On Evidence & Proof, Pt. I

If you've spent more than a passing moment listening to contemporary debates between atheists and believers, you're likely to have heard the claim that there is no evidence for God. I've heard this claim countless times, and I believe that many, most or possibly all who make the claim conflate the two related but distinct concepts of evidence and proof.

I also believe that attempts to resolve the matter are futile without firmly cementing the goalposts before beginning. Whether the responses are single or list, I've not once had an atheist accept anything I've ever suggested or heard suggested as evidence for God, and IMO there's nothing more annoying than, "Here is good evidence," followed by some variant of, "No it's not you douche," only to be repeated ad nauseum.

Personally, the most ground I've made in any of these ill-guided discussions was SI's recent concession to evidence of a miracle, albeit shortcoming. I'm okay with that, because like I said, my goal isn't to convert SI or other atheists, and I currently don't believe that a successful ontological argument exists. What they do with what I say remains on them. Anyways, I bring it up at all only because we locked horns over whether or not evidence for God exists again, and the following summarizes my response to SI. Lifeguard asked some good questions as usual, and Ubiquitous Che made himself clear and contrasted SI's stubbornness by confronting my challenge to firmly establish goalposts head-on. Hat tip to the both of you; we'll get to those in Parts II & III.

As far as this post goes, my first complaint was that SI claimed my request that he more firmly cement his goalposts was unreasonable, even though commenter Ubiquitous Che agreed with me that mine was a reasonable request and met the challenge (we'll get to that).

SI said,

It's my post, my question, and I want to know what I asked for, not what you want me to ask for. Besides, I set some rather specific criteria in the post itself. I’m not an HMO, I’m not going to pre-approve your evidence.

Yet he wanted me to show him what he asked for – a magic genie that could consistently regrow hair or limbs – and it's not that I want my evidence pre-approved. I asked SI to elaborate because these types of discussions typically descend all-too-easily into, "Here is some decent evidence," followed by some variant of, "No it's not, you douche," to be repeated ad nauseum. There are far easier paths to insanity.

Then again, re-reading SI's criteria as listed in the OP, I can see that he's got his goalposts safely cemented in the stadium parking lot as opposed to anywhere even remotely near the playing field:

By evidence I want to see something, or hear something, or feel something, or have explained to me something that I can’t see, hear or feel, that can be reproduced at any time by anyone without exception, and capable of being experienced or understood by anyone and everyone equally. (SI, bold mine)

Has anybody played this game before? It's called, "Show me the science that proves God." Is there anything besides scientific experiments that can be "reproduced at any time by anyone without exception," as SI demands? If yes, what? If no, is it safe to conclude that SI will only accept that which can be validated by science as evidence?

Incidentally, why can't life and the various life processes be considered evidence of God? Go ahead, I fully expect some chuckling, and this is part of what I allude to when I ask if anyone's played this game before. Even though we don't have a comprehensive and coherent explanation of life, many atheists I've encountered assume that things like evolution, homology and natural selection automatically count as evidence for atheism. Yet, that molecules did certain things doesn't preclude that they weren't instructed to do said things, and in doing so, said atheists effectively hijack evidence that also reasonably supports the idea that everything resulted from an act of macro-creation.

Seriously: why can't life itself be offered as evidence in the case for Theos? Lest we forget, the odds are certainly against us being here, and it is far less likely that we'd exist were it entirely up to chance, correct? An act of intelligent, special creation seems to me a perfectly reasonable explanation for how something so vastly improbable could have happened. Better yet, we have real-world precedent for acts of intelligent creation: we humans are on the verge of micro-creation, that is, creation of life incredibly smaller than ourselves. What's so unreasonable about the idea that life incredibly larger than ourselves may have created us?

Of course, "vastly improbable" does not mean "impossible," and that we just happened to get really lucky remains possible, too – but I know what persuades me.

SI continues, not at all concerned that he's wandering into the land of unsupported assumptions and jumpy logic:

Frankly, the fact that you answer without responding tells me that you don’t have any evidence, and you’ll do anything to avoid the question. Am I not being reasonable in coming to that conclusion?

I don't think SI was being reasonable in that conclusion, because he jumped to it. That I didn't immediately proceed by proffering evidence for God does not entail that I don't have any, nor that I will do anything to avoid the question.

SI did say he was willing to consider Kayla's case as "evidence of a miracle," which makes me wonder: SI, considering the undeniably Christian context that surrounded Kayla's healing, why or why wouldn't you consider evidence of this miracle to be (by extension) evidence of "the Christian God?" If nothing else, that might be an interesting line of discussion.

If I might digress for a moment, as far as Kayla's case goes, I have no qualms with SI or other atheists who would consider it weak or unpersuasive evidence. After all, it remains a single data point, which also happens to be anecdotal, and we have no doctor willing to come forward and testify. Further, to deny all possibility of confounders in Kayla's case would not be permissible, because after all, we both agreed that spontaneous remission (SR) of cancer occurs without prayer. Everyone knows that, right? Rethinking, I'm no longer sure we can be so sure.

What rationally justifiable conclusion can we posit regarding how many of those who've have experienced SR had people praying for them? That cases of SR exist where the involved parties are unaware of any prayer does not entail that nobody prayed in said cases, yet SI factors this assumption into his argument, without evidence. While I will certainly agree that SR occurs in individuals who are unaware they were being prayed for, that doesn't mean we can just say that SR happens without prayer in any, all or most cases. How do we know? How can we isolate SR motivated by prayer from SR not motivated by prayer?

Now, if we could reliably re-create SR in a series of independent and convincing scientific studies that bear consistent and predictable sets of markers, then I would say SI's claim that SR occurs without prayer was sufficiently established – but until said evidence exists, we must remember that scientists don't have the slightest idea what causes SR. Hence, SI's claim remains a just-so statement with no supporting evidence, exactly the type of statement SI claims we should reject.

So, we can see that SI uses some pretty poor and contradictory logic to challenge Kayla's case: he began by merely dismissing her healing as SR while refusing to address my contention that significant markers were absent in Kayla's case. He then argued that "because SR happens without prayer, something else besides God must be going on." Folks, that logic is just as poor, because even if we grant that SR occurs without prayer, such in no way entails that "something else besides God was going on" in Kayla's case.

SI continues,

So why can’t you list all the evidence I asked for, let it all hang out, and let the chips fall where they may?

Well, because he's not asking for evidence, he's asking for proof. Evidence doesn't necessarily need to be "[reproducible] at any time by anyone without exception."

Growing increasingly candid, SI continues,

You're not going to convince me with your evidence (and I say that not to discourage you, but to be honest – nothing you've said so far has convinced me, so I'm going with the odds, tentatively) – but why not try?

Yet by that point, SI had conceded that I'd offered only a single data point, and an admittedly weak one at that: Kayla's case. So, isn't SI's appeal to "odds" here a bit odd?

SI continues,

My rejection of your evidence won't change your opinion, because you've already decided that the evidence is good enough for you. But for some reason you're afraid to say what it is. Don't forget, there are others reading this shit.

Of course others are reading, and it's not that I'm scared or anything like that. It's that by his own admission, SI refuses to accept anything that cannot be "reproduced at any time by anyone without exception" – in other words – the whole discussion is a doomed enterprise from the start, because SI conflates evidence and proof.

So, it seems to me the 'ol Spanish Inquisitor and myself are again at an impasse, but I'm willing to continue the discussion if he's willing to put more effort into it and ease back on the assumptions.