What is evidence?

Hawkins said:

Since those militant atheists are offended when I post legitimate questions in their forums. I'd rather provide an explanation here.

Evidence is things in support of a fact/truth but reachable by our 5 senses either directly or indirectly. Is the sun round or flat? We don't have the evidence. Only the less than 20000 cosmic scientists have the evidence. That is, the rest of the 8 billion humans at some point need Faith to believe what the 20000 scientists would have to say. No Faith no truth.

The above is in present tense. The worse comes from the two huge gaps blocking the touch of humans from their 5 senses. First is huge time gap. We can't access the past and we can't access the future, that is, with our 5 senses. This forces us to approach what beyond the gaps by means of faith in testimony. It's not even a 8 billion vs. 20000 situation. It's a 8 billion vs. 0 situation. The only which still works efficiently is the methodology of "faith in testimonies". That's what history is.

And in fact, humans even lack the ability to write a history. Among the thousands of civilizations and nations ever existed on the surface of Earth, only the Chinese and the Jews can have a rather complete set of history. All other histories are either broken or non-existent. (I think that I mentioned this before). No one can tell the future either, not even in the form of a testimony (as a history does). We have very limited capability (even when choose testimonies as the tool) to access the past, and nearly zero ability to reach the future. We stuck in the middle, and this middle is represented with a 8 billion vs. 20000 proportion. That is, effectively we have 0.00025% capability to reach a truth such as "sun is round but not flat" if we choose not to employ our faith to reach such a truth.

The other huge gap is the space gap. We are living on our perception of the 5 senses. That remains our maximum capability to interpret the reality. We (our science) modeled our reality as a simple 3D space. We don't have the ability to test our model if we have to assume otherwise. Say if we assume that our universe is made of multiple 3D spaces interacting with each other, we can't possibly test this model predictably and falsifiably as our science demands. That is to say, even when it's true the our universe is not a single 3D space, we have no way to reach such a truth. God however said, in the beginning God created heavens (possibly multiple spaces).

By assuming such a multiple spaces model, possibly we can never find the missing pieces dark energy and dark matters, as they can be a result of multiple spaces interacting with each other. Even quantum physics tends to suggest same. The phenomena we encountered are not explainable using a simple 3D spacetime model. I asked the possibility of this model in the "science" forums and those "scientists" (must be close minded) are offended.

Spiritually as an advocate from the very beginning of humanity is never about things lying within our realm/space. It's always about existences lying outside of our own realm/space. We can't (no ability) to approach further due to our lack of ability to test it as well as to perceive it.

That is to say, under most circumstances human don't actually have any evidence. All they have is faith. They put faith in testimonies by examining the validity of the testimonies. The devil even fools them from validating a testimony correctly. That's why humans don't actually know what history is. They employ an ideal to say that, "the authorship is unclear", "the books are not original' etc. etc.. They reject a testimony using a criteria defined by a fabricated ideal given by the devil. Ideals are same old fruits from the same old Tree of Knowledge prepared by the same old snake. The day humans choose to eat of it, the same day they shall surely die.



Please hate me for the unique opinion/information which the rest of 8 billion humans can't come up with. It's a 8 billion vs. 1 situation.

I feel for Jesus when the Jews picked up stones to stone Him. They never care about what truth Jesus brought to them. What they only care is, "no, this guy cannot be God", "this carpenter son of Joseph cannot be the Messiah, cannot be the Son of God, cannot be a prophet". "No, this guy is not possible...." remains what fills up their minds and leaves no room for them to think about what message has been brought to them. That's actually how prophets are often killed by the Jews (humans), in the past till in the coming future.

Revelation 11:10
The inhabitants of the earth will gloat over them and will celebrate by sending each other gifts, because these two prophets had tormented those who live on the earth.

Click to expand...

Honestly, I really dont think human beings need to have evidence. Do we need evidence to breath? No. Do we need evidence to drink water? No. Do we need evidence to eat? No. Do we need evidence to love? No. These are all things that come naturally to us. Proceed accordingly.

Be blessed.

Hawkins said:

Evidence is things in support of a fact/truth but reachable by our 5 senses either directly or indirectly. Is the sun round or flat? We don't have the evidence.

Click to expand...

A Greek philosopher over 2000 years ago, analyzed the evidence, which is available to anyone who bothers to look, and concluded that the sun was a very large sphere around which the Earth rotated. So there is that.

Hawkins said:

Among the thousands of civilizations and nations ever existed on the surface of Earth, only the Chinese and the Jews can have a rather complete set of history.

Click to expand...

Indians, and Iranians, and Greeks (via the Byzantine Empire, which had access to Jewish, Iranian, Mesopotamian, Egyptian and even Indian culture (since the time of Alexander the Great, Greece traded with India, which is why the Kochin Jews and later Syriac Christianity spread to India from Basra in Mesopotamia, and also why until the 17th century there were Syriac Christians on the island of Socotra, for this was in antiquity a pit stop on the Egypt to India overseas trade route) and especially Syriac Christians (with their access to Mesopotamian, Persian, Indian sources and even Chinese sources, for the Church of the East’s Northeastern extremity was in Mongolia and her southeastern extremity was in Tibet, stretching right across China until the genocide of Tamerlane, as well as Hellenic, Coptic, Armenian, Ethiopian and Latin sources - indeed it was Suroye, the Christians of the Syriac Orthodox Church and the Assyrian Church of the East, at monasteries in Egypt and modern-day Iraq who translated for the Islamic scholars the writings of the Greeks which were later translated into Latin (with other bits of Syriac material translated into Latin by another group of Syriac Christians, the Maronite Catholics of Lebanon, in particular the Assemani family), which in turn led to works like the Summa Theologica (which depended on Aristotle and the commentaries on Aristotle by Avicenna and Averroes in his monumental work of systematic theology to among other things write a formal intellectual proof of God, which to be clear is not direct evidence but is not unlike a circumstantial argument from logic, although there have been attempted refutations; the Orthodox likewise rely on the Platonic idea of an unmoved mover while recognizing that Plato was correct that one cannot prove one’s first principle, creating an inherent epistemological limit, which is why Eastern and Oriental theology is extremely comfortable with the idea of divine mystery). Indeed there is a reason why the Muslims went to the Syriac Christians to access the philosophers of antiquity rather than to adherents of other religions, since ancient Christians were less biased due to worship of Truth incarnate in the person of Christ, and willing to help outsiders on the basis of the Golden Rule.

Also on this point, while the histories of these cultures are compelling, they are not complete; some important cultures have histories only partially recorded due to lack of literacy (the Inca people, for example), and to a large extent we are dependent on archaeological evidence. This evidence indicates that the world is much older than the numbers arrived at by various groups including the Jews, Byzantines and Assyrians who attempted to calculate various dates for the age of the world and use these as their calendar epochs were all off considerably - ultimately among Christians the Copts have the most reliable calendar epoch (since the realization Anno Domini is likely off by at least six years or so based on the information in the Gospel According to st. Luke and the demise of Caesar Augustus, but since we can’t know for sure the date on which Christ was born, the Coptic approach it turns out is a bit more reliable - their calendar epoch is based on The Year of Martyrs, the start of the Diocletian Persecutions in Egypt, where they were conducted with particular severity and brutality, which sharpened the faith of Coptic Christians and led to the emergence of Christian monasticism through St. Anthony the Great (who retreated to the desert and dedicated himself to continuous prayer and rejection of temptation after failed attempts at joining those being taken to be martyred - a decision which caused him to suffer grievous adversity at the hands of the Adversary as recorded in his biography by St. Athanasius). It is presently The Year of Martyrs 1742 according to the Coptic Christian calendar (this calendar also has the advantage of not having atheists and others attempt to rename its epoch with the deeply offensive “CE” and “BCE,” and it is a Christian calendar, for the martyrs have always, throughout the history of Christianity, endured the persecution Christ warned of and bravely took up His Cross and followed Him, receiving a crown of martyrdom or of a confessor for it is promised “He who confesses me before men I will confess before the Father/“

A calendar stretching back for the entire history of the human race in its present form would be at least 160,000 years in length and in significant portions of it very little would happen, since much of that time consisted of primitive tribal civilizations which are lost to us.

The Barbarian said:

A Greek philosopher over 2000 years ago, analyzed the evidence, which is available to anyone who bothers to look, and concluded that the sun was a very large sphere around which the Earth rotated. So there is that.

Click to expand...

Indeed, it can be discerned from optics, and indeed in antiquity it was well known that the sun was a sphere, hence ancient depictions of it as such and the idea of “the music of the spheres,” so that was a less useful example in the OP.

The rest of the OP relates to faith and epistemology but with regards to faith, I would note there is a difference between faith in the sense of intellectual belief, and faith in the more proper sense of the word - fidelity and faithfulness to God, which is an active assent. One can have certain knowledge of God’s existence and be an infidel - such is the case of the fallen angels who rejected God.

The difference between the two as pointed out by St. James is found in works, for “by their fruit ye shall know them.” Traditional Protestants, Orthodox and Catholics all agree that faithful Christians engage in works; Protestants regard these works as evidence of salvation rather than as salvific in and of themselves whereas Orthodox and Catholics take a more literal interpretation of St. James while refuting absolutely the idea of Pelagius - that we can save ourselves through our own works in imitation of Christ - although the refutation of Pelagius that is employed differs, with Catholics relying on St. Augustine and the Orthodox on another Latin monk from the same era, St. John Cassian (who was also more important in Rome in the Patristic era, before Scholasticism; the RCC regards St. John of Damascus as the last Patristic theologian and one clearly sees a shift towards the Scholastic approach on their end, although not all of Scholasticism is wrong, but some aspects of it were problematic and would lead to conflict with the Orthodox; some argue that St. Gregory Palamas due to his use of Aristotle to defend the Hesychasts was an Orthodox Scholastic but I disagree and hold to the Orthodox view that the Patristic era did not end and that the likes of St. Nicodemus the Hagiorite, St. Seraphim of Sarov, St. Ignatius Brianchaninov, St. John of Kronstadt, St. Nektarios of Pentapolis, St. Rafael Hawaheeny, St. Tikhon of Moscow, St. John Maximovitch of Shanghai and San Francisco, and St. Seraphim Rose are Church Fathers (to which I also include Oriental Orthodox fathers who postdated St. John of Damascus, who is also venerated by the Oriental Orthodox, for example St. Gregory bar Hebraeus and St. Dionysius bar Salibi. Indeed I have venerated the relics of a recent Greek father, St. Joseph the Hesychast, and prayed at the tomb of a recent Coptic saint, Thrice Blessed Bishop Keras.

Hawkins said:

Since those militant atheists are offended when I post legitimate questions in their forums. I'd rather provide an explanation here.

Evidence is things in support of a fact/truth but reachable by our 5 senses either directly or indirectly. Is the sun round or flat? We don't have the evidence. Only the less than 20000 cosmic scientists have the evidence. That is, the rest of the 8 billion humans at some point need Faith to believe what the 20000 scientists would have to say. No Faith no truth.

The above is in present tense. The worse comes from the two huge gaps blocking the touch of humans from their 5 senses. First is huge time gap. We can't access the past and we can't access the future, that is, with our 5 senses. This forces us to approach what beyond the gaps by means of faith in testimony. It's not even a 8 billion vs. 20000 situation. It's a 8 billion vs. 0 situation. The only which still works efficiently is the methodology of "faith in testimonies". That's what history is.

And in fact, humans even lack the ability to write a history. Among the thousands of civilizations and nations ever existed on the surface of Earth, only the Chinese and the Jews can have a rather complete set of history. All other histories are either broken or non-existent. (I think that I mentioned this before). No one can tell the future either, not even in the form of a testimony (as a history does). We have very limited capability (even when choose testimonies as the tool) to access the past, and nearly zero ability to reach the future. We stuck in the middle, and this middle is represented with a 8 billion vs. 20000 proportion. That is, effectively we have 0.00025% capability to reach a truth such as "sun is round but not flat" if we choose not to employ our faith to reach such a truth.

The other huge gap is the space gap. We are living on our perception of the 5 senses. That remains our maximum capability to interpret the reality. We (our science) modeled our reality as a simple 3D space. We don't have the ability to test our model if we have to assume otherwise. Say if we assume that our universe is made of multiple 3D spaces interacting with each other, we can't possibly test this model predictably and falsifiably as our science demands. That is to say, even when it's true the our universe is not a single 3D space, we have no way to reach such a truth. God however said, in the beginning God created heavens (possibly multiple spaces).

By assuming such a multiple spaces model, possibly we can never find the missing pieces dark energy and dark matters, as they can be a result of multiple spaces interacting with each other. Even quantum physics tends to suggest same. The phenomena we encountered are not explainable using a simple 3D spacetime model. I asked the possibility of this model in the "science" forums and those "scientists" (must be close minded) are offended.

Spiritually as an advocate from the very beginning of humanity is never about things lying within our realm/space. It's always about existences lying outside of our own realm/space. We can't (no ability) to approach further due to our lack of ability to test it as well as to perceive it.

That is to say, under most circumstances human don't actually have any evidence. All they have is faith. They put faith in testimonies by examining the validity of the testimonies. The devil even fools them from validating a testimony correctly. That's why humans don't actually know what history is. They employ an ideal to say that, "the authorship is unclear", "the books are not original' etc. etc.. They reject a testimony using a criteria defined by a fabricated ideal given by the devil. Ideals are same old fruits from the same old Tree of Knowledge prepared by the same old snake. The day humans choose to eat of it, the same day they shall surely die.



Please hate me for the unique opinion/information which the rest of 8 billion humans can't come up with. It's a 8 billion vs. 1 situation.

I feel for Jesus when the Jews picked up stones to stone Him. They never care about what truth Jesus brought to them. What they only care is, "no, this guy cannot be God", "this carpenter son of Joseph cannot be the Messiah, cannot be the Son of God, cannot be a prophet". "No, this guy is not possible...." remains what fills up their minds and leaves no room for them to think about what message has been brought to them. That's actually how prophets are often killed by the Jews (humans), in the past till in the coming future.

Revelation 11:10
The inhabitants of the earth will gloat over them and will celebrate by sending each other gifts, because these two prophets had tormented those who live on the earth.

Click to expand...

Evidence is a many faceted concept and being as such, I'd really like to know from whom you've learned or gained the definition you've briefly posited here in your OP.

Thanks!

Hawkins is right in his assessment (assuming Hawkins is male?) Any evidence of anything there is can only be perceived by humans using human means. Human means are finite, and not all-encompassing. Much of the universe's mysteries and unsolvable mathematical problems are likely due to reasons that humans have no way of detecting, let alone measuring (do I dare say, "yet"?). This would be akin to humans using x-ray technology in the year 30,000 BCE--they had no comprehension of x-rays, but may have been able to randomly imagine such a concept. My decades of reading articles from Scientific American and the like has shown me that much of the technology man has developed over the centuries has been due to accidental discoveries. I don't think it rational (from a Christian viewpoint) that our Creator intended us to understand everything--at least not until after our mortal bodies pass away. Space and time are just the two mediums by which humans exist that are detectable. The life force within each of us is individually experienced, but not detectable by any means limited to the natural universe--it appears to transcend it (yes, think "interdimensional").