Faith is not "without evidence" argument

Damocles said:
This would not be evidence of absence of this God, only of a "how" this minor miracle was brought about. We hear that this God works in mysterious ways, we could not prove that their God didn't ensure the parent overheard and thus through his action He made sure they got a pony.
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There is no evidence of miracles; supernatural influence on the outcome of an event.

However, even with zero evidence of God and magic in the Universe that is not evidence that something greater exists. Both Franklin and Jefferson were Deists; believer in a "Watchmaker God" where God created the Universe and then let it run itself out.

This makes sense to me for several reasons: 1) what is a Googol of years to an eternal being? It's nothing. Time only matters to those living inside the bubble of our Universe.
2) If humans, or all living things, have an essence that transcends mortal death, does it matter how long they live as opposed to how they live? I think the time element is unimportant compared to the quality of one's existence in the natural Universe.
3) Why would an all-powerful being create a Universe with set rules then violate those rules for arbitrary reasons? Especially considering the first two points made above?
 
ZenMode said:
I'm am saying some slaves learned skills that benefitted them when freed. What part of that claim do you disagree with?
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I'm saying they'd have been happier living with their tribe in Africa. What part of that claim do you disagree with?
 
Doc Dutch said:
I'm saying they'd have been happier living with their tribe in Africa. What part of that claim do you disagree with?
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I agree with that statement. Two things can be true at once, right?

So, again, which part of what I said do you disagree with?
 
Damocles said:
However, Faith is not generated without evidence. The evidence these folks use is the eyewitness accounts written down in the Bible, the Koran, the Bhagavad Gita etc. The Bible, the one that you mock here by calling their Skyfather (not meant in a mocking way, honest) "superman" is almost entirely made up of eyewitness accounts of past events and people. While we may choose not to believe in their veracity, saying there is no evidence is absurd, as a jurist pretending that eyewitness testimony is not evidence would be laughable. Eyewitness testimony is accepted in every court of the land as evidence of crimes, or of alibis.

So, we can measure the weight of the evidence, but saying there is none is just a lie. To me it is not convincing, to you it is not I assume as well, that doesn't change that it is still evidence.
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There are more eyewitness accounts of Charles Manson making a bus fly and brining birds back to life. I don't believe those either.
 
Doc Dutch said:
There is no evidence of miracles; supernatural influence on the outcome of an event.

However, even with zero evidence of God and magic in the Universe that is not evidence that something greater exists. Both Franklin and Jefferson were Deists; believer in a "Watchmaker God" where God created the Universe and then let it run itself out.

This makes sense to me for several reasons: 1) what is a Googol of years to an eternal being? It's nothing. Time only matters to those living inside the bubble of our Universe.
2) If humans, or all living things, have an essence that transcends mortal death, does it matter how long they live as opposed to how they live? I think the time element is unimportant compared to the quality of one's existence in the natural Universe.
3) Why would an all-powerful being create a Universe with set rules then violate those rules for arbitrary reasons? Especially considering the first two points made above?
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There is no evidence against miracles either. For example: There are definitely "surprise" healing of cancer patients, where patients go into remission without effective medical treatments to explain it. If someone believed it to be a miracle and you just tried to explain that there is no such thing (I agree, there is no such thing, I just realize that I cannot explain how they went into sudden remission) they would simply look at you like you grew a third leg from your forehead. Just saying, "Nuh-uh!" isn't evidence of absence either.

As for "why" questions, you are off into philosophical weeds now, questions are not evidence of absence any more than just insisting that the evidence they bring isn't evidence. It is just unconvincing (to both you and I) evidence. Eyewitness reports and things left unexplained by science, such as sudden remission, all of these things are brought as evidence. They remain unconvincing to many, but it doesn't change the nature of the thing. It is still evidence.
 
ZenMode said:
I agree with that statement. Two things can be true at once, right?

So, again, which part of what I said do you disagree with?
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It depends such as the "work camp" example you keep dodging.

I'm a firm believer that "Knowledge is power". However, saying people are better off as educated slaves than as ignorant freeman is a matter of opinion, not fact. The part I disagree with you, besides your dodging of questions, is that you have often stated or implied your opinion as fact.
 
Damocles said:
There is no evidence against miracles either. For example: There are definitely "surprise" healing of cancer patients, where patients go into remission without effective medical treatments to explain it. If someone believed it to be a miracle and you just tried to explain that there is no such thing (I agree, there is no such thing, I just realize that I cannot explain how they went into sudden remission) they would simply look at you like you grew a third leg from your forehead. Just saying, "Nuh-uh!" isn't evidence of absence either.

As for "why" questions, you are off into philosophical weeds now, questions are not evidence of absence any more than just insisting that the evidence they bring isn't evidence. It is just unconvincing (to both you and I) evidence. Eyewitness reports and things left unexplained by science, such as sudden remission, all of these things are brought as evidence. They remain unconvincing to many, but it doesn't change the nature of the thing. It is still evidence.
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There is no evidence of miracles or supernatural forces. Only unexplained events such as the UFOs in the news a few weeks back.

The things I posted were not my ideas; they are hundreds of years old.
 
ZenMode said:
My claim would apply to slaves of any race, not just black slaves.
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Your opinion doesn't apply very well to black slaves since less than 10% of them were literate, inspite of laws limiting their education. Trying to make a case that 10% benefitted from slavery is woefully ignorant of the facts.

Additionally, there's the life expectancy of black slaves: 22 years to free whites 40. Is learning to read worth the cost of half a lifespan?

https://www.history.com/news/nat-turner-rebellion-literacy-slavery
Ultimately, however, Virginia and other southern states opted to keep slavery in place and tighten control of African Americans’ lives, including their literacy. In the antebellum South, it's estimated that only 10 percent of enslaved people were literate. For many enslavers, even this rate was too high. As Clarence Lusane, a professor of political science at Howard University notes, there was a growing belief that “an educated enslaved person was a dangerous person.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slave_health_on_plantations_in_the_United_States
A broad and common measure of the health of a population is its life expectancy. The life expectancy in 1850 of a White person in the United States was forty; for a slave, it was twenty-two.

https://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtid=2&psid=3040
Slaves suffered extremely high mortality. Half of all slave infants died during their first year of life, twice the rate of white babies. And while the death rate declined for those who survived their first year, it remained twice the white rate through age 14. As a result of this high infant and childhood death rate, the average life expectancy of a slave at birth was just 21 or 22 years, compared to 40 to 43 years for antebellum whites. Compared to whites, relatively few slaves lived into old age.

A major contributor to the high infant and child death rate was chronic undernourishment. Slaveowners showed surprisingly little concern for slave mothers' health or diet during pregnancy, providing pregnant women with no extra rations and employing them in intensive field work even in the last week before they gave birth. Not surprisingly, slave mothers suffered high rates of spontaneous abortions, stillbirths, and deaths shortly after birth. Half of all slave infants weighed less than 5.5 pounds at birth, or what we would today consider to be severely underweight.

Infants and children were badly malnourished. Most infants were weaned early, within three or four months of birth, and then fed gruel or porridge made of cornmeal. Around the age of three, they began to eat vegetables, soups, potatoes, molasses, grits, hominy, and cornbread. This diet lacked protein, thiamine, niacin, calcium, magnesium, and vitamin D, and as a result, slave children often suffered from night blindness, abdominal swellings, swollen muscles, bowed legs, skin lesions, and convulsions.
 
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