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Originally Posted by
The Atheist
Excellent analogy, thanks; I've never seen a blue whale either!
I have pictures of blue whales. I have also been to the museum and seen the skeleton of one. I have seen videos of them and I know that Whalewatch in Kaikoura runs boats out to see them when they pass NZ.
When the same level of evidence is presented for god/s, I'll start believing they exist as well.
I love that analogy - it's pretty common, but as you see, it places the onus of evidence onto theists.
Then you should start believing that the Gods and the Goddesses exist, because the evidence is on the same level as the evidence for te existence of Blue Whales.
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This is when we start applying a little intelligence to the situation and goes back to why I have stressed the "one, true god" point.
If I believe all of the people who claim to have a relationship with this one god chappie, I find a terrible conundrum - there is more than one god! Which group do I believe?
The matter of "the one true god" is very different from the matter of actual Gods and Goddesses. I was raised to believe in that one true god, but now I believe in a large number of Gods and Goddesses. Remember that the chief god of the Hebrews was just one of the gods of the Canaanites.
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When anecdotal evidence conflicts, you ignore it. Have you ever studied eyewitness testimony? I used to run security courses for bank staff at risk of armed robbery. They were told that they would be tested on their observation skills. An armed robber would then burst in and spend 4-5 minutes in full view of the audience.
Each staff member then went away and filled in a form describing this person they had been watching for several minutes.
There was no consistency at all, and even things like the colour of his clothing was never better then a 40% success rate.
We don't covict people of crime on hearsay evidence, and I'm certainly most uncomfortable with it when it pertains to something I cannot see, hear or touch and for which not one single piece of physical evidence has ever been presented.
WHen evidence is incnsistant, we weigh the sources. People are regularly convicted on hearsay evidence. Such evidence is ofte given as part of a larger case. There are some people who can look at a scene for a fw seconds and describe everything there in detail, while other people wouldn't recognise anything.
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This I disagree with completely.
As above, if anecdotal evidence is removed, there is none at all.
Theists cannot even agree on where their sky-daddy chap was buried! The event of his resurrection is the single defining moment of christianity, yet nobody can say with certainty where it happened. The shroud from Turin has been proven fake and it's known that many alleged miracles - holy fire, levitating host and the like, are actually simple parlour tricks.
You can believe whatever you want to, but please keep in mind that different people place different weights on different kinds of evidence.
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Originally Posted by
The Atheist
Nobody claims they don't exist. What's in doubt is their godliness. Do some people really believe wine is a god?
If you don't believe that the Earth is a Goddess, that's your business. It's a matter of definitions, and similarly with Bacchus.
