This is a follow up to my Stupid Things Atheists Say post. Evolve is being obstinate in his idiocy. He does not seem to understand the rather simple distinction between “evidence” and “evaluation of evidence.” I will try to help him (whether a fool such as he can be helped remains to be seen; there are none so blind as those who refuse to see). I will try to spell it out in terms adopted to the meanest understanding:
What is “evidence”? The dictionary defines the word as follows: “the available body of facts or information indicating whether a belief or proposition is true or valid.” The rules of evidence that I use in court define relevant evidence as anything that has a “tendency to make a fact more or less probable than it would be without the evidence” Note that for evidence to be evidence it need not compel a conclusion; it need only have a tendency to lead to the conclusion.
Suppose I am trying a case and the key issue in the trial is whether the light was green. I put on two witnesses who testify the light was green. Is this testimony evidence? Of course it is. The testimony has a tendency to make a fact of consequence to the case (i.e., the light was green) more probable than it would have been without the evidence. My opponent then puts on three witnesses who testify the light was red. That is evidence also.
The evidence closes; we make our closing statements; the jury is charged; and off the to the jury room they go. The jury then evaluates the evidence. Now suppose the jury comes back and says, “we find as a matter of fact that the light was red.” I lose the case. Did I lose the case because the jury had “absolutely no evidence” on which to find that the light was green? Of course not. I presented evidence (i.e., testimony) that the light was green; presenting evidence is, after all, what a trial is about. I lost the case not because there was no evidence the light was green. I lost because the jury was unpersuaded by the evidence I submitted.
Now, if someone comes along and says I lost the case because there was “absolutely no evidence the light was green,” we would say that person was an idiot. Of course there was evidence. The evidence just did not persuade the decision maker.
Now, the evidence for God: All of the things I listed in my last post are evidence that God exists. Let’s take fine tuning as an example. There are a few possible explanations for fine tuning: Inexplicable brute fact; multiverse; God did it. The fact that God is at least a possible explanation for fine tuning means that fine tuning is evidence for the existence of God.
Who is the jury? Everyone is a juror. We all evaluate the evidence for God’s existence and come to a conclusion. I find the evidence from fine tuning very persuasive. If I were on the jury I would vote “God exists.” The fact that you would vote “God does not exist” does not mean there was “absolutely no evidence.” You are like the jurors who believed the light was red and were unpersuaded by the evidence that the light was green. It is not a matter of whether there was no evidence. It was a matter of the evaluation of the evidence.
I hope that helps. I doubt that it will since your ideological blinders seem to make you incapable of seeing anything outside of your narrow dogmatic myopic point of view.