2012-07-11, 05:24 PM
GreatOrator2 Wrote:Not exactly, I was very careful in the wording of that line (though happy to see that it meant enough to be used as a starter for another topic). Using your rain metaphor, true that while being on the 31st floor would keep you from seeing the ground and knowing it was wet, there is still enough pre-requisite proof (physical) that would allow someone to make a rational, informed decision that the ground is indeed wet because of the knowledge that water does make things that way. HOWEVER, in line with my statement of not being able to preove OR disprove, even with a truckload of previous experience, it is possible the ground is indeed not wet because something could be covering it, rain does fall that far (if you lived in arizona you would know exactly what that is like), etc.
Now to expand on this point, with the ground being wet, the inference is made because there has been on the part of whoever, a number of direct correlations to the rains effect, i.e. they have been on the ground floor when it is raining and have seen the ground get wet from rain. So, the difference here is, noone has directly seen God physically (in a manner that can be proven to others on a large scale) in front of them, performing anything, so the reference to his existence therefore would still be in question.
So your usage of the word 'evidence' seems to not mean a causal effect of the thing in question, but rather our knowledge of the world through observation and experience. Is there any restriction on this? Perhaps, as I take to be implied by your post, only visual experience would count (No one has directly seen God physically)? Because otherwise, I can throw out something like this as an argument:
- Everything that exists has a cause
- The world exists (*)
- Thus the world must have a cause (God)
Using our experience, we can confirm (to a certain degree of confidence) that the world exists, and employing reason, we can make an inference from that fact, effectively rendering it an 'evidence'.