Burden of Proof

can someone please explain to me why burden of proof isn't the biggest crock of bullshit cop-out in the history of philosophy and logic?

Because in my view, that is what it is.

 

What do you mean? Are you saying that one shouldn't have to provide evidence for claims?

My question to you: if you believe that the "burden of proof" is bullshit, then why do you keep wanting more and more explanations for evolution? It seems as though you are saying that views which oppose yours have a certain burden of proof before you will consider the validity of the view, while simultaneously saying that you should not have to provide evidence for your views. I am curious why this is. Maybe I read your post wrong, but this is what I got from it. As I've said before, you shouldn't call yourself pro-life when you support the death penalty (a metaphor, not an accusation directed at you).

Peace and love

 

The burden of proof is crucial in any argument, because whoever bears the burden is fighting an uphill battle. There are some general rules of thumb that are applicable: (s)he who asserts must prove. If you make an assertion, you have the burden of backing it up. It's no good to say: "The Purple Flying Spaghetti Monster exists, prove me wrong." Because that would presume that any wild, fantastic thing that pops into a person's mind is true, unless we can come up with evidence that it's not. A related priciple is that a person defending an extraordinary occurrence outside the realm of normal human experience (e.g., a miracle) has the burden of proving that it happened. If I tell you that a little green man carried me away and performed medical experiments on me, I doubt that you'd believe me unless I provided some evidence in the form of photographs, eyewitnesses, etc. It seems to me that both of these rules of thumb are reasonable. But reasonable isn't the same as right. The Purple Flying Spaghetti Monster might actually exist and the little green men might really have performed those medical experiments. In other words, the only reason to follow the rules concerning burden of proof, since we can't know ultimate reality, is that it allows us a way of making sense of reality other than "anything goes". I'd put it in the category of "animal faith" (Santayana) along with logic, math, and a belief in empirical data. If we don't believe that, there's no point in trying to conduct a rational discussion.

 

This is aimed at atheist who claim that theist must provide proof for the existence of God, while they themselves do not have to offer any evidence that he does not exist.

So I am wondering why I must provide all the physical evidence in the world for God, while they get to scrutinize it, call me crazy, and then offer absolutely no backup for the nonexistence of God.


btw hippie chick i think you hate me. just thought you should know.

 

well okie, their big thing is that they cannot be given the burden, because they cannot prove a negative.

that is stupid.

A. There is no cat in that box.

B. *Looks in box* Your right! no cat.

 

I think the atheist who says "God does not exist" has made an assertion, and has the burden of supporting it. If a theist makes an assertion that God exists, (s)he has the burden of proving that. Of course, another question is what constitutes "proof" and "evidence"? Agnostics may be on safer ground where the burden of proof is concerned, although I find them somewhat boring.

 

which is why I think this is bullshit. They make an assertion about reality in general, but they are not required to back it up? That's so stupid. Yet they laugh at me and call me crazy b/c I believe in something I cannot prove.

P.S. Im waiting on some atheists to jump into this.

 

Why do I hate you? Because I challenge you to think about why you believe what you believe? If anything, that is a sign I respect you enough to listen to your reasoning rather than write you off as a Bible thumping ignoramous. Also, have I personally attacked you in any way or otherwise insulted you? It kind of seems like you are taking my disagreement w/ your opinion as if I must not like you personally?

It seems that you find my challenging as a personal insult. Why is this so? Does it mean that I like someone just because I agree with their position? There are many people I don't like that are not based on whether their opinions on the world match mine. Sometimes I don't like certain Buddhists, which is not based on their views but rather how they treat me (name-calling) and others. I don't know you personally and in general, I don't hate anyone. I find hatred rather useless and an obstical to seeing the Divine w/in us all.

My question to you is why you think I hate you.

Peace and love

 

maybe i just misread you a lot. it always seems like your calling me out.

i dunno.
i'll take your word for it though. sorry.

 

Hello, atheist here. Here's my take.

You are claiming that there is a being. You think this being exists, but you can't see, hear, touch, taste, or smell him.

Pretend your mind is a blank slate. All your memories and experiences are gone, and there's nobody to tell you about them. You have to learn everything to know it. Your default point of view, at that point, would be that there is no god. Why? Because you can't see, hear, touch, taste, or smell him. Given enough time, maybe you will have a spiritual experience or something, but if asked where this world came from, you would not say that god created it, you would say you didn't know. If you really cared about it, you would do your best to find out, as many have.

But that's it. The default is nonbelief, for the reason Okiefreak gave. Any rational person will start from nonbelief when told that things of this nature are true. It is irrational to expect someone to defend nonbelief for that reason. Active disbelief, maybe. The atheist that says "I believe there is no god" as opposed to "I don't believe there is a god" can be challenged on that point. If I had never heard of a something as obvious as a snake, and you said "there are these things around that look like lizards without legs, and they slither around, and smell with their tongues, etc," my response would be disbelief. "Prove it," I would say. If you were to make that assertion and then tell me to prove that they don't exist, you would be in the wrong.

Instead of something as simple as a cat in a box, let's use a more fitting analogy. It's not so easy to see if god exists or not.

Like quarks. I've never seen (in focus) a lone quark, nobody has taken a picture of a quark. If you want me to prove quarks don't exist, I can't simply look. I must look at the evidence FOR the existence of quarks, evaluate its validity, and decide what I believe concerning quarks.

As it is with god.

 

I find life more interesting when people challenge my beliefs somewhat- it helps me realize why I have these beliefs. If you don't understand your beliefs and values, do you really know yourself?

Also, I am really into science; I am going into geology and it really frustrates me to hear things about the theory of evolution that are just false. It's as though people think evolution couldn't have happened b/c they don't understand it. People are confused w/ evolution b/c of all the spin about what it actually is. Many people believe evolution means that man came from apes; this is a completely false premise. Imagine if I heard that Christ said "Eat my body and drink my blood" and then started accusing Christians of being cannibals. I can say "this is what Jesus said!" but does that make my claim true? I feel the same way about evolution.

Peace and love

 

I just dont like when someone tells me for sure what happened 6 million years ago.
Im very very skeptical about a lot of that shit, like theories about things we can't even see and things that happened and no one was there. and all this stuff about the universe.


but hippie chick just please try and understand my frustration. Trust me I have my beliefs challenged ALL the time. The world gets less and less spiritual every day. And it always leaves me the subject of a lot of scrutiny because I have absolutely no way to prove my "crazy" beliefs.

Im sorry but if you can't prove to me that there is no God, then why would i change? I just dont understand what people expect of me. My personal convictions and insight are good enough for me. Atheist these days are becoming more and more the agressor.(not directed at any of you guys)

 

Your personal convictions and beliefs should be good enough for anyone, as long as you're willing to give others the same latitude. I base my Christian faith on my judgment, intuition, personal experience and risk acceptance, informed by facts as best I can. But of course when we come onto a website and engage in discussions about the existence of God, etc., we can expect some flack.

 

But you aren't skeptical of god. No offense, but you're accepting one set of beliefs that falls within those guidelines and dismissing another.

However...a lot of the stuff that you have a problem with is not nearly as shaky as you think. There is more than just theory to back up things like evolution and the big bang. We may not have seen these occur, but we can see evidence that they did. In evolution, we see, more or less, a progression of traits and species from simple to more complex. If you wiki the big bang, it'll show you some of the evidence for that. These aren't just guesses.

Nobody can prove that there is no god. If you believe something that is contradicted by a massive field of science, I think that would be a good reason to change. I may be speaking only for myself, but I just expect you to be yourself. You ask good questions and start good discussions. What do you take away from these?

You say your personal convictions and insight are good enough for you. I have a couple questions about that. What do you mean by personal convictions (morals, beliefs, gut feelings?)? Good enough for you to do what? I think, actually, that the increase you see in atheist aggression (which I think you are right about) is at least in part a response to the power many christians have tried to use against us and against science. I dunno if you've noticed, but atheists are hard to come by in politics, so in some places they want to teach ID in schools, or read disclaimers, etc. I don't think outspoken atheism was so popular until the religious political establishment fired the first shot.

 

Yes, I must agree. How can you be skeptical of evolution when there is so much evidence for it and at the same time expect others NOT to be skeptical of your claims when there is no clear evidence for it? As I said before, it seems as though there is only a burden of proof for claims that you do not agree with (or ultimately, do not understand)? Do you see the contradiction?

Also, the belief for a Creator entity has just as much evidence as FSMism and Greek mythology. What, in your opinion, makes the Christian God any different than the other two? Obviously besides the fact that you won't find the Olympian Gods on Mt. Olympus- just as a Christian defender would say that man cannot see God, a Greek would say that man cannot see the Gods and Goddesses. What makes your beliefs correct and beliefs in other mythologies false?

I ask this b/c if you cannot really answer, then why do you call yourself Christian? During the early years of Christianity, these debates were pondered by many, and it seems today that many Christians accept what they have been taught w/o understanding WHY it is taught that way. It is kind of funny that in my History of Christianity class, I have more of an understanding about WHY my Christian classmates believe what they do than those who hold the beliefs. It kind of seems like they have blinders on when asked different questions about why they believe, for example, in The Fall- most Christians remain silent.

Peace and love

 

well hippie chick, i dont expect people to be skeptical or not skeptical about my beliefs. When it comes to other people and my beliefs, i really dont give a shit. and i dont see a contradiction with this burden of proof thing, because the whole reason i started this thread is because im always the one that is getting attacked. spirituality is on the decline, and im constantly being called a crazy dumbass idiot and what not, just because I dont think we are all here by accident. I have an atheist friend who's not so much of a friend anymore, here's how our conversations usually go.

Friend: So you still believing in God?
Me: yep.
Friend: Why, when you can't even prove to me he exist?
Me: Why shouldn't I, when you can't prove he doesn't exist?

usually around this time, barbaric screams of "BURDEN OF PROOF!!!" can usually be heard from a distance of two miles.
Look, just because Im a theist doesn't mean I have the answers to every little fucking thing. No one does. I dont know why people can't understand this.

 

I found a site that did do a pretty good job of disproving a Creator God, based first by defining what God is supposed to be (all good, all perfect, all just) and then refuting these claims by showing that they simply can't co-exist. It's like proving that a cubic sphere cannot exist- by definition a sphere cannot have corners while a cube must.

I don't know, I'm not asking you to provide irrefutable evidence for a Creator entity, but your reasons why you believe one exists. It seems the more I logically think about the idea that God is an entity, the less and less likely I find it. Also, it seems like a throw back to thousands of years before Christ. This is when Judaism was being founded and the idea of Creator entities were widespread. All you have to do is look at Greek, Roman, Norse, Native American, etc mythologies. I don't see any difference between Christianity & Judaism entity and the aforementioned mythologies, except perhaps the notion that there is one entity in Judaism & Christianity and more in the others. But seriously, what makes the Christian God more viable than the others?

Peace and love

 

well for the last sentence you posted, i think that they are all the same God.

But hippie chick, can you post the link to the article you read about disproving God. Im almost completely sure I have read it, as one of my atheist friends tried to blast me with it, and from what i remember it was pretty weak. maybe you have a different one. As for evolution, I just dont think I believe it. I found a young earth site, and they have some pretty good reasoning. i'll put it up if anyone wants to see it.

 

It was that site: evilbible.com

I posted it on another thread- I hope the link works, so if it doesn't, there's another link on the thread about the Old Testament. If you copy and paste, it works.

Basically, the argument was similar to the one I had made against Augustine's idea of The Fall, only a lot broader w/ many more points.

Peace and love

 

yeah i read that thing. i'll post up what i think about all his points.