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Not at all. Based on that point you made I feel the likelihood that God exists is smaller than ever. What I am trying to figure out is what is considered evidence. I have heard a lot of people say there is no evidence for God. Not necessarily that it is weak or grossly insufficient to support the extraordinary claim of the existence of God. But that it does not exist. I never hear that statement regarding what a scientist claims is evidence for a scientific theory, even if it is believed the theory is completely wrong. When it is science I hear people say 'your evidence is completey wrong'. When it is religion I hear people say 'you have no evidence'. Either there is a difference I don't understand, or people are being more generous to the scientists than the theists. I'm trying to figure out which it is. Ah, ok. If we want to accept it as valid evidence, it shouldn't be a one off event. We should be able to find evidence to support the evidence maybe. So if prayer cured someone, maybe we can get prayer to move a rock. Or maybe praying to one God results in cures but not praying to another God. Or a complete lack of praying never results in remission. Alright, this sounds like it is a real difference between what I considered evidence of God and accepted evidence of the Big Bang. Excellent! Thanks for the clarification. Edit: I just went back and reread some of your previous posts. I seem to have been rather slow on the uptake. Thanks for sticking with it.

I guess what I keep trying to get to, is when does something become evidence? If I present what I call evidence for something, is it not evidence if you don't take it seriously? Or if you haven't accepted my hypothesis? What if you don't like it but someone else does? Is it evidence or not? Do a certain number of people have to agree it is evidence before it is considered evidence? Is it evidence simply because I use it to support my hypothesis? Many scientific theories that are now accepted were not accepted when they were first presented. Does that mean that what the scientist presented as evidence was not really evidence because the theory was not accepted? If the evidence presented for string theory is not considered evidence, then I can accept that miracles as documented by the Vatican are not evidence. If one is considered evidence but the other not, then it looks to me as if we have a double standard.

No, I generally agree with it. Are you saying that evidence has shown the Big Bang to be true, rather than just likely?

I agree with you that we don't know that the prayer actually caused the person to get better. But evidence doesn't always demonstrate reality or truth. Unless and until there is sufficient evidence, evidence is simply demonstrating the likelihood of reality or truth. Evidence has not demonstrated relativity to be reality or truth, it has only demonstrated a high degree of likelihood. If I had a closed box I might hypothesize that there is a mouse in the box. For a first test to prove my hypothesis I measure the amount of carbon dioxide coming out of the box, knowing that a mouse will breathe and give off CO2. If I find CO2, I have some evidence to support my hypothesis. I don't think anyone is going to say that my finding of CO2 is not evidence, they are just going to say it is weak and/or insufficient to prove my hypothesis. If someone is trying to make a case for God and they tell me about a Vatican documented miracle, from my perspective they have presented evidence. Weak and insufficient, but evidence nonetheless. I don't understand why "I measured the air coming out of the box and it had 'x' amount of CO2" can be considered evidence, and "I prayed and a test sometime afterward showed the cancer was in remission" is not evidence. To me, both are observations by someone, and both are using that observation to attempt to prove a point. If they really are different I would like to know why. It almost seems as if the only way to declare that the miracle is not evidence, is to make the assumption ahead of time that God does not exist. For argument's sake, let's say that we eventually discover that the exact right prayers had to be said for the miracle to occur, and because people didn't know about the right prayers, we hadn't been able to reproduce the results. But now that we do know the right prayers, we can get the miracle to occur using the scientific method. Would that mean that the miracle that was previously not evidence, now suddenly is evidence? Is something not evidence until the hypothesis is accepted by some critical mass of people?

Don't you consider it a fact that a person was sick and the disease went away?

How do you know it is not evidence?

How do you refute evidence of a miracle, that a person was healed by prayer 100 years ago, as documented by the Vatican?

No problems. My wife often tells me that while I may think I'm just asking questions, my style often puts people on the defensive. I'm working on it. Thanks for the links. The specific question I had regarding your post was the statement indicating that most scientists believed the universe would stop expanding. As far as I can tell, while a Big Crunch is also possible, the general consensus seems to be that the universe will continue to expand indefinitely. Did you interpret the links differently?

Cool. I didn't know black holes were described that way. Now I need to do more research to try to understand these active black holes versus quasars. They sound very similar. Unless of course they are the same event just described two different ways.

I thought a quasar was a galaxy or galaxy core that was active. I know a black hole is involved with quasars but I thought quasars were outside the accretion disk. Is that incorrect?

If you are not prepared to back up your assertions it can sometimes lead to embarrassing moments. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimate_fate_of_the_universe

Also according to him, right? Hmm, let me rephrase. When we get together again and compare clocks, we'll both agree that his ticked faster while I was off circling the black hole, right? Ah, I like that. It sounds as if I cannot move into the future any faster than anyone else, regardless of how fast I am moving or how close to a massive body I am. There will clearly be a difference in ageing though, which many people interpret as time travel since it would have the same properties as you would see if you did indeed time travel (e.g. my son is now older than me.). Is that a reasonable way to look at it?

Sorry, I'm not quite clear on that. Are you saying scientific evidence is derived from experiment or observation?

Can you please provide a link to that website? It sounds like you are describing a quasar.

Two things. If moving forward in time is only a perception, then it is probably not accurate to say that "scientists everywhere believe that orbiting an object with a super large mass is the quickest way to travel forward in time". Would you agree? If my friend's clock ticks faster, then didn't he move forward in time? Doesn't the fact that he aged more quickly indicate that he is the one who moved forward in time more quickly than me?

What property does 'scientific evidence' have that evidence of God does not have?

I was under the impression that we all move forward in time at a rate of 1 second per second. If I speed up or move closer to a massive body I still move forward in time at 1 second per second. I am wondering if the fact that our clocks run differently means that I have moved through time more quickly than you. In fact, let's say me being near a black hole means my clock ticks once for every time your clock ticks twice. For me to travel through time faster than you, wouldn't it have to be the other way around? Wouldn't my clock have to tick twice for every time your clock ticks once?

So you believe that the KT extinction had no impact on the amount of living substance? Or that the mass of living things is the same now as it was 3.8 billion years ago?

I was hoping for a more clear question. You said, "Were rulers in the past bad guys, or are there good reasons for having public trails with a jury of peers?". So either the first part is true or the second part is true. So if I say yes to the first part, that rulers in the past were bad guys, then that means no to the second part, as in there are no good reasons for having public trials with a jury of peers. How does it make sense to say 'rulers in the past were bad guys so there is no good reason for public trials with a jury of peers'? Or why not, 'rulers were good guys, and it also makes sense to have public trials with a jury of peers'? If you want me to put thought into the answer then you should put some thought into the question.

Can you expand on this please?

Can you please supply a citation for a scientist saying this? I'd like to see exactly what is meant by this.

Citation please.

A refrigerator works by circulating air into both the refrigerator and freezer portion of the unit. At least give the engineers credit for thinking of such an obvious issue.