Christianity and the Burden of Proof

[TagliatelliMonster]

So theists have 1 claim, God exists, and atheists have no claim?

Atheism is not defined by claims, correct.
Atheism is defined by not accepting the claims of theism.

Atheism is the response to a claim. It's not a claim by itself.

Please learn the difference between responding to a claim and making a claim.

The reason you do this is because you want to avoid having to prove that God does not exist

Why would anyone try to prove a negative?
Please, prove that any of these don't exist:
- bigfoot
- extra dimensional aliens
- allah
- visjnoe
- Odin
- leprechauns
- quetzalcoatl
- alien life
- undetectable pink dragons
- graviton pixies
- .....

This is an insurmountable problem for you

It's not. The only insurmountable problem here is how oblivious you people are to how the burden of proof works.

At least TagliatelliMonster admitted that science cannot prove first cause

I don't remember saying that and I'm not sure what you mean with it either.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

You are not telling the truth

I think I know better why I don't believe the claims of theism, then you do.

I have given you many evidences of the existence of God.

No. You gave me arguments overflown with false and/or unsupported premises and logical fallacies.

You have just determined not to accept my evidence as evidence.

Indeed. I evaluated your "evidence" and I found it totally unconvincing.
Just like find the "evidence" of all other religions you don't believe in, to be totally unconvincing.

For example, why aren't you a scientologist?
Do you somehow have proof that we aren't immortal Thetans? That Lord Xenu does not exist?
How about Visjnoe? Do you have any proof that he does not exist? Or do you simply not find the "evidence" of hindu's compelling enough to believe it?

So change your verbiage to: What defines my atheism is being presented with claims that are supported by evidence that I reject. Then at least you will be honest about it. Thanks.

Lol!
Fine, if that makes you feel better.
Doesn't change anything though.

Atheism is still the response to a claim and not a claim by itself.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

I believe the main reason that atheists are atheists is because they reject the rules that God demands of His people.

So, are you then not a hindu because you reject the rules that the hindu gods demand of their people?

Once again, you should really drop that arrogance.
No, you do NOT know better then me why I (dis)believe what I happen to (dis)believe.

Therefore they research every possible way to prove that God does not exists

I have never done that, nore do I care for it either. In fact, I consider it an exercise in futility to try and disprove unfalsifiable claims.

It will be an ugly day for the atheist, standing before the God they have rejected and spit on for years.

I can't spit on what I don't even believe to exist.
Also, it will be a bad day for Christians when they find themselves standing before Allah.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

If there was no evidence that any particular belief was true, then there wouldn't be anyone who held that belief. Without anything indicating to someone that something is true, then it would be impossible to account for the transition from them not holding a belief to holding it. The only reason that anyone is Christian is because the burden of proof has been provided to them.

If that were true, they would have no need for "faith".

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

You say "no" explicitly and "yes" implicitly. Your claim is that God is not worthy of belief, as I noted in post #20. "It lacks the evidence to justify the belief, therefore God is not worthy of belief." This is obvious.

Sure. And I can motivate that, by pointing at all the shortcomings of what theists present as "evidence". However, and this is the important part... that's not a claim about the existance of gods or the supernatural.

It's rather an evaluation of the attempt of theists to meet their burden of proof concerning their theistic claims...

But you make other claims as well. "There is not sufficient evidence to justify the belief." That is a claim that atheists make. How about a little intellectual honesty?

Like above: I can motivate that, by pointing at the shortcomings of theistic arguments.
And again, that's NOT a claim concerning the existance or non-existance of gods or the supernatural.

Do try to keep up.

Nonsense. Every atheist holds the belief that God is unworthy of belief.

Let me rephrase that in something more accurate:
Every atheist considers the arguments in support of theistic claims to be insufficient to justify accepting those claims as true or likely true.

It can stand alone; it is a claim.

No, it isn't.
Let's again give an example to illustrate.

Let's imagine a room without windows and a locked door. Neither you nor I can enter that room or look inside.

You claim "there is a golden chair in that room".
I respond with "I have insufficient evidence to accept that claim as true".

I'm not making any claims about what is or is not in the room.
I'm just responding to your claim about what is or is not in the room.

I don't have a burden of proof (either pro or con) concerning said chair in that room. YOU DO.

An atheist can be unconvinced by an argument, but that doesn't mean that they don't make claims specific to atheism itself.

That is exactly what it means.

See above for the chair example. I only respond by saying that I have insufficient evidence to accept it as true. I'm not making any claims about what is or is not in the room.
I'm just saying that I have no reason to accept your claim as true. And that's all there is to it.

The point is reality and truth. According to the definition of a claim, "There is not enough reason to accept theism as true" is a claim.

As above: fine. And I can motivate it as well. I can explain why I find the theistic claims unconvincing.

It is not a claim concerning the existance or non-existance of gods.

So now you're changing your tune?

Nope. Just used different words to say the exact same thing.

First you said that all claims have the burden of proof and that if two debating parties each make contradictory claims then they both have the burden of proof.

Indeed. But the theist-atheist debate is not a debate concerning contradictory claims.
It is a debate about a SINGLE claim, made by the theist.

Drill it into your head: atheism is not the claim that there are no gods.

Now you've excepted yourself due to inconvenience.

I most certainly didn't. You just don't seem to comprehend that the topic of the "debate" is a single claim, not contradictory claims.

When a theist claims that god exists, then the atheist response is "i don't believe you". The response is NOT "no, he does not".

That's what a debate is: a contest with two contradicting claims

That is just not true. A debate is more often then not about a single issue.
Consider a court case again. The issue being debated there is "guilt". Not innocence.
When a defendant wins, the jury rules "not guilty". It does not rule "innocence".

I explained this before.
There are two options:
- god exists
- god does not exist.

The debate is about the FIRST. Not the second.

"There is insufficient evidence to justify acceptance." That's a claim, like it or not.

It's not a claim about the existance or non-existance of gods.
It's a claim about the evidence (or lack thereof) in support of the claims of theism.

And in doing so he implicates himself in a claim that is capable of standing alone.

That claim being "There is insufficient evidence to accept your claim".
That claim is NOT "it is not heads" or "it is tails".

It is a claim about the argument presented by the other side.

Are you paying attention or even trying? "I don't believe X is true" implies "X is unworthy of belief," which is a claim. No one has said it implies the falsity of X.

Then we are in agreement and I wonder what you are objecting to.
For the record: this entire thread is EXACTLY about the implication that atheists make claims about the existance or non-existance of gods/the supernatural. Which is simply false.

When it comes the existance of gods/the supernatural, the burden of proof is on the theist, not the atheist.

Exactly what I've been saying all along.

Your strawmen are falling like rain.

what strawmen?

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

This just hit me... I think it touches the very root of the problem / misunderstanding here...

In a previous post I said:
A response to a claim, is not a claim.

To which zippy replied:

It can stand alone; it is a claim.

That is utterly incorrect.

A response to a claim can not "stand alone".

How on earth could I ever say that I do not believe that X exists...unless someone first tells me about X / claims that X does exist????

Do you wake up in the morning claiming completely out of the blue that you don't believe that "uinhekahd" exists???

Obviously, you do not.

In order to even be able to discuss or think about "uinhekahd", somebody FIRST needs to define what "uinhekahd" is or is supposed to be.

Why on earth would you come up with a definition of "uinhekahd" yourself, only to then say that you don't believe it exists????

See? A response to a claim can not logically "stand alone". Because, by definition, a response needs something to respond to.

 

[Dave Ellis]

This just hit me... I think it touches the very root of the problem / misunderstanding here...

In a previous post I said:
A response to a claim, is not a claim.

To which zippy replied:



That is utterly incorrect.

A response to a claim can not "stand alone".

How on earth could I ever say that I do not believe that X exists...unless someone first tells me about X / claims that X does exist????

Do you wake up in the morning claiming completely out of the blue that you don't believe that "uinhekahd" exists???

Obviously, you do not.

In order to even be able to discuss or think about "uinhekahd", somebody FIRST needs to define what "uinhekahd" is or is supposed to be.

Why on earth would you come up with a definition of "uinhekahd" yourself, only to then say that you don't believe it exists????

See? A response to a claim can not logically "stand alone". Because, by definition, a response needs something to respond to.

I have faith in the mighty, all powerful uinhekahd.... just saying.

 

[Soyeong]

If that were true, they would have no need for "faith".

Faith is defined as nothing less than the will to keep one's mind fixed precisely on what reason has discovered to it. It is one thing to have good reason to think that God will keep His promises and another to have the will to take an action that depends on Him to be trustworthy, especially when we do not see how God will provide. To use an example, there is a tightrope walker who claimed that he could cross Niagara Falls with a wheelbarrow with someone in it and then proceeded to demonstrate his ability to do this many times. At this point, he has demonstrated the burden of proof for his claim, so it is reasonable to form the belief that he can do this, yet there is a difference between having that belief and being willing to get in the wheelbarrow. As you are crossing, the wheelbarrow can sway and give you reason to doubt what reason has established that he can cross safely, but having faith him is about having the will to keep your mind focused on the fact that it has been established that he can cross safely.

 

[Soyeong]

Not necessarily, plenty of people believe incorrect things because they were convinced by bad reasons.

In fact, your claim is self refuting. There are many religions with many competing and contradictory theistic claims, they can't all be true. Yet, millions if not billions of people believe in those different religions. They could not all have met a burden of proof, because at most only one is true, and it's possible none of them are.

It is true that plenty of people believe incorrect things, but not one of them has been convinced by what they considered to be bad reasons. It is also true that many religions hold contradictory beliefs, but again there would be no way to account for someone holding one of these beliefs without anything establishing to them that their belief is true. If they didn't consider the burden of proof to be met then they would never have formed the belief in the first place. Whether or not what they believe to be true is actually true doesn't change this.

For example, two people examine the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus and one person is convinced while the second person is not. The first person considers the burden of proof to be met while the second does not. A third person coming in to judge whether the burden has been met would judge according to whether they personally found the evidence to be convincing, so popular opinion doesn't change anything, and we must all decided for ourselves whether the burden has been met.

 

[Dave Ellis]

It is true that plenty of people believe incorrect things, but not one of them has been convinced by what they considered to be bad reasons. It is also true that many religions hold contradictory beliefs, but again there would be no way to account for someone holding one of these beliefs without anything establishing to them that their belief is true. If they didn't consider the burden of proof to be met then they would never have formed the belief in the first place. Whether or not what they believe to be true is actually true doesn't change this.

For example, two people examine the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus and one person is convinced while the second person is not. The first person considers the burden of proof to be met while the second does not. A third person coming in to judge whether the burden has been met would judge according to whether they personally found the evidence to be convincing, so popular opinion doesn't change anything, and we must all decided for ourselves whether the burden has been met.

While I agree that necessarily people must make up their own minds on whether or not a claim has met its burden of proof, people should strive to hold themselves to the highest standards of evidence.

In reality, there is no definitive proof for any theistic belief or religion that I'm aware of. As such the only rationally justified position to take is to withhold belief (unless someone has access to information that I do not that would justify belief).

 

[KWCrazy]

For the first 4,000 years of our existence God was more actively involved in our existence. The recorded evidence of that interaction is undeniable. Almost every culture has reference to God or gods in some form. Quite possibly many saw the nephilim as gods. Jesus Christs made the pathway to salvation simple. It only requires faith. Simple does not mean easy, because it's hard to maintain faith in God in a godless world. We are surrounded by an increasingly vocal and disrespectful mob of thought conditioned people who are convinced we live in a purely physical world where everything can be explained by natural processes. These people scoff at and reject all things supernatural. They demand physical proof of non physical things. They know not what they ask.

God will prove Himself to them and it will be too late. When Jesus returns they will have proof and it will be too late. If there was a way you could absolutely prove to them beyond doubt that God was real, they would be forever lost. Faith is belief in things unproven. We have faith in God and because of that faith we have experienced His presence. He proves Himself to His own who have come to Him in faith. We know God is real. We know that Jesus still changes lives.

Psychology tells us the personalities never change; behaviors do but not personalities. It's not true. If a man is born again he is a new creature. Some cults can achieve similar things through brainwashing their followers, but eventually all cults collapse under the weight of their own lies. Christianity is going strong 2,000 year later. What we can do is demonstrate our love. All love comes from God because God IS love. Some people do this better than others. Regardless, the human mind is like a book; it only functions when open. It's a waste of time arguing with a closed mind. Better to just present the truth, and who accepts it accepts it.

 

[Dave Ellis]

For the first 4,000 years of our existence God was more actively involved in our existence. The recorded evidence of that interaction is undeniable. Almost every culture has reference to God or gods in some form.

However, none of the other gods worshipped by other cultures was your god. That shows evidence that humans have a tendency to make up gods, rather than those gods actually existing. Furthermore, your god dates to roughly 1,500BC at the earliest, there is no record of your god before that date. That would indicate your god was made up some time after that time period.

Quite possibly many saw the nephilim as gods. Jesus Christs made the pathway to salvation simple. It only requires faith. Simple does not mean easy, because it's hard to maintain faith in God in a godless world. We are surrounded by an increasingly vocal and disrespectful mob of thought conditioned people who are convinced we live in a purely physical world where everything can be explained by natural processes. These people scoff at and reject all things supernatural. They demand physical proof of non physical things. They know not what they ask.

Why would a god provide us with the ability to reason and discover truths by using reason, then require us to reject reason in order to accept him? That makes no sense.

It does make sense for a religion to come up with that concept in order to convince people to believe, especially when they know they don't have evidence.

God will prove Himself to them and it will be too late. When Jesus returns they will have proof and it will be too late. If there was a way you could absolutely prove to them beyond doubt that God was real, they would be forever lost. Faith is belief in things unproven. We have faith in God and because of that faith we have experienced His presence. He proves Himself to His own who have come to Him in faith. We know God is real. We know that Jesus still changes lives.

If he proves himself to people who have faith, however proving the existence of god would cause someone to be forever lost, would that not also mean those people who believe on faith are forever lost?

And why would it be too late to believe in god when he shows himself anyway?

Psychology tells us the personalities never change; behaviors do but not personalities. It's not true. If a man is born again he is a new creature. Some cults can achieve similar things through brainwashing their followers, but eventually all cults collapse under the weight of their own lies. Christianity is going strong 2,000 year later. What we can do is demonstrate our love. All love comes from God because God IS love. Some people do this better than others. Regardless, the human mind is like a book; it only functions when open. It's a waste of time arguing with a closed mind. Better to just present the truth, and who accepts it accepts it.

Hinduism is far older than Christianity, does that mean that it's even more true because it's older? Your argument is fallacious.

Just because a belief is old doesn't mean it's true.

 

[Hawkins]

That's called the false positive.
As in, it's safer to run then to stand there and be skeptical.

But let's contrast this with another example.
When someone as an eyewitness reported an invisible dragon hunting for humans, will you then also just run? Will you even bother asking for proof?

Why or why not?

Under any circumstance, the guy reported it has no burden to prove to you anything. It's your life, it's your decision. It's you who will suffer from if the claim is true. What you should examine is not the claim itself but the reliability of the one who convey the message. That's how humans should react.

That said, your example here is not accurate. An invisible dragon is a passive being which has no intention nor capability to hide from the encounter of humans. So by statistic if no serious human witnessing about it in human history, than it makes sense to assume its absence as a matter of statistics.

After death is completely something else, each and every humans without exception will have to encounter it, they won't be able to come back to inform other his encounter. That's the case about the claim of hell.

Similarly, bomb is common encounter of other humans. Comparing the possibility of a bomb claim to a red dragon claim is apples and oranges.

 

[Hawkins]

It's not my fault that you people seem to be completely incapable of understanding the difference between making a claim and responding to a claim.

Rather it's you who choose to argue against the obvious by applying your intellectual dishonesty. Such as the example of your invisible dragon!

Burden of proof is about a situation where you have a neutral point to stand as your stance. It's never about a claim which could potentially endangers your own life!

 

[Soyeong]

NT

 

[Soyeong]

While I agree that necessarily people must make up their own minds on whether or not a claim has met its burden of proof, people should strive to hold themselves to the highest standards of evidence.

In reality, there is no definitive proof for any theistic belief or religion that I'm aware of. As such the only rationally justified position to take is to withhold belief (unless someone has access to information that I do not that would justify belief).

Historical events are based upon a testimonies that can't be definitively proven, so are you suggesting that the only justified position to take is to withhold belief about all of history? Though I think the existence of God can be definitively proven through things like Aquinas' Five Ways, the issue is not about what can be definitively proven, but what can be sufficiently established beyond a reasonable doubt. Those who believe Christianity is true consider it to be a justified belief sufficiently established beyond a reasonable doubt and wouldn't not believe it to be true if we thought we weren't justified in believing it. While I find it difficult to believe that Jesus resurrected, I find it even more difficult to believe that Christianity survived and flourished without him having resurrected, but either way we're stuck believing something that is very difficult.

Of course we should strive to hold ourselves to the highest standards of evidence, but we often have to make choices about what to believe when we do not have all of the evidence that we would like. If someone told you what they ate for breakfast today, then the highest standard of evidence would be to pump their stomach to see what they ate, yet we are nevertheless justified in believing many things without having the highest standard of evidence available. Naturally, things that are harder to believe require stronger evidence before we consider it to be sufficiently established, but it is unreasonable to refuse to believe anything until it has been definitively proven.

 

[Soyeong]

While I agree that necessarily people must make up their own minds on whether or not a claim has met its burden of proof, people should strive to hold themselves to the highest standards of evidence.

In reality, there is no definitive proof for any theistic belief or religion that I'm aware of. As such the only rationally justified position to take is to withhold belief (unless someone has access to information that I do not that would justify belief).

Historical events are based upon a testimonies that can't be definitively proven, so are you suggesting that the only justified position to take is to withhold belief about all of history? Though I think the existence of God can be definitively proven through things like Aquinas' Five Ways, the issue is not about what can be definitively proven, but what can be sufficiently established beyond a reasonable doubt. Those who believe Christianity is true consider it to be a justified belief sufficiently established beyond a reasonable doubt and wouldn't not believe it to be true if we thought we weren't justified in believing it. While I find it difficult to believe that Jesus resurrected, I find it even more difficult to believe that Christianity survived and flourished without him having resurrected, but either way we're stuck believing something that is very difficult.

Of course we should strive to hold ourselves to the highest standards of evidence, but we often have to make choices about what to believe when we do not have all of the evidence that we would like. If someone told you what they ate for breakfast today, then the highest standard of evidence would be to pump their stomach to see what they ate, yet we are nevertheless justified in believing many things without having the highest standard of evidence available. Naturally, things that are harder to believe require stronger evidence before we consider it to be sufficiently established, but it is unreasonable to refuse to believe anything until it has been definitively proven.

 

[Nihilist Virus]

In a court of international law and in which whether a person is an American (or any other nation for that matter) has no relevance here, for both parties must establish their case before a judge(s). The burden of proof lies with both. Otherwise, the judge(s) will rule in favor of one over the other and the case is closed.

And if both parties are utterly inept? Then what?

Atheists espouse the view that there is no "Cause" to the universe such as theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss who asserts that "something came from nothing" with regard to the "Big Bang" and that the "law of physics supports this", while many in the religious community say that there is a "Cause".

Which assessment is accurate ? Both have to bring to the table weighty evidence that proves their case. And logic and reason must be factored in, in order to acquire the "truth", for much of what is factual cannot be seen, such as a spectrum of waves and particles within quantum mechanics.

This is not a core idea of atheism. But it turns out the physicists are correct. The prime mover argument has been thoroughly debunked:

The first cause argument asserts that there must have been a cause for the t=0 event. The problem is in the definition of causality:

A system is a region of space.

A state is the arrangement of matter, energy, and otherwise existing things within a system.

Causality acts on a system to take it from one state to another over a duration of time.

"Prior" to the t=0 event, space and time "did" not exist. Phrased more precisely, in a state of reality wherein the t=0 event has not occurred, space and time do not exist. Therefore, causality does not exist. Therefore, the t=0 event cannot have been brought about via causality.

And does Aristotle (384-322 B.C.E. and a pupil of Plato) have any relevance concerning this, such as his doctrine of causality (in which he enumerated four different kinds of causes but was opposed by Sextus Empiricus of the 3rd century B.C.E. who emphasized observation and common sense as opposed to philosophical theory) ? Not really. Though seemingly searching for some semblance of "truth", he faltered.

Aristotle's causality also implies there is no first cause.

You cannot have an efficient cause without a material cause. So what did God act on in creating the universe? Himself? I'd think not. The universe? He cannot have acted on the universe before the universe existed. So that leaves us with only one possible choice: he acted on nothing. But there's no difference between acting on nothing and doing nothing. So... what did God actually do?

The Greeks assigned great importance to philosophy, so that when a man from another land visited them in Athens, Greece, in the 1st century C.E. and spoke of a "deity" other than their gods, Epicurian and Stoic philosophers (who did not believe in a personal God) exclaimed: "What is it this chatterer would like to tell us ?"(Bible book of Acts 17:18) They felt that they could not possibly be in the wrong, only in the right. Were they ?

The Greeks were wrong about a lot of things. What's your point?

Aristotle was a Greek philosopher who also fostered the idea that the earth was the center of the known universe, whereby all the stars were embedded into 50 crystalline spheres surrounding the earth. Was he right ? He was a philosopher who developed his own series of ideas or beliefs and which impacted others for hundreds of years, such as Catholic theologian Aquinas (1225-74 C.E.) who struggled for five years to fuse Aristotle's philosophy with Catholic doctrines.

Actually that's the cosmology presented in the Bible. The firmament is the nonexistent crystal dome in which the stars are encased.

Philosophy is not truth, but a "particular system of thought or doctrine".(Microsoft Encarta Dictionary) It also can be rendered as "viewpoint, values, beliefs" or even opinion, in which they are like noses, everyone has one. On the other hand, looking for the truth about the universe and its life requires that person be unbiased, willing to use logic and reason on all the evidence, accepting it when sufficient proof is provided rather than shove it away when it does not fit their "agenda".

Then I assume you have rejected the first cause argument by now.

Logic and reason drives home that life comes from life and that all that we see and use has a maker and this can be seen from empirical evidence. Can a person successfully argue this ? No, they just continue to support non-causal life such as evolution.(note: arguments against a Creator being the cause of life has been going for a long time, but especially since Darwin's Origin of the Species in 1859)

Empirical evidence implies the existence of a creator? Do tell.

Even something as simple as a toothpick is readily known as having a maker or manufacturer. Add on to this the level of complexity that reaches incomprehensibility of which life and the universe is composed and reason draws the "logical" conclusion that they are the product a Supreme Designer, for what home, watch, computer, fork, spoon, plastic bottle, rug, and the list goes on and on, that has come into existence without a mind ?

And here we see your misconception that complexity is associated with design. The opposite is true.

Theists tend to associate complexity with order and design, and conversely they tend to associate simplicity with chaos and randomness. They then observe that because the universe is complex, it follows that it is ordered and designed.

This is a fundamental misunderstanding. The fact is that simplicity is associated with order and design, and conversely complexity is associated with chaos and randomness.

The universe is complex. Whether marbles are taken to represent galaxies or atoms, the picture on the right is representative of the universe whereas the picture on the left is not. The universe is complex, disordered, and random. It is not designed.

Former atheist Antony Flew, in which his 1950 paper "Theology and Falsification" became "the most widely reprinted philosophical publication of the [20th) century", arguing at that time that the idea of God is philosophically meaningless, said in 2007 after having recognized the "unbelievable complexity.....needed to produce life" that "the important point is not merely that there are regularities in nature, but that these regularities are mathematically precise, universal, and ‘tied together.’ Einstein spoke of them as ‘reason incarnate.’ The question we should ask is how nature came packaged in this fashion. This is certainly the question that scientists from Newton to Einstein to Heisenberg have asked—and answered. Their answer was the Mind of God.”

So then naturally they must've concocted some logical argument for the existence of God, right? Please, indulge me.

Michael Behe (whom you feel is "bizarre") who serves as professor of biochemistry at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania, said in 2006, that the conclusion of life being the product of a Supreme Designer "is not due to ignorance. It's not due to what we don't know; it's due to what we do know. When Darwin published his book The Origin of Species 150 years ago, life seemed simple. Scientists thought that the cell was so simple that it might just spontaneously bubble up from the sea mud. But since then, science has discovered that cells are enormously complex, much more complex that the machinery of our 21st-century world. That functional complexity bespeaks purposeful design".

I take it you saw my explanation of how he debunks his own ideas, right? Here it is again:

Behe himself accidentally explained how irreducible complexity can arise in his appearance on the Scott Sullivan podcast. Behe said that unnecessary traits in microbes can quickly vanish in a population (presumably because energy conservation is very important in a single-celled organism) and so he essentially stated that there could have been organic scaffolding for the flagellum which originally served some other purpose but then became irrelevant with the emergence of the motor function.

He further said that "if you search the scientific literature, you will discover that nobody has made a serious attempt - an experimental attempt or detailed scientific model - that explains how such molecular machines arose by Darwinian processes. This is despite the fact that in the ten years since my book was published (in 1996, and called Darwin's Black Box - The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution), many scientific organizations, such as the National Academy of Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, have issued urgent appeals to their membership to do everything they can to fend off the idea that life provides evidence of intelligent design".

OK, simply design an experiment to test this that you think will demonstrate the failure of evolution.

The many who become full fledged atheists have failed to seriously examine unbiasly everything around us, from the atomic structure to the smallest microbe to the largest stars and galaxies, that show a precision unmatched by humans. Where does organization come from ? From an accident ? This turning life into a philosophical "escapade", rather than seeing it clearly as a result of Supreme Designer, will continue to cause these ones to never recognize the "truth" about life and its Maker.

And you finish it all off with an appeal to ignorance.

I don't know why there is something rather than nothing, and neither do you. Why does God exist instead of not exist? I assume you think there's something "necessary" about his existence? Necessary for what?

 

[Nihilist Virus]

Though I think the existence of God can be definitively proven through things like Aquinas' Five Ways,

Care to elaborate?

 

[Dave Ellis]

Under any circumstance, the guy reported it has no burden to prove to you anything.

If he wants you to believe his claim, then yes he does have to meet the burden of proof.

It's your life, it's your decision. It's you who will suffer from if the claim is true. What you should examine is not the claim itself but the reliability of the one who convey the message. That's how humans should react.

No, actually the claim is the important issue here. Some people are very trustworthy, and may be honestly mistaken. Claims must be examined on their own merits. The person making the argument is irrelevant.

That said, your example here is not accurate. An invisible dragon is a passive being which has no intention nor capability to hide from the encounter of humans. So by statistic if no serious human witnessing about it in human history, than it makes sense to assume its absence as a matter of statistics.

How do you know invisible dragons are passive beings? The invisible dragon could be responsible for all the missing persons in the area that you live in because he had them for lunch. The only reliable witnesses to its acts are currently being digested.

What if that's true? Should you not be concerned that you may be eaten by the invisible dragon?

After death is completely something else, each and every humans without exception will have to encounter it, they won't be able to come back to inform other his encounter. That's the case about the claim of hell.

If humans can't come back to inform us of what happens after death, then how do you know what happens after death?

 

[Dave Ellis]

Rather it's you who choose to argue against the obvious by applying your intellectual dishonesty. Such as the example of your invisible dragon!

Burden of proof is about a situation where you have a neutral point to stand as your stance. It's never about a claim which could potentially endangers your own life!

If you haven't demonstrated an actual threat to his life, then we are starting from a neutral point.

I'm as concerned about your god sending me to hell as you are of being eaten by the invisible dragon. There's no reason to believe either threat is real.