Who has the burden of proof?
Offline If we were to discover a fully automated factory of some kind on the Moon or Mars, we would have to assume it is the product of design, at least until we could satisfactorily show that it is not.
This situation "defaults" to a designer, and the burden of proof resides on those who champion an alternate, much more complicated explanation. The existence of the designer *is* an explanation, in fact it is the simplest one. And please, no "who created the designer" questions, IF he is necessary, then he DOES exist, and he has the property of having always existed.
And even if you can show that life does not require a designer, you still need something at a very fundamental level to have "always existed". The fact that the Big Bang occurred means there was something before the Big Bang. If there was absolutely nothing before the Big Bang, there would be absolutely nothing right now. The universe needs an uncaused cause, the only question is whether this "uncaused cause" has intelligence or not.
Let's make one small thing clear though: none of the revealed religions are correct. If you spend any time researching the origin of the so-called sacred texts, you see that the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament), the New Testament and the Koran were all written by MEN. They are *not* the "Word of God".
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2061773048178434620
So who's actually making the more extraordinary claim here, the idea that something that looks designed WAS designed, or the idea that life gives the astounding illusion that it was designed, but that in fact it was not. The second claim requires EXTENSIVE demonstration to be valid. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
So, as of 2007, what is the pathway, starting from rocks and water, that leads to the LUCA?
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See this is what i dont' get about your god. He created you to live in this world in order to suffer basically. Then after a blink of a eye (compared to how long you will be in heaven) you are with him eternally. This makes no sense, why not just skip the entire testing you nonsense and just give let you live in heaven with him?
I guess that life is some kind of test then. Yes we suffer pain and loss, but the ends justify the means. Perhaps God wanted to see who would be loyal to Him, I don't know completely why.
But since he's omnimax shouldn't he know who would be? He set up all the conditions for everything including free will so this test is just him having fun watching us suffer.
Perhaps. I tend to avoid the free will vs. predestination argument, but I have heard some good opinions on it. However, this still does not account for the fact that God apparently knows everything. I'll have to think about this one for a while, good point.
Well Edison, it appears for some reason or another you could not stand to have this person walk out of your life, so you conformed to what they wanted.
I hear this argument quite often from people I have spoken to. As much as it may be hard for you to believe, it is random pointlessness.
If you saw a car plow into a barrier on the side of the highway, and the driver got out and walked away unharmed, would you attribute this to God's work?
Do you have any idea how many vehicles are on the various roads throughout the world, and how many of those vehicles get into accidents each year? Now what are the chances that in one of those accidents, someone randomly, pointlessly gets lucky and walks away? What about those that are not lucky enough to walk away? When people feel uncomfortable about randomness, they default to "God did it". Doing such is being very dishonest to yourself.
God did not stop your girlfriend from killing herself, she did. Saying that God somehow managed to stop her from suicide is saying that she has a higher value than an unimaginable amount of people that have lived or are living on this planet. Do you not see how vain that is?
I hope for her sake you are not just praying for this to go away, because bud let me tell you, it will not. There will be another event that will spark the fire again. Your girlfriend seems very troubled, and should be talking to someone. Mental health professionals can do alot to help her work through it.
I have to quibble with this, not that I disagree, but I'd like to propose some qualification. The events we observe do seem better explained by causality, and there is certainly no indication that they are directed by an anthropomorphic agency. If our lives were neutral propositions, I would agree with theists that, without an external agency to validate our actions, life wouldn't just be undirected, but indeed pointless. There is, however, nothing neutral about our lives. Every action confesses some innate human priority; some desire to improve, contradict, transcend, some observable quality of our existences. Even denying that would be committing a stolen concept fallacy, because wanting to deny it would be an act dependent on a human perspective. We are, inescapably, ourselves through and through.
Then I guess we can't know anything for sure either, if all our thoughts are random pointlessness...
I'm not just praying, I'm working on it. She has gone through alot in life, but things are starting to look up.
Has anybody else noticed that this whole thread doesn't really address the question posed? It's worth taking a look at the question. After all, if the question isn't valid, we can talk for weeks and never arrive at any truth.
Givens:
1) Life exists.
2) Life began.
Ok. Now, we have the problem of figuring out what else we can say. There are two ways of going about this. One, we call science. In science, we just deal with what we know. So, the scientist's claim goes something like this:
"We don't know, but we've done decades of experiments, and have learned so much about RNA, that we think it's quite possible that self replicating pre-RNA could have formed on earth around the time all the evidence suggests. Here are several thousand pages of documented research, if you'd like to know more.
The theist's claim works exactly the opposite way:
"We don't know, so God created it. Believe it or burn in hell."
This OP is not about burden of proof, though the poster believes it is. Burden of proof is not something that changes based on the plausibility of the concept in question. That's really important. Read it again. Burden of proof is not something that changes based on the plausibility of the concept in question. Every claim, no matter how probable or improbable, requires proof. Every single claim ever. So, to answer the question, who has the burden of proof.... EVERYBODY.
Scientists have the burden of proof to demonstrate that their theory of abiogenesis is correct.
Theists have the burden of proof to demonstrate that their theory (sic!) of creationism is correct.
To date, there are university libraries all over the world, full to the brim with supporting evidence for different theories of abiogenesis. Also, to date, there is not a single coherent definition of god ON THE PLANET.
So, who has the burden of proof? Anybody who makes a claim. What do you do when your claim doesn't have enough evidence for proof? If you're a scientist, you look for more evidence.
If you're a theist, you just yell louder.
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
http://hambydammit.wordpress.com/
Books about atheism
Perhaps they need medical attention? Hopefully, they are currently getting it.
-Triften
No matter what the situation,the burden of proof is always on the person making or holding a claim.