Re: The Logic of Atheism

[Martian]

What the hell is non-physical evidence?

What is non-physical?

Or rather, what does it mean to not be physical?

It can, for instance, be anecdotal evidence, which is usually poor quality...

Anecdotes and witness testimonies are physical. They are information stored in the arrangement of matter, be it your brain, book, hard drive, or the patterns of air compression (eg sound). It is all physical.

For me "non-physical evidence" is inconceivable, an oxymoron. I've tried to find a way for it to work, but it just doesn't work out. Unless of course "non-physical evidence" does not refer to evidence not being physical.  

[Asmodean]

Anecdotes and witness testimonies are physical. They are information stored in the arrangement of matter, be it your brain, book, hard drive, or the patterns of air compression (eg sound). It is all physical.

Yes, but if I told you there was a dollar in my back pocket yesterday, would my testimony be trustworthy? In this country, we don't use Dollars, so my statement would be a lie. Thus, if me testifying to having had the dollar is evidence, it is made up and incorrect.

So where exactly is the fact that I have had a dollar physically stored again?

[Martian]

Anecdotes and witness testimonies are physical. They are information stored in the arrangement of matter, be it your brain, book, hard drive, or the patterns of air compression (eg sound). It is all physical.

Yes, but if I told you there was a dollar in my back pocket yesterday, would my testimony be trustworthy? In this country, we don't use Dollars, so my statement would be a lie. Thus, if me testifying to having had the dollar is evidence, it is made up and incorrect.

Evidence =/= proof. A man can have a smoking gun in his hand and still not be the killer. He could have been defending the victim from another person who was the killer. Nevertheless, him holding the gun within shooting range of a recently killed person is still strong evidence that he is the killer of that person.

For the dollar hypothetical:
The evidence that the dollar was in your pocket yesterday is in your testimony.
Your testimony of having a dollar in your pocket  is evidence that you had a memory of having a dollar in your pocket yesterday.
Your memory of having a dollar in your pocket is evidence that you had a dollar in your pocket yesterday.

The likelihood of you telling the truth is dependent on your motives, so it may be hard to determine the probability of such evidence. A testimony may be weak evidence, but it's still evidence.

So where exactly is the fact that I have had a dollar physically stored again?

1. Remember, such a fact is unknown. We are only using evidence to increase the probability of a possibility that it's true over other possibilities.
2. The evidence that the dollar is physically stored in your pocket is in your testimony, which is physical.

Even if you think that testimonies do not count as evidence, it does not detract from the fact that all evidence is physical and that "non-physical evidence" is an impossibility.

[Kyuuketsuki]

I heard an interesting argument and I want some opinion on it.  It went something like:

God is not physical.  The atheist will accept only physical evidence of the existence of God.  There is no physical evidence for the existence of God because God is not physical.  Atheism supports itself in this manner while being total BS in reality.

Well?

It's a ridiculous argument ... this supposed god does things, if it does things it causes effects, if it causes effects it leaves a trail of evidence, if it leaves evidence that can be examined and to date utterly no validatable evidence has been uncovered in support of supposed god. The argument is one of someone who has no logical reason to believe what they believe.

Kyu