mererdog

Mostly due to the same motives as anyone else, but unrestrained by empathy due to a lack thereof. Empathy is a kind of knowledge, so it should fall under the omniscient umbrella. I would think that all-knowing would be all-loving

Taken another way, all these little tees are clearly blasphemous. Taking a sacred symbol and using it for profane purposes... We should be ashamed.

If God is all-powerful, as you have said, any sentence beginning with "God cannot" is incorrect. If God is omniscient, God has perfect knowledge, and what is a better source of judgment than perfect knowledge? Now, note that the motive you cite is pointless if everyone passes the test. While the motive you now propose is logical, it is also morally questionable in the context of omnipotence. I would feel guilty if I harmed some in order to help others, if I knew I had the power to help everyone without harming anyone. Would you?

I vaguely remember a Gnostic story about a violently insane god who pretends to be the creator god. I never understood what he was supposed to be getting out of the ruse, but he was described as being insane, so I suppose that's a moot point...

You only need evidence if you do not already have knowledge. If God knows, why would he test? Look at it this way.... You say it is obvious that God would not need to ask where someone is, because God already knows. In other words, God does not need to do something to get information He already has. You say God knows everything, so God does not have to test anything to find out about anything. Any exception, whether caused by free will or a lead-lined briefcase, would be a limitation that prevents the word "omniscient" from being accurate. This is not to say that an all-powerful God could not run tests, merely that it is not sensible that an all-knowing God would want to- there is simply no reasonable motive because there is nothing to gain.

There is basically no symbol that does not have a religious use. That something can be religious in one context does not mean that it is religious in all contexts. Otherwise, government would be banned from using lower-case tees.

Which does not address my point. I know that if I drop a ball it will fall. I have the power to change the natural course of what might have been. But there is no motive for a test. I would only need a test if I did not know the natural course, and therefore needed to know whether (or how) to use my power.

Claims of omnipotence are claims that logical limitations do not apply. This is not special pleading, but an assertion about the fundamental nature of existence. If God is omnipotent, the universe is irrational, as everything is a matter of God's whim. Nothing is truly impossible and nothing is truly inevitable. As such, using logic as evidence when dealing with claims of omnipotence means failing to recognise the nature of the claim. It is an attempt to play baseball with a wiffleball bat.

It is a statue inspired by depictions of Libertas, but also by depictions of Sol Invictus and by other works of art.

If God is omniscient, God knows what will happen before it happens. We test things because we do not know what will happen. We have expectations about what will happen because we don't have knowledge about what will happen. When you say God was testing, and that God has expectations, you are saying that God is not omniscient. You are saying that there are limits to God's knowledge.

If God is all-powerful, would that not make God contradiction-proof? Able to both be and not be, do and not do- all at the same time? To presume that such a being's actions must make sense is to attempt to force logic onto the patently illogical- to weigh what has no weight.

Speaking of lack of common reference points, what qualities makes something good? Is this objectively provable? Universally agreed upon?

Form my point of view, it looks like all you are really saying here is that you do not know what God is. You have no knowledge of God, therefore you cannot tell which definition of God, if any, is accurate. Once again, this is the "We don't know how they could do this without modern tools" argument. The "We" is presumptive, projecting personal ignorance onto the world at large. Without common reference points, you cannot understand what others are saying... And yet facts exist whether or not we understand them. So common reference points can have no bearing on what is fact, merely on what is understood about fact.

I only saw you say there was no "objective evidence." Objective facts and objective evidence are not the same thing. The reason for this is that an objective fact can only be observed subjectively, and evidence exists at the intersection of fact and observation. It is both what exists and what we think about what exists, you see? As for a lack of objective facts about God, well... To speak about objective facts requires starting from the question "How does one objectively recognise the difference between what does not exist, and what exists but has not been observed?" In other words, what is proven by lack of proof?

Do you know of an objective standard for what qualifies as evidence in normal daily life? I know many objective standards for what qualifies as faulty evidence, but they all sort of work on the unspoken assumption that everything is evidence, or at least potentially so.

It has been asserted, but not proven. Your proof srandards may be lower than mine, of course. As such, it may take less evidence to convince you of a thing . As for your link, note that I already noted that those scenarios are an exception. Note also that arbitrary rules developed by people to impose a guiding standard really only create a veneer of objectivity while remaining patently subjective. If I impose a "no math" rule of evidence, that would not prevent math from being evidence. At most, it would prevent people from calling it evidence around me. As for evidence that has been exposed as fraud, this would be akin to testimony that has been stricken from the record. We may not want the jury to be swayed by it. We may specifically tell the jury to not be swayed by it. But once the jury hears it, they have heard it. It is a part of the evidence they will use to make their findings, for good or for ill. The only way to prevent it from being used as evidence is to prevent the jury from ever seeing it. A lawyer who does not understand this, on an instictive level, should stay away from jury trials. Keep in mind that the Bible is often used as evidence that the Bible should not be believed. A lie is often the best evidence of the truth.

It does not. Because evidence is subjective. Outside the particulars of specific scenarios like court cases or scientific papers, there is no objective standard you can cite to determine whether something qualifies as evidence. What makes something evidence is the fact that it leads someone towards a conclusion. It is both that simple and that complicated.

So, a point I have been trying to make in this thread is that our emotional reactions can prevent us from being able to engage in fair critical assessment- and that this can happen without us being aware of it. This kind of cognitive bias is very well documented and no one seems to be immune. When our bias against an individual or group can cause us to be biased against evidence presented by that individual or group, our beliefs simply cannot be wholly evidence based. There must be other factors in play that are just as important, if not more so.

Yes. And your response is not that far off from what I got. You insulted the study and its sources, but provided no objective reason to think the study is actually flawed. As if you were responding to a personal slight, rather than a scientific paper

I linked to information about Emily Rosa's Therapeutic Touch studies. It was met with a lot of hostility and ad hominem. I dont remember whether that was from you, specifically, so that's not a personal accusation. Its just why I remember it. It seemed like the reaction was way out of proportion to just a link to a set of research papers.

I follow the logic. I disagree with the premise "all fact is determined by evidence." If You don't want me to reply to you, I won't. Provided, of course, that you stop talking about me.

Hey now. I have never said things like "There is no good reason to think that Reiki works." I have simply expressed my personal opinion and presented the evidence that led me to my conclusions. And I have been careful to note that it is simply an opinion, and that the evidence can be explained differently. This is my idea of being fair. Not intellectual purity. Fairness.

If you look back, you will find that I said that facts are objective, but that using facts as evidence requires putting them through a subjective process. Evidence is the word we use for the things that cause us to form opinions. This is how we can look at the same fact and consider it evidence for different things. The facts are objective. The evidence cannot be. This does not mean that we cannot learn. It means that learning is a subjective process. It means that we can have all the facts and still come to wrong conclusion. It means that there is no real way to know the answer to the question "Why dont you believe" because it is too subjective a subject.

My wife cares, so it matters to me. If "forest brides" are a real thing, it matters to them and to those who care about them. You don't care, but it still may matter to you. It is hard to accurately gauge the impact of something when you know little about it. Like doctors back in the day thinking that hand washing doesn't matter, you know?

There is no good reason for me to think it exists. That does not mean there is no good reason for someone else to think it exists. There was a period in time where people were reporting seeing black swans, but were not producing other evidence of what they had seen. It was reasonable for them to believe their own eyes, and reasonable for others to doubt their word. My wife has a story. We explain it differently, but I wasn't there.