What is Evidence?

[Vastor]

I'm not understand how this universe is evidence for existence of God that said by the creationist!

 

but at the same time, I can't understand what is evidence / proof also? can anyone give an insight of what this thing is?

 

in other words, how can something be an evidence or not?

[imatfaal]

Firstly - you need to accept from which standpoint you are judging the evidence. On these boards we tend to talk about scientific evidence - in my opinion this means several factors must be present; it must be empirically documentable, it must be objectively observable, and it must be repeatable. To break those down; we must be able to experiment/take observations and measure something (either qualitative or quantitative) - evidence cannot consist of abstract events or concepts. Each person who tries to observe the phenomena must, if using the same methodology and ideas comes to the same conclusion about the measurement of the observation - ie the results depends only on the object being observed not the subject doing the observation. Every time that the same set of circumstances occur the same same results (with experiment error) will be found.

 

Evidence DOES NOT EQUAL proof! Evidence in science can help in two ways. Evidence that is in concurrence with the theoretical model; provides more credence that the theory is probably correct, but it can never show that a theory is completely correct. There is no such thing as positive proof in science - we only improve the probability that model correctly models nature and produces good predictions. Evidence that is at odds to the theory is very different - in that some cases it can show that the theory is incorrect; this is known as falsifiability and is crucial to modern science. To summarise; data that are as predicted raises the confidence that the theory is correct, data that are against predictions means the theory is limited or even wrong.

 

Evidence must also have a causal and logical chain that links the observation to the theorized cause - and the lack/failure of observation to something other. The problem with the existence of the Universe as evidence for God or a Creator is twofold; there is no exclusivity, it makes just as much sense to delete the word God insert the phrase Flying Spaghetti Monster (or anything else) If some data can prove anything, then in fact they prove nothing. Secondly, to be able to make the argument in the first place the universe must exist - so you cannot really start a sentence If the Universe exists...

 

 

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_evidence

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability