"I Don't Have to Prove a Negative"

[PureX]

You're coming from a position that there is no valid evidence for "god".

Actually, there is a ton of legitimate "evidence". What is missing is an ability to clarify and validate the ideal. We humans simply do not possess the intellectual capacity to do that. The God ideal is too all-encompassing for us.

My point was that the less definition you attach to the word, the more difficult it is address it, and vice versa.

Yes, that's so. But some ideas are just not reducible. God, infinity, perfection, etc., as examples.

When we have a reasonably detailed definition, ...

Then all you're debating are the definitions. No definition of God is God. No religious depiction of God is God. No amount of imaginary detail is going to change that.

I do agree that, after centuries of believers, non-believers and philosophers kicking it around, it's now highly unlikely ever to be settled.

Interestingly, we humans have the ability to formulate conundrums that we do not have the capacity to resolve. That, in itself, might tell us something about the nature and existence of 'the mystery source, sustenance, and purpose of all that it'.

 

[ratiocinator]

Claiming human ignorance is not a truth claim.

Actually it is, and especially in this case. You are claimed that nobody knows anything about the subject. This is patently false. One class of claims about god involve denying evolution. It is perfectly correct to claim that there is strong evidence that evolution did actually happen. That is true and it is about the subject. It is not a belief, an opinion, or a blind guess.

But for the rest of us, the basic idea/mystery referred to as "God" is pretty universal, and it always has been.

It only seems that way when you refuse to differentiate between the idea and the representations of it. As you do.

There are plenty of theists who would give you an argument and some that will tell you that they have a personal relationship with what they call god.

There is a deep irony in the way you post. You claim that god is universally understood to represent what you say it does (latest version: "mystery source, sustenance, and purpose of all that is") and you preach that with passion, dogmatism, and fervour that would shame even some of the most fundamentalist evangelicals, while at the same time telling everybody that nobody really knows anything. It's seriously bizarre.

 

[Alien826]

If you make a claim, the onus is on you to provide evidence of that claim if you want that claim to be taken seriously by others. Disagree?

Yes, hard disagree.

In the context of formal debates, academia, or scholarly circles? Sure, this approach is more or less reasonable.

But this is a place for formal debate (though the formal part is loosely observed largely). And that's the context in which the original question was posed. Not observing the "rules" of debate contributes to 90% of the time wasted here imo. (I'm only referring to "debate" threads of course. We can have fun too.)

Outside of those specific contexts?

Practicing active listening, keeping an open mind, and thinking critically - in other words, taking something seriously by default and aiming to learn more about it while challenging your own foundational assumptions about reality - is vastly more important.

Yes, but that can be done within a formal debate environment without abandoning all the rules.

To add, even if one presents "evidence" it is routine to still not be taken seriously by others, so honestly? Why even bother? If someone is dead-set on not practicing active listening, being open-minded, or thinking critically it doesn't much matter what is or isn't presented to them.

I agree in general, but this is not friendship, counseling or all the other situations where your approach has great value.

 

[Heyo]

But this is a place for formal debate (though the formal part is loosely observed largely). And that's the context in which the original question was posed. Not observing the "rules" of debate contributes to 90% of the time wasted here imo. (I'm only referring to "debate" threads of course. We can have fun too.)

Yes, but that can be done within a formal debate environment without abandoning all the rules.

I agree in general, but this is not friendship, counseling or all the other situations where your approach has great value.

:winner:

 

[Alien826]

Actually, there is a ton of legitimate "evidence". What is missing is an ability to clarify and validate the ideal. We humans simply do not possess the intellectual capacity to do that. The God ideal is too all-encompassing for us.

How can you claim both that there is valid evidence and that we can't clarify and validate that to which this evidence is supposed to point? If you don't know what you are looking for, how can you know where to look, let alone know if you have found it?

Yes, that's so. But some ideas are just not reducible. God, infinity, perfection, etc., as examples.

Then all you're debating are the definitions. No definition of God is God. No religious depiction of God is God. No amount of imaginary detail is going to change that.

Interestingly, we humans have the ability to formulate conundrums that we do not have the capacity to resolve. That, in itself, might tell us something about the nature and existence of 'the mystery source, sustenance, and purpose of all that it'.

All reasonable ideas. But to me they all lead to either "we don't know" or the somewhat stronger "we can't know". I'm drawing this conclusion from your words here. Then you go on to claim that you have legitimate evidence for something or other that is just a collection of words if we can't "clarify and validate" what they purport to relate to. I'm perfectly OK with your basic conclusions, in fact it seems perfectly reasonable that something so different from us that a god might be would be beyond our understanding. But having said that, you have to stop there in making claims about it.

 

[PureX]

How can you claim both that there is valid evidence and that we can't clarify and validate that to which this evidence is supposed to point?

I said "legitimate" evidence. All evdence is legimate, but not all evidence can be validated. For us to validate evidence for the nature or existence of God would require that we be able to reasonably define and contain the nature and existence of God. But our general definition of God is so encompassing that all evidence could be reasoned to be valid or invalid. And we have no way around this.

If you don't know what you are looking for, how can you know where to look, let alone know if you have found it?

Exactly. Which is why we have never been able to resolve this conundrum. It's not a lack of evidence. It's a lack of specificity. And we simply do not have the capability for resolving that problem.

All reasonable ideas. But to me they all lead to either "we don't know" or the somewhat stronger "we can't know".

That is where we are if we are being honest and reasonable. Yes. Everything else is just belief/opinion/guessing whether we know it and admit it, or not.

I'm drawing this conclusion from your words here. Then you go on to claim that you have legitimate evidence for something or other that is just a collection of words if we can't "clarify and validate" what they purport to relate to.

All evidence is legitimate.

Too many people these days have adopted the foolish notion that evidence is defined by it's ability to convince them of something. This is false. Evidence is evidence whether they are convinced buy it or not. There is ALWAYS evidence. Just the fact of the question "does God exist" is evidence that God exists. (It could also be used as evidence that God does ot exist.) You do not have to be convinced by it for it to be evidence.

I'm perfectly OK with your basic conclusions, in fact it seems perfectly reasonable that something so different from us that a god might be would be beyond our understanding. But having said that, you have to stop there in making claims about it.

No one is actually making any claims, ... not if they are being honest and reasonable about it. The only people making actual claims are people that have falsely convinced themselves that they know the answer to a question that no one can know the answer to (without reasonable doubt).

If God appeared right in front of you, in whatever blaze of glory that would entail, how would you verify that it was God, as opposed to some very clever magician's trick, or some anomaly within your own mind, or even some advanced alien visiting you in a form that it thinks you would be able to understand? And even if you were somehow able to determine that it is one of these other circumstances, how could you be certain that these other circumstances didn't enable a real experience of God?

The answer is that none of us could possibly verify even a direct physical experience of God, as an actual 'real' experience of God. It cannot honestly or reasonably be done. And that fact that is also legitimate "evidence" ... for which conclusion is up to you.

 

[sayak83]

But that's the thing: I question the value of random subjective experiences as a solid ground to ascertain the existence of anything...other than subjective experiences themselves.

Why do you believe it is random? Theists and mystics have had experiences of the divine for thousands of years (going by written literature and further back may be). What makes you think they are random and not pointing at something that actually is real? Calling them subjective is neither here nor there....as no experience exists that is non-subjective. Objective phenomena are inferences based on compiling and analyzing thousands and thousands of subjective experiences from multiple people. You can say that there has not been a consensus among experiencers about the features and properties of the reality that spiritual experiences point to as they seem to defy the usual conceptual classifications we use to analyze our normal experiences. However that, by itself, does not imply that there is no objective reality behind them, but simply maybe our minds have limited capacity to grasp the reality that is being experienced.
I will provide an analogy. Think of the creature that evolved the first primitive eye. Do you think its mind was capable of processing all the information that the visual world provided it? It appears that in the long billion year old evolutionary history, we are the first creatures with a reasonably complete self-life awareness and full-world awareness (they exist in bits and pieces in other creatures like apes and dolphins and elephants too...but I do not think that an elephant can construct a biography of her life or the story of the world she roams in). We are also the FIRST creatures who are having this new thing called spiritual experience of a realm beyond the 5 senses. Maybe we are developing something here that is new and incomplete yet in us? I think it is clear that with our arrival, a transformative change has happened in what life can be or can acheive in this world (like the emergence of the eukaryotic cell or the first multicellular organism). So I would urge everyone to think before dismissing what we experience as mere delusions or superstitions. With 7 billion of us, we are so used to taking ourselves and our way of seeing things for granted......but it is likely that in this entire gigantic universe we are one of the rarest of the rare phenomena one can encounter.
If you are a humanist, embrace all that is human in us...that is my advise.

 

[lukethethird]

I see some variation of this phrase, "I don't have to prove a negative" posted here often, and I find it to be nothing short of a copout.

As I see it, it's pretty simple: If you make a claim, positive or negative, the onus is on you to provide evidence to support that claim, otherwise your claim can easily be dismissed by others.

Claim: "God exists." The onus is on the person making the claim to provide evidence for the existence of God.

Claim: "No gods exist." The onus is on the person making the claim to provide evidence that no gods exist.

And as for the second, "I see no evidence to support the existence of any gods" is not evidence. Before 1930, not a single person saw evidence to support the existence of Pluto. Does that mean it came into existence in 1930? Eris in 2005? So before 1930, would the claim, "There are no [dwarf] planets orbiting the sun beyond Neptune" have been valid?

If you make a claim, the onus is on you to provide evidence of that claim if you want that claim to be taken seriously by others.

Disagree? State your case below.

No gods exist is a counterclaim to the claim that gods exist and it is a perfectly reasonable counterclaim when considering the lack of evidence supporting the claim of Gods existing. Tinker Bell does not exist either.

 

[Quintessence]

But this is a place for formal debate (though the formal part is loosely observed largely).

For you, perhaps, and others who think like you do.

For others? Then there's ones like me who do not consider a recreational web forums to be a place for formal debate. If anything, I consider the notion that recreational web forums are a good place for formal debate to be comical. There are a lot of reasons why I think that, but a deep dive is a bit beyond the scope of the discussion here so I'll leave it there.

Not observing the "rules" of debate contributes to 90% of the time wasted here imo. (I'm only referring to "debate" threads of course. We can have fun too.)

Maybe. Since you mention, the fact that it's not reasonable to expect participants in a recreational web forum to obey arbitrary formal debate rules is one of the reasons why I think it is comical to consider them a good venue for it. I'm not sure if that's more or less comical than the folks who (perhaps inadvertently) come across as all self-superior by attempting to lord these rules over others when there's just no way others are going to play that game with them.

Yes, but that can be done within a formal debate environment without abandoning all the rules.

It can. In practice, folks obsessed with "the rules" can be too busy lording them over others to do those things - it keeps them from listening at all, really. I suppose experiences in other fora when I was younger shaped this perspective for me, though. Nine times out of ten, the folks lording "rules" over others weren't actually interested in debate, they were interested in controlling the conversation, shutting down anyone who thought differently than them, and... well... kinda being jerks.

So where you don't see value in the alternative approach I present, my experiences have taught me otherwise. Each to their own.

 

[Heyo]

For you, perhaps, and others who think like you do.

For others? Then there's ones like me who do not consider a recreational web forums to be a place for formal debate. If anything, I consider the notion that recreational web forums are a good place for formal debate to be comical. There are a lot of reasons why I think that, but a deep dive is a bit beyond the scope of the discussion here so I'll leave it there.

Maybe. Since you mention, the fact that it's not reasonable to expect participants in a recreational web forum to obey arbitrary formal debate rules is one of the reasons why I think it is comical to consider them a good venue for it. I'm not sure if that's more or less comical than the folks who (perhaps inadvertently) come across as all self-superior by attempting to lord these rules over others when there's just no way others are going to play that game with them.

It can. In practice, folks obsessed with "the rules" can be too busy lording them over others to do those things - it keeps them from listening at all, really. I suppose experiences in other fora when I was younger shaped this perspective for me, though. Nine times out of ten, the folks lording "rules" over others weren't actually interested in debate, they were interested in controlling the conversation, shutting down anyone who thought differently than them, and... well... kinda being jerks.

So where you don't see value in the alternative approach I present, my experiences have taught me otherwise. Each to their own.

The rules of debate aren't arbitrary, they enable a rational exchange of ideas.
Not wanting to debate is also OK, but interrupting a serious debate between adults with rule-less small talk is naughty. (Or rude if you happen to be an adult who should know better.)

 

[lukethethird]

I see some variation of this phrase, "I don't have to prove a negative" posted here often, and I find it to be nothing short of a copout.

As I see it, it's pretty simple: If you make a claim, positive or negative, the onus is on you to provide evidence to support that claim, otherwise your claim can easily be dismissed by others.

Claim: "Tinker Bell exists." The onus is on the person making the claim to provide evidence for the existence of Tinker Bell.

Claim: "No, Tinker Bell does not exist." The onus is on the person making the claim to provide evidence that no Tinker Bell exists.

And as for the second, "I see no evidence to support the existence of "Tinker Bell" is not evidence. Before 1930, not a single person saw evidence to support the existence of Pluto. Does that mean it came into existence in 1930? Eris in 2005? So before 1930, would the claim, "There are no [dwarf] planets orbiting the sun beyond Neptune" have been valid?

If you make a claim, the onus is on you to provide evidence of that claim if you want that claim to be taken seriously by others.

Disagree? State your case below.

I just stated it above.

 

[vulcanlogician]

And as for the second, "I see no evidence to support the existence of any gods" is not evidence. Before 1930, not a single person saw evidence to support the existence of Pluto. Does that mean it came into existence in 1930? Eris in 2005? So before 1930, would the claim, "There are no [dwarf] planets orbiting the sun beyond Neptune" have been valid?

"I see no evidence for the existence of any [dwarf] planets beyond Neptune, therefore I have no reason to believe that there is a dwarf planet beyond Neptune." If someone said that in in 1929, I'd call that a reasonable position.

But let's consider the statement, "There is a dwarf planet beyond Neptune." And let us suppose that it was uttered by someone in 1929. And let us also suppose that they had no evidence; it was a wild guess. This person's position, while true, is in no way reasonable. And a listener to this claim in 1929 has no reason to take it seriously.

If there is no evidence at all, any number of claims could be made about what sort of planet may lie beyond Neptune. I person, in 1929, could claim that there is a gas giant beyond Neptune. Another person could have claimed that it was a frozen Venus-like planet. A person in 1929, who has no way to verify any of these claims, has no reason to take the dwarf planet hypothesis seriously. Unless he feels like playing the lottery and betting that one of those unfounded claims may turn out to be true.

 

[Alien826]

All evidence is legitimate.

Too many people these days have adopted the foolish notion that evidence is defined by it's ability to convince them of something. This is false. Evidence is evidence whether they are convinced buy it or not. There is ALWAYS evidence. Just the fact of the question "does God exist" is evidence that God exists. (It could also be used as evidence that God does ot exist.) You do not have to be convinced by it for it to be evidence.

I'm going to have one more try at understanding.

What do you mean by "legitimate" evidence? What makes it legitimate? I'd agree that whether it convinces someone of something is not sufficient. If I wanted to understand something in say quantum mechanics and I asked for evidence from someone that really understood it, I wouldn't have a clue about the answer, even though it was totally valid. But the expert would.

But surely, to be evidence, it has to have relationship to the question? If I ask you for evidence for the existence of fairies and you say "The Empire State Building" that's legitimate evidence for the existence of fairies even though it has nothing whatsoever to do with the concept of fairies? It is of course evidence for a lot of things, but not fairies.

And a question is evidence for both the existence and non-existence of something?

 

[Alien826]

For you, perhaps, and others who think like you do.

For others? Then there's ones like me who do not consider a recreational web forums to be a place for formal debate. If anything, I consider the notion that recreational web forums are a good place for formal debate to be comical. There are a lot of reasons why I think that, but a deep dive is a bit beyond the scope of the discussion here so I'll leave it there.

It's perfectly reasonable that you should prefer to not participate in the debates here. So don't participate. Lots of other people, myself included, do quite enjoy it and when I stop enjoying it I go and do something else. Incidentally, I'm not sure if you are suggesting that we should all give up this harmless pleasure because you find it comical. Good luck with that!

Maybe. Since you mention, the fact that it's not reasonable to expect participants in a recreational web forum to obey arbitrary formal debate rules is one of the reasons why I think it is comical to consider them a good venue for it. I'm not sure if that's more or less comical than the folks who (perhaps inadvertently) come across as all self-superior by attempting to lord these rules over others when there's just no way others are going to play that game with them.

Some do "obey the rules" and some don't. The way to avoid being annoyed is to restrict communication with whichever group that you disapprove of.

It can. In practice, folks obsessed with "the rules" can be too busy lording them over others to do those things - it keeps them from listening at all, really. I suppose experiences in other fora when I was younger shaped this perspective for me, though. Nine times out of ten, the folks lording "rules" over others weren't actually interested in debate, they were interested in controlling the conversation, shutting down anyone who thought differently than them, and... well... kinda being jerks.

Been there, done that, got fed up with it. The reason I stay around here is that people in this forum are much less guilty of that behavior than elsewhere.

So where you don't see value in the alternative approach I present, my experiences have taught me otherwise. Each to their own.

I thought I said I saw the value of your alternative, I just don't see why people that enjoy debate should change over to it. Luckily the Internet offers vast choices to us all.

 

[Quintessence]

The rules of debate aren't arbitrary, they enable a rational exchange of ideas.

To clarify, I meant "arbitrary" in the sense that it's made up stuff by humans; this is in contrast to, say, laws of thermodynamics that govern reality regardless of what humans think or feel about it. Some human at some point made up some set of rules rules for their debates, which, ironically, means they themselves can be debated and discarded more or less at will. That's much of what the humans who "debate" on recreational web forums do, but a lot of that is because of multiculturalism - folks from different backgrounds are simply not going to adhere to some unified style of debating unless they've been specifically trained in a particular school of thought on the matter. I don't know how it is in other places, but learning a specific, formal debate style was never part of public education when and where I grew up. You only learned it if you participated in very specific recreational activities outside of class (e.g., debate teams). Formal debating not being part of general public education is a second reason why I find expecting formal debates on recreational web forums a bit comical.

As an aside, I think about the kids these days who grew up watching the most recent presidential "debates" in my own country. I put that in air quotes because some of those "debates" have been... yeah. Kids these days aren't even going to grow up with good examples of what formal debates actually look like, apparently. Oh well.

 

[Quintessence]

Incidentally, I'm not sure if you are suggesting that we should all give up this harmless pleasure because you find it comical.

Not at all. Folks will do what is within their nature to do. If anything I think debate has value even (or perhaps especially) when it isn't (unnecessarily?) constrained by formalism. Wasting too much time doing that when I was younger helped me become a vastly better writer, for example - it didn't matter if I or anyone else was following "rules" for any of it.

Been there, done that, got fed up with it. The reason I stay around here is that people in this forum are much less guilty of that behavior than elsewhere.

I know what you mean. There's one particular forum I'm thinking of that was just... well, looking back on it, it's honestly the sort of awful anyone would reasonably expect of a forum that was mostly geared towards teenagers and college students.

 

[Koldo]

Why do you believe it is random? Theists and mystics have had experiences of the divine for thousands of years (going by written literature and further back may be). What makes you think they are random and not pointing at something that actually is real? Calling them subjective is neither here nor there....as no experience exists that is non-subjective. Objective phenomena are inferences based on compiling and analyzing thousands and thousands of subjective experiences from multiple people. You can say that there has not been a consensus among experiencers about the features and properties of the reality that spiritual experiences point to as they seem to defy the usual conceptual classifications we use to analyze our normal experiences. However that, by itself, does not imply that there is no objective reality behind them, but simply maybe our minds have limited capacity to grasp the reality that is being experienced.

It definitely doesn't entail there is no objective reality behind them, but it certainly makes inferences grounded upon them very questionable.

I will provide an analogy. Think of the creature that evolved the first primitive eye. Do you think its mind was capable of processing all the information that the visual world provided it? It appears that in the long billion year old evolutionary history, we are the first creatures with a reasonably complete self-life awareness and full-world awareness (they exist in bits and pieces in other creatures like apes and dolphins and elephants too...but I do not think that an elephant can construct a biography of her life or the story of the world she roams in). We are also the FIRST creatures who are having this new thing called spiritual experience of a realm beyond the 5 senses. Maybe we are developing something here that is new and incomplete yet in us? I think it is clear that with our arrival, a transformative change has happened in what life can be or can acheive in this world (like the emergence of the eukaryotic cell or the first multicellular organism). So I would urge everyone to think before dismissing what we experience as mere delusions or superstitions. With 7 billion of us, we are so used to taking ourselves and our way of seeing things for granted......but it is likely that in this entire gigantic universe we are one of the rarest of the rare phenomena one can encounter.
If you are a humanist, embrace all that is human in us...that is my advise.

But who said those spiritual experiences are actually spiritual experiences?

 

[Heyo]

To clarify, I meant "arbitrary" in the sense that it's made up stuff by humans; this is in contrast to, say, laws of thermodynamics that govern reality regardless of what humans think or feel about it. Some human at some point made up some set of rules rules for their debates, which, ironically, means they themselves can be debated and discarded more or less at will.

With "not arbitrary" I meant that the rules were not made up on the spot. The rules have grown over time into a form that is most conductive to a smooth and productive exchange. They can not be changed at will without giving up the benefits.

That's much of what the humans who "debate" on recreational web forums do, but a lot of that is because of multiculturalism - folks from different backgrounds are simply not going to adhere to some unified style of debating unless they've been specifically trained in a particular school of thought on the matter. I don't know how it is in other places, but learning a specific, formal debate style was never part of public education when and where I grew up. You only learned it if you participated in very specific recreational activities outside of class (e.g., debate teams). Formal debating not being part of general public education is a second reason why I find expecting formal debates on recreational web forums a bit comical.

You don't have to be trained in formal debate to take part in one on RF. If you mess up, somebody will explain the rules to you. You can accept that or you can derail the thread.

As an aside, I think about the kids these days who grew up watching the most recent presidential "debates" in my own country. I put that in air quotes because some of those "debates" have been... yeah. Kids these days aren't even going to grow up with good examples of what formal debates actually look like, apparently. Oh well.

Political debates are also formal but they have different rules. You score by using pathos or ethos while those are frowned upon in philosophical debate in favour of logos.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

I see some variation of this phrase, "I don't have to prove a negative" posted here often, and I find it to be nothing short of a copout.

As I see it, it's pretty simple: If you make a claim, positive or negative, the onus is on you to provide evidence to support that claim, otherwise your claim can easily be dismissed by others.

Claim: "Tinker Bell exists." The onus is on the person making the claim to provide evidence for the existence of Tinker Bell.

Claim: "No, Tinker Bell does not exist." The onus is on the person making the claim to provide evidence that no Tinker Bell exists.

And as for the second, "I see no evidence to support the existence of "Tinker Bell" is not evidence. Before 1930, not a single person saw evidence to support the existence of Pluto. Does that mean it came into existence in 1930? Eris in 2005? So before 1930, would the claim, "There are no [dwarf] planets orbiting the sun beyond Neptune" have been valid?

If you make a claim, the onus is on you to provide evidence of that claim if you want that claim to be taken seriously by others.

Disagree? State your case below.

I just stated it above.

It depends on how you view evidence in effect. At least for one version of evidence there is neither postive nor negative evidence for a certain category of claims, namely moral judgments, uttility claims and political/moral rights, duties and responsibilities.
So in effect for the following claim. There is no postive or negative evidence for e.g. that it is wrong to kill another human, because neither right or wrong in this case has no objective evidence.

Now for dismissed there is this effect of subjectivity as per above. If I claim something subjective based on how I think/feel and as long as I don't claim it has evidence, but rather it is how I think/fell, then you can dismiss it if you think/feel differently, but both cases are without evidence.

So here is a uttiltly claim without evidence. It works for me to have blind faith that the universe is real, orderly and knowable, but it doesn't work for me to claim that the universe is natural or from a theistic God.
And in effect my faith is a non-theistic version of ontological idealism as real is not physical/objective.

So the debate in a sense ends in if the universe is either objective, subjective or in effect a combination. But that depends on what you consider evidence as much as it depends on what I consider evidence.

 

[SalixIncendium]

Actually that is not strictly true (at least in the USA). The prosecutors have to establish among themselves that they have a viable case, based on the evidence they already have, none of which has to be provided by the potential accused person. Then, for more serious crimes they have to convince a Grand Jury. The accused doesn't even have to present a defense in court if he doesn't want to. In fact his lawyer could get the whole thing thrown out on various grounds without presenting any evidence of innocence. Of course if things go as they usually do an accused person does present exculpatory evidence. The point is that the prosecution has to come up with evidence enough to establish a case, they can't just say "you're guilty, prove you are not".

Nor can they present evidence of guilt, circumstantial or otherwise that may not be entirely objective, and the defendant can simply say, "I'm not guilty" with no other evidence and have the case dismissed.