Fallaneze

What is your definition of "testable evidence"?

Define "testable evidence."

It's immoral to punish an innocent person though so the threshold of evidence needs to be higher as a practical matter. You can still accept that a person is guilty by an epistemic threshold where they more likely did the crime than not but also accept that they haven't met a threshold of beyond reasonable doubt.

Evidence available to us is often dynamic and changes over time

Of course, a perfectly rational mind would instantaneously adjust their beliefs to the corresponding amount of evidence for and against the claim.

Here's how I see it. A perfectly rational mind would accept that a claim is true if there's more information indicating that it's true rather than false, and vice versa. 

But when you refer to "absence of evidence" I presume you're envisioning a situation where we observe the absence of something and determine a likelihood of it existing. That is evidence of absence, not absence of evidence. Evidence refers to information about a claim.

I'm asking you what the threshold of "sufficient evidence" is. Is it when there's more information indicating the claim is true rather than untrue? 

Is there sufficient evidence when there's more information indicating that the claim is true rather than false?

But that means your position on the claim "God exists" is that it's neither more plausibly true nor more plausibly false.

Even the slightest bit of information favoring the existence of God would make you a believer?

If the posited defintion of God includes physical characteristics then sure, you could run an inductive argument against God using the same logic I used with the elephant in my fridge. 

It depends on how you define the word "evidence."

When we imagine a situation where we observe the absence of something, like the absence of an elephant in my fridge, I'd consider this evidence of absence - not absence of evidence. I am basing my conclusion that there is not an elephant in my fridge on information that indicates the truth of the claim (evidence).

Skepticism isn't a worldview though.

When taking into account my background knowledge that elephants live on a different continent, the dimensions of an elephant, the cubic feet of my fridge, and my daily observations in and around my fridge, all indicates that there is not an elephant in my fridge. If someone were to ask me if I was sure that there was no elephant in my fridge I would say yes. I have much more information indicating that the claim is false rather than true. 

Basing a conclusion on lack of evidence is an argument from ignorance 

Is absence of evidence evidence of absence?

So even the slightest bit of information favoring the existence of God would make you a believer?

But that means your position on the claim "God exists" is that it's neither more plausibly true nor more plausibly false.

I'd like to hear any strong arguments you might have for atheism.

Mirroring the human moral conscience 

Animals are a long, long way off. 

Do quantum fluctuations have free will? 

I had Quantum fluctuations in mind when I wrote my argument.

Morality requires higher level cognition. If you don't have the ability to know how your actions affect others beforehand then it's hard to be blameworthy. So while free will is a prerequisite for moral culpability, rudimentary free will is less advanced than rudimentary morality. 

I don't believe computers will ever be morally culpable. They can't be conscious and harbor intent.

I have a "first cause" topic on this issue.  

The designer(s) of the program 

Especially if all sensations are just well-placed electrical signals in the brain. When you feel something the nerves in your fingers send electrical signals to the brain and those electrical signals determine the sensations.

Free will has lots of utility. We just cant be knowably certain whether animals have it. Yes, free will allows moral culpability

What they all have in common is diminished or increased ability to choose between alternative courses of action. Animals may be purely instinctual - there's no way to know without first person knowledge 

I don't know if dogs have free will. If they do it's a rudimentary version.

Eventually we'll probably have technology that simulates sensations of real stuff in the brain. 

"Acting according to causes" does not refute free will defined as the ability to choose alternative courses of action. 

If the images we see in a VR helmet, on TV, and in the real world are all made of the same light, it's just a matter of arranging that light to match what we see in the real world.

Free will is the ability to choose alternative outcomes. Deterministic processes, like chemistry, cannot choose alternative outcomes. In that sense, material cause and effect is deterministic and does not allow free will. Consciousness, however, is different than a chemical reaction. We can consciously decide which course of action we want to take. If we move in line with our intention this is mental causation, a non-material process. So cause and effect still applies, it's just not a material process. So I would reject the premise that if something is caused, it has no free will.

If the Big Bang wasn't brought into existence by free will, then there must be an infinite regress of preceding causes that led to up to the Big Bang.

Given an infinite amount of time, any action that has a greater than 0 chance of occurring will inevitably occur.

One this action inevitably occurs, we can count backwards the number of trials that led up to the action. By doing this, the entire event has a quantifiable beginning.

The problem is that given an unlimited amount of time, something that can happen inevitably will. This gives you an infinite chain of events that all have quantifiable beginnings to them which is logically absurd. The only way around this is if an action occurred by free will - in that case the event will not have a quantifiable beginning.

All of this:

When you consider that colors aren't real it makes you question how anything is.

None of this makes sense. 

No. An uncaused event is one that has no explanation as to how it occurred. A random event is a description of unpredictability, usually in terms of WHEN the event will happen. A coin flip is not random, the outcome is determined while it's already in the air. 

Random does not mean uncaused. 

And please dont conflate random with uncaused. The rate of nuclear decay on certain molecules is random but this does not mean uncaused.

You just got finished saying that our shift in views could be the nearest UNcaused quantum event. Now you're saying you dont believe in free will because it violates cause and effect.

Your philosophical views don't seem to be logically cohesive.

So you believe that in-determinism is most likely true but firmly believe nobody has free will.

So the logical conclusion is indeterminism yet you're a determinist?

All events are determined by a linear chain of preceding material causes. True or false?

So you believe in unfalsifiable theories 

He's right, all future choices would be predetermined at the big bang and no alternate realities would be possible. He's saying that although many believe in the B-theory of time, there's still the illusion of A-theory and people will still die (as if there's an arrow of time). He was making a comparison between B-theory and determinism.

You can't verify logic using science.

Logic is also abstract and science operates under logical constraints.