or gino fli fe

I believe that absence of evidence is evidence of absence. Furthermore, I believe that is the basis of American law, where the if the prosecutor cannot prove guilt then innocence must be assumed. In a perfect world, the burden of proof would lie on the theist. (If the world were perfect, however, the atheist would not have much of a case against the monotheistic God.)

The prefix 'a-' is Greek for without. In words such as 'apathy' or 'apolitical', it follows that connotation. But unlike the aforementioned a-words, atheism implies a more aggressive stance: to deny the existence of a god or gods (at least according to this site) rather than having no interest thereof. So to whom does the burden of proof own?

James T

I add one proviso to that.

Absence of evidence is evidence of absence when a sufficient attempt has been taken to make the absent evidence evident.

mighty_duck

Hello or gino fli fe, and welcome to IIDB.

In very general terms, what you are describing is a strong atheist, someone who makes a positive claim that there is no god. This usually assumes some burden of proof.

On the other hand, Weak Atheism is simply a lack of belief in gods. To counter this position, the burden of proof is on the theist to actually prove there is a god... at least in theory. Most Theist debaters will still claim the burden of proof is on the atheist, be they weak or strong.

MrWhy

There's a recent thread that included many posts on this question.
http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.p...99#post2865899

NZSkep

Absence of evidence is evidnece of abscence when evident evidence is absent- say that ten times very quickly!


not that much less wordy, but I think a little easier to understand might be:

If there could reasonably expect evidence to be present, then absence of evidence is evidence of absence.

Bobinius

I already provided an argument in the other thread, but no brave theist was able to respond. And since this 'burden of proof' and strong atheist thing is becoming boring, I will formulate the argument again, in order to show that the atheist can start very well by claiming that 'God does not exist' and that this conclusion is supported by a sound argument. Of course the theist can disagree and prove me wrong.

P1: If God exists, there should be observable effects of his existence.

P2: There are no observable effects of God's existence.

-----------------------------------------------------

C: God does not exist.

Notations:

'God exists' = G

'observable effects of his existence' = E

The conclusion can be attacked in 2 ways:

I. Attacking the validity of the argument.

The argument is valid: it is modus tollens.

G -> E

~E
------
~G

II. Attacking the premises.

Proof that P1 is true by reductio ad absurdum

Let's presume that P1: G -> E, is false.

The conditional is false only when: G is true AND E is false. We obtain:

P3: G ^ ~E (T)

therefore (simplification)

P3': G (T)

P3'': ~E (T).

But we also know that if God does not exist it is implicit that there won't be any observable effects of his existence (it would be contradictory). Therefore:

P4: ~E ^ ~G (T)

therefore (simplification)

P4': ~G (T).

Clearly P3' contradicts P4'. P3' ^ P4' is false. Therefore our presumption that 'G -> E' is false was wrong, and therefore 'G -> E' is true.

Another way to summarize this reductio is to say that if God exists, but there are no observable effects of his existence, it is impossible to differentiate him from non-existence, since non-existence has no observable effects too.

The second premise

This is the only premise left for the theist to attack. He can falsify it really easily by providing us with observable effects of God's presence. This premise is true in virtue of the fact that there is no evidence of God's existence. Again, it is very easy to be proven wrong: bring forth the evidence. And of course, show that these observable effects are the consequence of God's existence and not that of a natural process.

So, the atheist has taken the burden upon himself, formulated a logical argument with the conclusion 'God does not exist'. Unless someone provides us with some evidence of God, we can safely consider this argument sound, since there is no observable effect of God's existence.

Bobinius

Alf

This is wrong.

What you have is P4a:

P4a: ~G => ~E

A => B can be simplified to B or not A, i.e. either B is true or else A must be false. The only way B can be false is if A is false. Thus, with A = ~G and B = ~E we get:

~E or ~~G or ~E or G. This can be written as ~~(~E or G) or ~(~~E and ~G) or ~(E and ~G) but there is no way to get from there to ~E and ~G as you do.

So we get P4b: (simplified) ~E or G. I.e. we either have no observable effects or there is a god.

This is actually a consequence of your original. You have already concluded that the premise P1 - if false - must conclude that G and ~E

~E in turn implies ~E or G - if it is true that "Johhny is a boy" then the statement "Johhny is a boy or superman exist" is also true and ~E or G is equivalent to ~G => ~E The point is that if you have ~E is true then A => E is always true, regardless of A.

So, if P1 is false and therefore ~( G => E ) then

~(G => E) <=> ~(E or ~G) <=> ~E and ~~G <=> ~E and G

so we have P4a ~E and P4b G in this case.

I.e. to show P1 false you have to show that 1) there is a god and 2) there are no observable effects. Since G is what we indeed want to prove the truthness or falseness of, this appears to be a cirle we don't need. Also, if you are able to prove G it doesn't really matter if you have E or ~E, G is true either way. In this case the E is just a red herring.

So, to attack the premise P1 you essentially have to show that there is a god. Good! If you did manage to show that, the prove you gave is obviously wrong. However, that is exactly the case which we are debating.

In short, it seems to me that it is very hard to attack P1. It does seem reasonable and any attempt to prove P1 false is actually harder than to prove ~G since ~P1 entails both G and ~E.

I therefore suggest to the theist that they do not try to argue against P1. It is a very silly thing to do.

The question is then P2?

P2: ~E

Can this be attacked? Well, in theory this is a hard thing to prove. You are saying there are none. It would be enough for the theist to provide ONE example of an observable effect to prove that you are wrong.

However, so far, no theist has ever been able to come up with that ONE example. So the evidence for P2 appears to be very strong.

So the argument seems rock solid to me.

Alf

mirage

That's right Jim! And facts are facts and concepts are word organ audiovisual representations of that which carry the definition of that which the sense organ tentacles identify as the True Value in the world. And that which we call that which is the Highest Value is held by the defintion of that we call God.

Bayes theorem has nothing to do with it!

Bobinius

Thanx Alf. Good observation. But still the reductio is correct, but it is not proven as I did.

The good observation was that it is correct to write: ~G -> ~E. (btw: you can only simplify a conjunction, not a conditional or an implication. you can only write equivalent formulations for them).

So:

P4: ~G -> ~E (T)

<=>

P4': ~(~G) v ~E <=> G v ~E (T).

So we have this system:

P3'': ~E (T)

AND

P4': G v ~E (T)
----------------

P5: ~G.

And this contradicts P3': G. Therefore the presumption was false and the first premise is true.

I believe that I made the correct reductio now above. But your points about circularity are correct too.

The falsification should be really easy for the theist if God exists.

Yeap, I believe the argument is rock solid now, with the first premise logically proved.

Cheers,

Bobinius

Afghan

I could be missing something blindingly obvious but your "or" is inclusive. How does P5 follow?