Evidence of God!

Nope.

I don't know what a perceptual need is unless you are using "gathered" in some narrow sense involving purpose.

I'm aware there are no facts without an observer.

Presuming why a frog does something is anthropomorphic.



They sound like assertions to me. If a person has a "relationship" with God is that non-naive reality? Or a woman he thinks he understands but doesn't? Where the "fact" he observes is an illusion? A hallucination. A dream. An image he fancies.

Children are not running water. And the Ed system is not a river bed. But it's pretty obvious that internal and external states are mutually existent and in constant dynamic flux.

Spendius,

I'm probably flogging a dead horse, but I would finally comment that....

Relationships are between concepts not things, and concepts like "self" and "God" are epiphenomena of language which embodies "social reality". Selves, gods, rocks are coexistent aspects of such reality. For a believer, the concept "self" has a positive relationship with the concept "God", for an atheist it is a negative relationship. Existence is relationship. The forces of consensus might assign "hallucination" or "illusion" to some aspects of some relationships.

fresco-

You disappoint me saying "finally".

I wasn't arguing with you. I was trying to pick your brains.

There are no "things". Everything consists of atomic particles and they are concepts. We give names to certain arrangements of them in order to get along and conquer nature or, at least, bend it to our will.

I am trying to find out if atheists can order a successful society without the sort of interventions I presume we all disapprove of. The atheists on the ID thread simply refuse to even contemplate the idea and I was hoping maybe you might.

Spendius,

Your ID saga might merely be a circular language game.

You need to investigate your usage of the term "successful society". It may be that the cognitive/linguistic process which evokes such a concept necessarily evokes "order" and "God"("ultimate orderer") as co-concepts. "Atheism" is obviously just as contingent on "God" as "theism".

If for example you concede that animals can have a "successful society" without linguistic activity, is it a "Godless one" ?

I would guess fresco that you are fresh from the pub. As I am.

A successful society is one that has pubs. I don't know what an animal with no pubs might be like.

In the beginning was the word. And the word was with an ordered society.

AFTERTHOUGHT



As Brits, we certainly know what animals with pubs are like !

Hitler only? How about Ghandi, Jackson, King, The Rams, Dorothy Hamill etc. which all means what?

What kind of response would they get now?

...which means we are social animals prone to group dynamics which both music and oratory can focus. Wagner's music can have exactly the same effect as Nessun Dorma . Unlike music, oratory is more prone to historical context.

Excellent point Bartikus.

Pretending that there is only one type of evidence is rather disingenuous.

Scientific evidence and legal evidence, for instance, have different standards of proof.

Science relies on observation, repetition, falsification, etc.

By this standard of evidence it would be difficult , if not impossible , to 'prove' that Charlemagne had lived.

His life cannot be repeated, nor observed. We cannot examine nor question witnesses who have given testimony of what he did.

His existence cannot be falsified. (Try to prove a negative. It's not often done.)

But we don't only rely on 'scientific evidence' in dealing with historical matters. Science may be able to provide supplementary or circumstantial evidence that tends to support or not, as the case may be.

But sweeping generalizations regarding evidence, or the lack thereof, are humorous diversions nonetheless.

FM , as a man of science, should be more careful to qualify his statements regarding evidence. But don't look for it soon.

Those who ask for 'evidence of God' often don't understand what they are asking for.

The notion of requiring 'natural' evidence of the 'supernatural' is more than a bit absurd.

The last words of a dying philosophy. Enjoy it's last days.

T
K
O