On Evidence & Proof, Pt. III: Questions From Ubiquitous Che

I have an open mind (I think) so I am willing to be convinced. I’ll even say that if you show me good evidence, I’ll bow down and worship your god, whoever he may be. But I want evidence. -SI, The Existence of God

MiracleQuest is alive and well again, this time at SI's. So far, it's went more or less exactly as every other discussion of this nature I've seen: hundreds of comments, plenty of insults and not much to mention in terms of reasonable resolution.

SI asks believers to present their "good evidence" for God. Sounds innocent enough, right?

Yet, veterans in this game should be able to see the red flags immediately. In reality, we have different kinds of evidence each with varying degrees of strength and usefulness according to the nature of the evaluations. Consider the differences between anecdotal, circumstantial and empirical evidence, for example. When SI asks for "good evidence" for God, how am I supposed to know exactly what he means? His original criteria excluded only personal anecdotes, and elaborated that, 

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.

Now, the "reproduced at any time by anyone without exception" part of SI's criteria effectively excludes everything that cannot be "reproduced at any time by anyone without exception." By definition, anything beyond science's purview falls into this category, and SI eventually admitted that he was asking for something more akin to what people mean when referring to laboratory-style scientific proof. Of course, this is convenient for SI, because it means he wins from the getgo, because anything that might exist beyond science's purview – for example the God of the Bible – is refused a priori.

Am I saying science can't "prove" God the way it "proves" natural phenomena? Certainly. Does this mean I'm arguing the NOMA defense, or that I'm trying to protect my beliefs from the scrutiny of science because I'm scared? By no means. That one can't "prove" God doesn't mean one can't approach the God question in a way that is scientifically grounded; it's just that one can't expect to demonstrate something like God – something purported to come and go and act completely independent of our existence – with equal repeatability as something like gravity.

After demonstrating that SI's goalpost was safely in the parking lot as opposed to anywhere near the playing field, the question remains: what besides "non-personal-anecdote" is SI's criteria? To date, he's not made the necessary emendations, and has either criticized or eschewed all requests to supply them. What is a willing interlocuter to do?

As an analogy, most of us here in America and even many abroad know who Waldo is, so much so that we have an entire book series dedicated to the question "Where's Waldo." In any crowd, he's the tall, skinny white guy wearing glasses with a red-and-white striped shirt and matching hat, right? If only SI would cement his goalpost thusly! SI's request is more akin to asking us to find the drunk guy with a black-and-orange ball cap at the SF Giants game – no matter which drunk guy with said ball cap we point to, SI can simply say, "Oh, not that drunk guy with a black-and-orange ball cap you stupid troll…" Then round and round it goes!

SI, PhillyChief and John Evo adamantly complain that my requests for elaboration are unreasonable, but they're my most predictable detractors. With one or two notable exceptions from SI and Evo, they've shown a pattern of consistently slandering me no matter what I say. So isn't their complaining and slandering expected? That's why I thought it was both interesting and gratifying when an atheist without a personal vendetta against me immediately agreed that my requests are reasonable. In retrospect, I now realize I should have ignored or at least minimized my detractors in order to discuss this with somebody who hadn't already demonstrated themselves as completely closed-minded to almost everything I say.

Anyways, without further adieu, I'd like to reproduce most of the discussion I had with Ubiquitous Che. Che's questions were good, and he treated the issue maturely, whereas most everyone else at SI's, well… we all know the drill.

After Evo criticized me in his typical knee-jerk fashion for asking SI to elaborate on what exactly would constitute "good evidence," Ubiquitous Che said,

This, I think, is actually a reasonable question… I can’t speak for the author of this blog article, obviously, but I’ll give an attempt to answer for myself, if it pleases you. Firstly, it should be acknowledged that it would take more than one single thing to convince me. A single data point, even if it is very good, is unpersuasive alone. It would require a slow build-up of networked evidence. Each individual item on its own may not be spectacularly convincing, but the combined weight of the evidence, as it grows, would eventually win out. It may be argued that a requirement for a volume of evidence, rather than a point, is unfair. Perhaps it is – however, it is no less than I demand for anything else.

Yet at the same time, I would also accept evidence for things that are not directly related to God. Anything that increased God’s initial implausibility would do – for example, establishing that any kind of supernatural afterlife exists would instantly make the existence of God a little bit less implausible.

Now, an exhaustive list of the kind of evidence that would persuade me is, I’m sure you’ll understand, not possible. I’m sure that God, if He exists, could manifest evidence of His existence in ways I cannot even mention. However, I can offer a few suggestions.

1) Prayer Study:

A high quality scientific study (‘high quality refers to such things as; a large sample group of both praying believers and subjects, strong controls, good blinding procedures, and justifiable statistical conclusions) that shows that surgery patients who are prayed for have a higher rate of recovery than those who are not. An additional nice feature would be if patients prayed for by one particular religious denomination had better recovery than another. Note that I acknowledge that absence of such a study, and the existence of such studies that explicitly show that prayer has no such effect do not of themselves disprove God. But if such a study emerged showing prayer had a statistically detectable effect on the recovery of surgery patients, and this test was both explicable and of high quality, then it would count as strong evidence.

2) Evidence of an afterlife:

Say we find an old man with a terminal disease that is willing to participate in this (arguably) ghoulish little experiment. The old man and a researcher conclude on a specific code. The researcher waits for the old man to die. The researcher consults with the ‘best’ mediums. The researcher and the old man have an agreement that the old man will do everything in his power from the afterlife to visit a medium and communicate that code to the researcher. If such experiments could be reliably performed and regularly reproduced, it would go a long way to providing evidence of an afterlife. This would not necessarily show that God exists, exactly. But it would make the existence of such an entity much less implausible.

3) Demonstrable, reliably recorded miracle:

In scripture, God frequently manifests miracles to convince people. If He exists, why no longer? A genuine miracle would be something like the spontaneous regeneration of an amputee’s lost limb. According to the Gospel of Matthew, the dead rose and wandered around Jerusalem when Jesus rose from his tomb. Why then would the regeneration of a limb be any more difficult. Of course, there would need to be reliable evidence, before and after, that such a regeneration actually took place. This is just an example, however. Any reliably documented miracle along these lines would do…

4) The existence of a crocoduck (or something like a crocoduck):

Google the keywords ‘Kirk Cameron Crocoduck’ if you are unfamiliar with the term. We don’t currently have the genetic expertise to create a crocoduck. Anything remotely like it would be strong evidence for a divine act of creation. By ‘anything remotely like it’ I mean that if we had a violation of the flow of evolutionary processes, such that we wound up with a species that was an obvious cross of two very, very disparate clades. As a more concrete example, a mammal that used haemocyanin as its respiratory pigment instead of haemoglobin would be something of a shock.

Wow! Consider that against SI, Evo and Philly's paltry and insulting responses that tend to focus entirely on their perception of me vs. what I'm actually saying! Personally, I liked much of what Che had to say, especially his distinction between evidence for what he later calls Theos and evidence for things that reasonably increase the plausibility of Theos. I agreed with Che that a single data point – no matter how strong – should not be expected to persuade. Also, I agreed with Che that it's proper to ask for a volume of evidence.

So, I responded to Che thusly:

..thank you for the obvious and honest effort you put into my evidence question… I agree with you regarding the insufficiency of a single data point. Further, I don’t think a volume of evidence is an unfair demand by any means; after all, that’s the standard science proceeds by, right?

The best [prayer studies] can do is to falsify a magic Yes Man in the sky, which the God of the Bible is not. Still, let’s say there was a prayer study where only Hindus effected cures. Would that prove Shiva? Vishnu? Brahma? Or just something unexplainable?

As far as evidence of an afterlife, if the God of the Bible exists, we should expect not to find ironclad evidence for an afterlife, because the Bible says there is a chasm between the humans that are living and the humans that have died. I see an analogy in the singularity, and I agree with you that even if this weren’t allegedly the case, the reliable and repeatable experiments wouldn’t prove God. At best, they would merely suggest continuation of consciousness after death, right?

As far as miracles, feel free to peruse the MiracleQuest series on my blog. It’s literally loaded with reasons why miracle claims fall short. I’m particularly interested in hearing your reaction to my “Recapitated Man” example. In response to the question of how they would parse a Recapitated Man, I’ve had atheists propose with a straight face things like SMERF’s – Sudden Magnetic Entropy Reversal Fields – and guess what? We can’t disprove them. Said atheists might as well argue for Invisible Pink Unicorns if you ask me.

As far as the existence of a crocoduck, that’s quite interesting. I’ve never heard that idea until now. Allow me to ponder it, if you will.

Regarding Che's 1-4, I do have problems with prayer studies that I think render them fatally flawed as good evidence; I agree with Che that evidence of an afterlife (or "other realms") would decrease the implausibilityof God and/or the supernatural; I agree with Che that a reliably recorded miracle would also decrease implausibility of God and/or the supernatural; but I also have some reservations about the "crockoduck" argument: it's essentially the same God of the Gaps / organized complexity argument creationists and ID'ers have been making unsuccessfully for years.

Che replied,

I will use the term Theos instead of God if that works for you, because I want this to apply to all forms of deism, monotheism and polytheism, and I’ve found that Theos is a nice generic bundling-up term that everyone can accept.

I’ve always considered that Theos is, before interpreted to fit anything else, a proposed solution to Primum Movens. Firstly, I have found Primum Movens to be non sequitur in the first place. However, even if we grant the argument’s logical form as sound, I still find that Theos is a very poor solution to Primum Movens due to the regression problem. Yet although I find it unlikely, I acknowledge that it may be true in spite of this. But for me, overcoming this initial implausibility will require more than mere words (Logos). It will require the combination of words (Logos) with evidence (Kairos). As such evidence is (in my experience) sorely lacking, I therefore believe with high confidence (though not utter certainty) that Theos does not exist. I am an atheist.

There’s a lot packed in that last paragraph, so I just want to repeat myself: It is not my intent to persuade you of my opinion on these matters, or to even defend my opinion on these matters against you. I only seek to make myself clear. I say this because my purpose (at the moment) is not to argue the point, only fulfill your original request for the kinds of evidence that would be acceptable.

This, I suspect, places me in a slightly different category from the other commentators on this post – at least for the moment…

It sure does! I ask them to get serious, and they recoil defensively with insults and derision. I didn't even ask you to get serious, and you came along with open hands, glad tidings and offerings of your own. That's why I said earlier that I should've ignored or minimized my detractors in favor of what began as a rather promising dialog. Live and learn, I suppose.

Back to Che:

Say there was [a prayer study where only Hindus effected cures]. On its own, of course this would prove nothing. However, such a study could be put to service to support a premise in an argument that did seek to prove the existence of any of the above entities, or others besides. But even if it could not be used to prove any of these entities, it would still remain persuasive to those mindful of evidence-based reasoning.

As an aside, a word on ‘proving’ things. To my understanding, a ‘proof’ is a mathematical construct. The branch of mathematics that deals with argumentation is logic – be it propositional or predicate logic. So the only way evidence can ‘prove’ something is via some kind of logically sound logical argument founded upon materially supported premises. As such, a proof is actually a very tricky standard to achieve. Often, such a standard cannot be met, even in probabilistic terms. However, ‘proving’ things is one kind of persuasion. A very strong kind of persuasion, but still only one kind. Even when a logical proof cannot be attained, we may use other, weaker forms of persuasion. Evidence based reasoning is one such trope – and it is a form of persuasion to which I am particularly susceptible whenever a logical argument cannot be found to decide a matter.

Che and I agreed that prayer experiments, miracles and evidence for the afterlife – no matter how persuasive – lend plausibility at best. Towards this end, I suggested Che peruse the MiracleQuest posts here because they're loaded with reasons why I believe miracle claims fall short as God proofs.

Che continued,

I disbelieve in the continuation of consciousness after death. To phrase it positively, I accept the neurological evidence that the mind is what the brain does, just as pumping blood is what the heart does. I have found presented evidence to the contrary to be of lower quality than the neurological evidence. It follows from this that, when the brain dies, the mind ceases to function just as blood ceases to be pumped through the corpse’s veins… If it could be shown that minds could exist without a physical system of some form, this would not be a proof – but it would make Theos that much more plausible.

If I might interject here, Che stated a disinterest in "getting bogged down into an argument about the consciousness-after-death issue," but for those interested in some of my thoughts on the matter can start here.

Regarding the crockoduck, Che continued,

..it would do a great deal to invalidate [evolution] as the sole cause of species diversity. Such a creature should not be possible under evolutionary theory. Evolutionary theory would still be valid, mind you. Just incomplete. But this way, we would be able to show hard evidence that there is a source of species diversity that must exist outside evolution. This could form the foundation for some form of proof or reasoning for God’s existence.

The problem with this so far seems that it's essentially a God of the Gaps argument. That evolutionary theory is incomplete has never been a successful argument for God even when the evidence pointed to the incompleteness of evolutionary theory (for example in Darwin's time). Even if we could show such a species, wouldn't most people simply presume that it must have occurred naturally?

And Che, while we're on the subject of anomalous biological oddities and their degree of significance, what was your opinion about the so-called Starchild Skull? Either way, thanks for the intelligent discussion and for not shrinking back from a reasonable question, Che. I'm certainly going to incorporate some of your contributions into my formal arguments. My next beer's for you.