HRG

Playing advocatus diaboli for a moment.

The following is a perfectly valid view of mathematics: Once you postulate Hilbert's axioms for geometry, or Peano's for arithmetics, then the Pythagorean theorem/infinitely many prime numbers etc. follow from the definitions just like the famous bachelor statement. It's only that their proof is longer.


Regards,
HRG.

Kat_Somm_Faen

Well, pray, tell how does one prove an absence of an object?

I really do not have a frim grasp ( as some on these boards ) of these very highly structured and formalized systems. I dont know a proper name for every fallacy, I do not know of a proper catalogue definition but I ask you:

How does one prove the absence of an object ( God ) when they ( atheists ) are the ones asked to disprove a claim.

It seems that you are really trying to walk around the issue that an atheist should not have to jump through hoops to disprove existence of a God(s). The point here seems to be "How can I just wiggle through an argument that..."

And it concerns semantics and the way something is said or asked not the essence of what is being asked. Although such approach should be followed where applicable and practical I see no reason to do it here.

Anyway, I am not trying to pick a fight but more I am trying to find an answer to "How can you prove absence?" In a sense where theists come up to you and say "Prove that God does not exist!" Atheist do not really want to say all negatives cant be proven but its more of an euphemism for "How the hell can I prove I have nothing in my pocket if we dismiss the fact that when I looked inside my pocket there was nothing there." The "negatives" here are not all the negatives out there but rather that one particular negative "there is no God". I think that is the case and that is what most people mean when that say "You can't prove ( that particular ) negative."

And also, you had a proof and THEN after the fact you have a proof you ( or whoever ) made a negative statement about the object in question ie. prime number, married batchelor and on.

njhartsh

As I believe I've shown more than once on this thread already, one way is by logical contradiction.

Note the third example I provided in the OP: Married bachelors do not exist. A married bachelor is an object. It's a (theoretical) man who is married but is also not married. So even though the title "married bachelor" theoretically posits a living, breathing human being, the internal logical contradiction in his definition proves that he cannot exist.

The same is true of the Logical Argument from Sdfoiewr I posted in my most recent post. A god that would, by definition, eliminate sdfoiewr if the god existed cannot coexist with sdfoiewr. Presuming that my premises P1 and P2 are correct (see above for those--and note that they are otherwise irrelevant to this thread), that god--an "object," if you must--cannot exist.

Pyrrho, in the second post in this thread, referenced a weaker but arguably more practically useful method for disproving certain classes of objects. You may want to investigate what Pyrrho was saying.

Here's a list of many of them. We hope your visit to the Secular Web is fun and educational. Keep your hands inside the car at all times. Please don't feed Richard Carrier.

No, the point is to take note of the principled ways in which we can establish what is true and what is not. This is generally called "reason," and many people in these parts are strongly committed to it.

If it's those arguments that you're interested in, visit the section of the Secular Web Library devoted to that topic and/or read nearly any of the other threads on this ("Existence of God(s)") forum.

My only intention in starting this thread was to try to dispel the myth that it's impossible to prove a negative. "PANII" is a false statement, so obviously it's an improper reply to a "strong" atheist who declares her belief that there is no god.

Take the discussion of particular arguments against gods to another thread. The issue in this one is whether universal negatives can be provable. (They can.)

I can't parse this sentence. A "negative statement"? Was that when I accused the married bachelor of being a liar, a cheat and a thug? That damned crook--I think he stole my wallet.

- Nathan

Clutch

One of the reasons I don't come around much any more: I've already said my piece about most of the topics that interest me. Like proving negatives.

Irishbrutha

Actually the search space of the universe is extremely important. We can not know if it is uniform until we experience it. By this I do not mean that we have to experience every part of it. We must have a random sampling of a representative amount of space to be able to determine that the whole is much like our sample. But if there is an infinite amount of space, there can be no representative sample. Infinity cannot be quanitfied. Neither can portions of infinity. So we are left with the quandary that non-existence predicated of an entity within a total set of data that is infinite cannot be meaningful.

Also, not to totally change my topic here, but God is a supernatural entity. Even if we could somehow empirically identify all beings that exist in nature, we still would have no data related to the existence of a supernatural being. Which is why I can't stand it when people make the ignorant statement that science somehow contradicts God. Science, as a method of discovery, is only relevant in a God-conversation when we are seeking to ascertain the acts of God in nature. Never will it tell us whether that God exists.

-Shaun

sandlewood

I believe you’ve got the cart before the horse. It may be the case that a god exists and that he does not work according to our understanding. But first we must use our understanding (our reasoning) to decide if that god exists or not. There’s no other way around that.

You cannot say just declare that god does not need to work according to logic and then say it follows that you can’t use logic to prove he doesn’t exist. By arbitrarily choosing when logic is used and when it isn’t, you have no reliable way of gaining knowledge and determining truth from fiction.

njhartsh

Well, as Thomas Jefferson is once supposed to have said, "The price of philosophical accuracy is eternal vigilance."

Or maybe that's not quite what he said--or maybe it was actually John Philpot Curran who said something like that. I don't know.

But I'm honored to be following in your distinguished footsteps, Clutch.

- Nathan

Keith Russell

Proving a negative is more than possible, it's actually rather easy.

There's no shoe store in this mall.

We're out of milk.

I have never taken calculus.

That is not the way to the party.

Sue has never had cancer.

(And so on...)

K

diana

I've split off the admitted tangent with Chesterton's holey argument for a god and placed it here.

I had to lock the thread momentarily to do this safely. My apologies if this inconvenienced anyone.

d

Clutch

Irishbrutha,No. An infinite space may be entirely homogeneous, in which case any sample is a representative sample.

Of course, if a space is infinite, then there is no finite sample that we can know to be representative of the whole. But that does seem to be the problem of induction in one of its guises -- a problem from consideration of which I prescinded.