pears

Yea - cos that's exactly the same thing.

I didn't make up that meaning. Testimonial evidence is accepted in court. And it's called evidence there.

Agreed. I'm not asserting such evidence is reliable. But I still think it can be called evidence in a sense. It may not be corroborated and it may not be strong evidence. It's a matter of opinion as to whether one accepts it or not.

Should this be in general philosophy rather than religion? Even though it touches on religious ideas, the central question of whether a non-spatiotemporal "I" capable of free-will exists, is philosophical. Perhaps it doesn't matter but you might reach a wider audience in general philosophy?

Thanks everyone for your insightful responses. How would you check? Google search? Is this standard across science papers? Are these ever made public? Good to hear I think this is key. Great reply Tridimity. Haha love this. I've seen similar components in software designs - sometimes in my OWN designs!

It's testimonial evidence.

Rather a sweeping statement don't you think?

I'm not sure you can call a lack of belief in something faith. That doesn't seem right to me.

I've been mulling this over and I don't see how faith can ever be "pure" in theism. Theist religions always involve some form of interaction with the divine, be it revelation, incarnation, healing, answered prayer, historical tradition, personal experience of the divine. Whatever. Surely, in that belief system, part of the purpose of such intervention is to give the theist a "leg-up" so to speak. i.e. to be "evidence" on which to base faith. (Not scientific or empirical evidence, but informal or personal or testimonial type evidence - sorry I can't think of a better word than evidence, otherwise I'd use it.) Only the purest faith could be achieved in deism - where there is no interaction. But in that case (assuming deism => indifferent deity) then the faith would be redundant anyway I suppose. So while 'faith' might be a goal in theism, perhaps purity of faith isn't? It's just that 'some' faith is required and so it's the presence of faith that must be maintained, rather than any particular quality, or level of it? I dunno, just my ponderings. But what they're really doing is expressing is very strong opinion. Is this again another issue with semantics? People in every day circumstances use 'know' when they mean 'convinced'. (I know I left my pen in here, but I can't see it anywhere.) Should such a person be forced to learn in detail about epistemology and ontology perhaps they would qualify their statement of fact as a statement of very strong belief. It sounds like there is a bit of a chasm between two camps here and plenty of potential for people to understand each other more. How that is achieved though, is a good question.

Is it possible? I can read a research paper but I have no way of validating it (or often even making sense of it). (Incidentally since papers are peer reviewed, where do those peer reviews reside?) Is there a thick black line drawn somewhere within the super-set of hypotheses and research results to give a neat subset of "mainstream" and "accepted". Or is the line fuzzy and blurred? Is it something that only an expert can really know, and only within a narrow field? And is that ultimately only an opinion anyway? What should a lay person trust? Pop science books? Science journalism? How do YOU recognise something as mainstream? Does it just come with experience and education?

Did quantum fluctuations cause the big bang?

Sorry arc - some of those pictures not quite so cute, and may actually give me nightmares. I want you to know I'm shuddering right now Perhaps I could learn to love them with training and maybe some hypnotherapy.

Awesome video. I had no idea spiders could be so cute.

Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes. Warning it may make you cry.

OK - no your explanation makes sense. I just got confused when you talked about post count not going up in certain sections.

But - if such posts don't count towards post count that doesn't explain the discrepancy. I thought you meant rank and count could get out of sync. What I see regularly is leptons and quarks etc with really high post counts It's not just me that sees them is it?

Ah - makes sense. Thanks.

Why do some users seem to have mismatching post counts and ranking? For example there is a quark with over a 1000 posts. This type of thing seems fairly common. Just wondering. And it always seems to be a lower rank than the post count would suggest.

Good point

Noooooo, that most certainly is not what I'm saying. If someone claims God cured their mother that is fair game for scientific investigation. If they had been receiving treatment and are cured afterwards then the reason seems clear. If someone wanted to view the provision of medical care as the provision of a God (because they feel all things come from God) then that would be their interpretation of events, but it would be an interpretation rather than a claim. If someone saw someone get better against all odds (i.e. with a high degree of improbability) then perhaps they would want to view that as a miracle. It might be natural in the sense that it was a series of unlikely events that caused it within the natural order, but I could imagine someone interpreting that as God rather than nature. That would be up for debate. The alleged improbabilty of it would be something science would have a say in. I don't know. It depends on someone's definition of faith. My personal view is that faith goes hand in hand with doubt. It seems healthier to me. That's my opinion. But then I have a suspicion of anything that is "too certain" because I don't think we can ever be certain about anything. Hmmm. I like your point. I can see your point. But I don't view faith that way. I do see degrees of certainty or uncertainty going hand in hand with degrees of faith. But I tend to view things in shades of grey generally anyway. You're right. The word certain is wrong here and is rather sloppy use of language on my part. I think what I mean is "It's all about what can be known with as much certainty as possible". Again certainty may not be the perfect word here either but I can't think of a better one off the top of my head. I hope you understand my meaning.

Whoa, where did all that suddenly came from? I was merely commenting on your conversation with Phi over a very specific statement and asking you to clarify a point which I thought was ambiguous in its use of English. I also commented on your appeal to common sense in the same post. You have now completely moved the goalposts and asked me to comment on something entirely different. My advice to you on whether you should take your child to hospital would be based on my understanding of and trust in medical care, because I know it is based on scientific understanding. Do you think I think blind faith is good? It seems you do. If so perhaps you can point me to where I said any such thing?

So you're saying that blind faith is not common sense? It's fine to make such a statement as an opinion. But terms such as "common sense" and "clearly misguided" ARE ambiguous. Appeals to common sense are generally fallacious. It's an appeal to popular opinion. So while your statement is a valid opinion, it's not a valid assertion.

I think you need to clarify this sentence Are you saying that your stance is that blind faith makes no sense i.e. that blind faith is not common sense. Or do you mean that your stance is common sense? Or something else? Either way "common sense" is a fairly woolly term. What is the standard for this "common sense"?

Yes there is a semantics issue. We certainly have different definitions of the word 'evidence' and that has led to some frustration within the discussion. I can see that in a science context then evidence takes on a special meaning, but it also as a more general every day usage which is far less formal. If we were discussing a science experiment then I would fully accept your usage in that context. But since we are not I don't think it's entirely fair to impose a scientific usage of the word on the conversation. Yes I know this is a science forum, but we aren't discussing science. We're discussing theistic scientists and what leads people to believe. Not entirely or perhaps I'm misunderstanding you. This seems to impose a digital view on faith. Faith is either 'pure' and doesn't need "evidence" or evidence is scientific and does not require faith. I.e. it's either all pure faith, or pure empiricism. I would view faith as a much greyer area than this. It's all about what can be known for certain. The more empiric the evidence the higher degree of certainty. Then there is a scale where faith may be based on "evidence" in a much less formal sense, e.g. testimony, personal experience, history etc or perhaps on pure philosophical reasoning. Forming an opinion in the middle or lower end of that scale is a personal judgement, and the amount of faith required probably varies along the scale. True but with faith there can be doubt, which is perhaps akin to scepticism in a faith context. Whoa there. What? You're suddenly making an appeal to popularity? And how are you defining reasonable? Reasonable in your subjective opinion? This statement (bold) is so woolly I don't know where to begin. You've hardly replicated courtroom conditions here. Someone could just as well respond with a Clearly the answer is yes because there are lots of reasonable people who strongly believe there is a God.

Hmmm. OK thanks.