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"I Don't Have to Prove a Negative"
- Thread starter SalixIncendium
- Start date
That's not necessarily true. If I tell you of an experience I have, I'm offering testimony - subjective evidence of my experience. This is certainly not an admission that I have no evidence of said experience. I simply have no objective physical evidence. But testimony is certainly considered evidence (especially if I swear on the Bible
).
PureX
Veteran Member
No, it actually wouldn't have.
"I see no evidence to support the existence of any gods" is just a way of saying "No gods exist" while pretending that you're not saying it. It's mealy-mouthed, dishonest, and illogical. "I see no evidence to support the existence of any gods" presumed that if any gods existed, the claimant would have evidence for it. Which is a patently illogical assumption. Especially when that same claimant can't even tell us what that evidence would be, how they would look for it, or how they could possibly verify it if they had it. So the fact that they claim they have none is completely meaningless.
So why do they continue to make this claim? It's because they actually believe that no gods exist. And they know full well that if they say that they can be asked to defend it with evidence and reason. And they can't do that. So they try to pretend that their lack of evidence is evidence and reason excuses them form presenting any evidence or reason.
Shadow Wolf
Certified People sTabber & Business Owner
Scientists do it with evidence, research and peer review.
When a religious person does it, they lack this evidence and are inherently making a moral judgement. That's rude because everything the bunghole wants to accuse others of can be thrown right back at him. This is when the Evangelical tells a gay "you're going to hell" and the gay replies back "your god is a blood thirsty demon." Amd we get no where and it would have been better to keep such things to themselves.
It's fair game to point out flaws in the reasoning that led to a conclusion even if the conclusion itself can't be absolutely ruled out.
It's also fair game to point out when someone has lowered their evidentiary bar in order to accept one conclusion when they haven't lowered it similarly for other conclusions.
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Ebionite
Well-Known Member
Rules of evidence are a matter of law, and these are distinguished from matters of fact, which do not rely on having expertise.
The rules of evidence for claims relating to religion would belong to the domain of commercial law, since the exchange of ideas and opinions is a form of commerce. The distinction between the material and the immaterial is blurred when dealing with matters of the heart, since the heart is a material thing but is the seat of consciousness.
In practical terms, the burden of proof is on whoever is trying to convince the other to change their mind.
Every argument will rely on premises. If you don't establish that your premises are true, then you haven't established anything else. "Evidence" is our term for the things used to show that those premises are true.
Yes, it actually would have. If someone can't present any convince evidence for something, why would anyone else buy it? We start reasonably believing things when we see convincing evidence. So if we had no evidence of Pluto, it would be perfectly reasonable not to believe there is a Pluto. Do you believe in a planet Sufhebejdg, a 9th/10th planet somewhere beyond Pluto's orbit? If not, why not?
No, it isn't. This is fun.
No, it doesn't. It simply presumes that it becomes reasonable to believe something when you have good evidence for it.
Some of them do believe no gods exist, it's true. All of them don't, though. This is how the conversations often go:
"God exists."
"Oh really? Where's your evidence for that?"
"Here's some."
"No, that's not good evidence for xyz reasons."
"Well you can't prove he DOESN'T exist!"
It's a way of putting the onus on the other person instead of defending one's own position.
Audie
Veteran Member
When someone tells me how supernatural /
superstition has affected their lives. I dont
believe them.
And i know from practice what sorry evidence
they provide.
My mom, commenting on whatvever moldy
Chinese superstition was involved, said she wss
so discouraged by how centuries of human
struggle to understand the world, deal with it by
reason, so many people still cling to or eaagerly
seek out new superstitions to fool themselves with.
Twilight Hue
Twilight, not bright nor dark, good nor bad.
It's simply due to the fact that negatives are self evident, obvious, and self-explanatory, where positives can be self-explanatory and self evident by being there as well as long as it's there to see.
Otherwise, a positive has to be proven in order to show that it's actually there. If not, the negative will always come out on top if nothing positive shows up.
Its really that simple.
PureX
Veteran Member
1. Why are you assuming that whenever someone offers their belief or opinion that they are trying to make the person they are offering it to "buy it"? That would be an absurd expectation.
2. "Convincing" evidence"? Evidence is evidence regardless of whether anyone is convinced of anything by it, or not.
Who's "we" Kemosabe? YOU can believe whatever you want to believe for whatever reason you want to believe it, and so can (and does) anyone else. No one owes you any explanations or justifications. The only one standing in your Kangaroo courtroom is you.
McBell
Unbound
If only that were true.
YOU come bursting into every "kangaroo court" you can find like the Kool-Aid man demanding all in attendance to bow down to your off the wall definitions.
Twilight Hue
Twilight, not bright nor dark, good nor bad.
Well using your Pluto example , was anybody yelling and claiming that Pluto existed before it was discovered?
I don't assume it. We're talking about a conversation in which the theist is making a claim, or overtly trying to convince the atheist.
I guess this is a semantic issue. If I tell you I can fly, and then you say "show me" and I jump for a second and come back down to Earth, is that "evidence?" If I accuse you of murder and we go to court and the "evidence" I present is that I had a dream you killed the person, is that "evidence?"
Maybe those are "evidence" to some fool. But they certainly aren't convincing evidence to anyone reasonable.
Reasonable folks.
Of course. If people want to believe, I don't know, that Batman is President, I can't stop them. That's obvious. We're talking about what's rational or reasonable here.
Yes, based on evidence.
In the mid-1800s, astronomers were finding unexplained deviations from the predicted orbit of Uranus. The deviations were analyzed and it was found that they were consistent with a large, previously undiscovered mass. This led to the discovery of Neptune, but when the orbits of Uranus and Neptune were analyzed further, they found that Neptune wasn't enough to explain all of the deviations in Uranus's orbit, so they kept looking - guided by their orbital models - until Pluto was discovered in 1930.
Altfish
Veteran Member
The problem is, you can't prove a negative in circumstances like this.
Bertrand Russell best explained it with his celestial teapot. He wrote that "if he were to assert, without offering proof, that a teapot, too small to be seen by telescopes, orbits the Sun somewhere in space between the Earth and Mars, he could not expect anyone to believe him solely because his assertion could not be proven wrong."
It is the same with god(s), no evidence is provided, we cannot see the god, so why should we believe it?
paarsurrey
Veteran Member
"I Don't Have to Prove a Negative"
Does one mean that "I Don't Have to Prove a Negative", is one among the new superstitions, right??
Regards
Twilight Hue
Twilight, not bright nor dark, good nor bad.
Exactly. It was because there was actually something out there that people could see and verify that prompted the notion there might be something there.
However with the god notion, there is no such actual case where anyone can verify something that could be actually pointed out leading to the discovery of a god.