The first category, incidentally, is required for jury members in a court of law. The second category is one into which people often fall when confronted with fact or hypothesis which doesn’t fit with their cosmology.

To give a non-modern but still religious example – the church used to assert the earth was the centre of the universe. And when Galileo proposed otherwise, he was declared a heretic and threatened with excommunication and death. 359 years later, in 1992, the church apologised for its treatment of Galileo. Now I would argue that the church, in that instance, definitely fell into the second category of scepticism. They didn’t want to be convinced, because it threatened their interpretation of many parts of the bible that imply geocentricity or geo-importance (I made that word up!). And they didn’t care how much proof Galileo might have; they saw his views as dangerous to themselves and their power, and they brought the full weight of church displeasure to bear on him.

Now, AV, I’m sure this discussion has gone on long enough. If there’s anything you still don’t understand about my distinction, then feel free to ask. But if it’s just that you still disagree, then IMO continuing to restate your disagreement isn’t going to take us forward at all.

As anyone reading my story would know, my philosophy about who and/or what god is, is based on facts – I was abused, no-one intervened, what sort of “god” fits with those events? (I concede that assuming a god at all is simply a matter of personal preference.) And it is in that sense that we often need to stretch our imaginations, as Jaqi said – when our pre-established understanding of the world doesn’t match events and facts. Close-minded scepticism clings to what it perceives as rationality, sometimes despite indications to the contrary, rather than risking exploration of the unknown and potential change.

And you’ve been tagged.

No. For one thing, it’s not a question of what can be proven, but simply what can be demonstrated and justified given the available evidence. As many philosophers of science (and scientists themselves) like to point out, scientific facts and explanations are not eternal, absolute truths: they are rather only tentatively true in the sense that their “truth” is contingent upon current knowledge and evidence, and they are open to re-evaluation as new evidence and methods are discovered.

The absence of evidence that God intervenes, or has previously intervened in the phenomenal world is not proof that such intervention has never taken place. By the same token, the absence of evidence that the Fairy Godmother intervenes or has intervened in the phenomenal world is not proof that such intervention has never taken place. Nonetheless I can still maintain, given the lack of evidence, that both “Yahweh intervention theory” and “Fairy Godmother intervention theory” are far-fetched as explanations of phenomena. It is not an argument from ignorance, because I am not claiming that either the “Yahweh intervention” or “Fairy Godmother intervention” theories are wrong. I’m just saying that the lack of evidence in support of these theories means that we should assign them lower probabilities than naturalistic theories when seeking explanations for natural phenomena; there being abundant evidence of naturalistic theories successfully explaining natural phenomena. (In other words: apply Occam’s razor.)

And I guess that’s why I stand where I stand in matters of faith. My concept of god is quite fluid (truth, justice and love are the embodiment of god, rather than god being a person or concrete soul-identity), and my faith practice is very individual. But I don’t care if anyone else believes the same, I don’t have to prove it’s true, and the minute I start telling anyone else they should believe what I do, I’ve stepped over the line, IMO.

Again, it depends on the claim. To return to the incorruptibility example, it seems to me that it would be quite easy to support the claim that “God intervened in the decomposition process” is far-fetched as an explanation, given the dearth of cases historically in which it has been demonstrated conclusively that God has intervened in . . . well . . . anything.

I’m not sure that’s altogether so. I think a lot of people challenge claims they perceive to be far-fetched, whether or not the claimant is expecting the hearer to believe it too. And I think there’s a sense in which in that situation the person accusing a claim of being far-fetched swings the onus of proof onto themselves somewhat, simply because they are making a counter-claim, the onus of which it is on them to prove.

However, I take your point on the rest of it. I guess I was focusing more on the claim of incorruptibility itself, rather than the claim of miraculous origin. Basically because it seems to me to go without saying that if incorruptibility can be found to have natural causes, then the “miraculous origin” claim is an optional extra (some or all incorruptibles may be so as a result of divine intervention, but not necessarily). That then comes down to more fundamental beliefs about whether god exists and how s/he/it acts in our world. But if there is no natural cause found, then that increases the likelihood of some UNnatural cause – not to conclusivity, of course, because it may simply be that we don’t know enough yet.

All that said, I don’t have any problem with people believing whatever faith construct works for them. The danger of organised religions is that they turn individual preference of belief into a) so-called divinely authorised, and b) obligatory. They are thereby misappropriated for reasons of power. And that’s where Mary and others like her get misled, because they take the package on trust without realising the underlying purpose is as a means of controlling people.

Yes, obviously. But it is only in such circumstances that the question of who has the burden of proof arises.

But my contention is also that a truly enquiring mind will go looking for evidence both ways rather than either a) debunking or b) sitting back waiting for the proof to be handed to them.

It depends on the nature of the claim being made. Take, for instance, the claim that an exhumed corpse had not decomposed at the expected rate over a given period of time because the corpse belonged to a person who had been declared a saint by the Catholic Church and was therefore miraculously “incorrupt.” What kind of evidence am I supposed to be looking for that supports this claim? How can I demonstrate that God stayed the decomposition process?

If it is a fact that some bodies when exhumed have been found not to have decomposed at the expected rate, and if it is also a fact that a significant proportion of these bodies belong to individuals posthumously declared to be saints by the Catholic Church, then these are phenomena that require explaining, and it would indeed be irrational to dismiss the phenomena themselves out-of-hand.

But the claim that the lack of decomposition has a miraculous or supernatural cause is something additional, and it is by no means unreasonable, before accepting or rejecting the claim, to demand of the claimant the evidence that substantiates it.

With regard to supernatural claims, there is something to be said for the impulse to debunk, too. Experience shows us that there are rarely (if ever) good reasons to accept claims about phenomena that invoke supernatural causation–whether you’re talking about ghosts, or fairies, or deities, or saintly incorruptibility. (I’m certainly not aware of any such reasons.) It is far more likely, then, that a natural explanation can be given. Regarding the phenomenon of arrested decomposition of saints, when I was presented with the phenomenon by the commenter Mary, I neither fell to my knees to praise Jesus, nor did I dismiss the phenomenon out of hand. Curiosity and my BS detector led me to investigate the matter further, whereupon I found the Skeptics article. But even if a natural explanation can’t be found right now, right this second for a phenomenon, that doesn’t mean that “God did it” is a viable alternative. All it justifies us in saying is “We don’t know.”