unexplained phenomena or miracles as evidence for God. You claim that this is inconsistent. There are at least two problems with that statement.
Problem 1. You avoid the question of what kind of evidence we should follow instead to determine the existence of god(s).
Further exposition on problem 1: You say you do not want to convince us. However, if we are asking the wrong question, yet we do not know the right question, the existence of god(s) becomes unknowable. But you claim to know God exists. Which leads us to question how you come about this knowledge. We know of nothing that we cannot explain without God, or where God would not just be a placeholder for ignorance. So we state that without good cause to think otherwise, our provisional conclusion is that God does not exist. You say this is wrong, but again you provide no reason why this would be wrong.
Problem 2. Many Christians do assert that God is not bound by natural law and thus will perform miracles.
Further exposition on problem 2: While you may distance yourself from the concept of God as many Christians hold it, instead opting for a more esoteric and abstract concept. However, in most cases we are arguing with people who hold to a less abstract, more involved God. Atheists are reacting to claims about the concept of God made by other people. You are basically saying they should not. But your concept of God is at the least problematic, in that you almost seem to be arguing for a deistic version of God. But what reason would anyone have to accept such a deistic God, for which there is again no evidence? At least the theistic version might show itself in some way, by acting upon the natural world and providing clues to its existence.
