I feel like often people ask me “Oh yea? Name some examples.” and the burden is on me to prove something by providing representative examples. But often it’s so overwhelming how many examples there are for something that I feel obligated then to either list everything, or try extra hard to find good examples, and even then I feel like I could be misrepresenting the case by not providing enough examples. Basically I feel like I would have to give many, many examples, or none at all, otherwise anything in the middle could be non-representative of the true trend.
Ironically, now you will want me to give examples of situations that I’m talking about. But for this I will provide 2 examples and rest on good faith that you will believe me (given the context of this post) that this happens much more often than I care to provide examples for.
So one example is when you are attempting to prove to someone that a certain thing is scientifically proven or is agreed upon as scientific consensus. You can look to the generally agreed hierarchy of evidence and provide what it considers to be high-quality evidence, such as meta analyses and systematic reviews, but even then there can be disagreement between specific reports, and there can be outliers that disagree with the overall most common trends or findings. So the only way to really prove something is to provide many, many different instances of scientific evidence to the point where the other person would be unable to find the same level or amount of evidence to the contrary by virtue of the fact that it doesn’t exist to the same overwhelming degree, essentially proving the scientific fact. But again, this takes either an enormous amount of high quality evidence from various different sources, or nothing at all and simply an assertion that something is in fact scientifically proven or agreed upon as scientific consensus, because anything else in the middle could misrepresent the case and make it seem less substantiated than it actually is. It’s either “all or nothing”.
And now I’ll provide a specific anecdote about someone who argued that there are no decent stories with a female main protagonist. I am so sure and believe it to be so obvious that there is an extensive history of great female main protagonists and female-driven stories, in all forms of storytelling, that I found this an overwhelming task to attempt to prove when the person asked for specific examples. How can I make the case of the wealth of good stories with female main characters without providing an exhaustive (or highly numerous) list? Even if I pick a few great examples, the person can always make the objection that “Those are an exception, and they don’t represent the overall trend.” and I risk misrepresenting that trend if the examples chosen aren’t the best ones available, too. How can you possibly prove something like that without a very long and well-thought out and extensively researched list? Again, it seems like it’s either attempt such a daunting task, or don’t engage with the request for examples at all and just assert the claim that there are many examples, without specifying any to avoid the risk of taking on the burden of proving it and possibly misrepresenting the trend.
I hope this made any sense at all.
You are definitely over-thinking this.
Your hearts in the right place, but this is the Internet, you’re not going to convince anyone of anything. You can have all the best examples, but people are just going to waste your time asking for more, or shooting down your examples with bullshit. There are no right answers, because everyone’s looking to hear what they want and are eager to let you know when they disagree.
That’s what debating atheists is like in a nutshell
That’s funny, I had the opposite in mind while writing it.
LOL. Why would you care to debate atheists? Assuming you follow an Abrahamic religion, you have your bipolar sky wizard with his bizarre, inconsistent mythos, while we have standards of evidence for what we believe.
While we do poke fun at the religious, most of us ultimately don’t care what you believe. We do care about the batshit actions taken by the ostensibly religious to enforce their personal beliefs on others, presented in the guise of religion. If the latter isn’t you, we’re typically not concerned. So why do you care?
Because I care about you. I care about your souls.
Well I can tell you that you’re debating on vain then. You’re never gonna convince an atheist until you have solid evidence of a higher power. And trust me, you don’t.
What sort of evidence would convince you?
Complete and irrefutable evidence that doesn’t require “faith” to prove it. No “look at the beauty of this world!” type of bullshit, actual miracles being performed, actual omniscient powers, abilty to create, etc.
These are documented in the New Testament.
Yeah, no. I said proof. Not “my magical book says so”.
If I told you that dogs exist and you didn’t believe me, what kind of evidence would you want to see?
But that’s a created thing, not a higher being.
I appreciate the sentiment, but I don’t even know if I have a soul. I’ll probably find out in the next thirty years.
I worry about the capacity for the religious to engage in active critical thinking, something that is necessary for a thriving, functional society but needs to be -at least temporarily- suspended to be religious, but I’m generally not going to debate theists over that point because it’s disrespectful of their beliefs. It’s also completely fruitless and frustrating to engage in debates with someone whose arguments aren’t grounded in observable, testable phenomena. They’ll always “win” because they can make up whatever they want.
Anyhow, we largely leave you alone, please leave us alone too. We’d appreciate it. With that being said, you have my encouragement to go hard, Galilee guns blazing, on any atheists who give you shit for being a theist.
The whole existence of an abrahamic God is self defeating at its basic premise.
If God is all knowing, all good, and all powerful, then he either designed all of this, including Satan, as some fucked up experiment, or he is not perfect and he messed up somewhere.
There are no other options.
Fuck my soul, tell your psychopathic God I said to fuck off. He doesn’t deserve my soul. Better to burn for eternity than kneel before that monster.
Your choice!