Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Question for the holy guys

Once again, "As for me, and my house, we will Serve The Lord."

What are you serving Him for supper tonight?

Thanks for the explanation. I have no idea why you think I’m looking for sympathy. I certainly don’t feel persecuted or mistreated by some words on a computer screen. I’m certain I’d enjoy sitting in a bar with you and talking about this or any other topic while we killed off several beers.

I did concede that I can prove there isn't an elephant in my house.

That's correct, absence of evidence where evidence should be found is evidence of absence. The problem lies in assertions such as "prove there is no God," where there is no evidence, but unlike an elephant in the room, it can't be proven.

Hastings,

Believers see the existence of God daily in His creation itself. That is clear evidence, to believers, of His existence. Believers also see and feel the effects of God’s Holy Spirit that dwells within them. That is clear evidence, to believers, of His existence.

If one chooses to reject that clear evidence, so be it.

We easily prove the nonexistence of things on a regular basis.

We can easily prove beyond reasonable doubt that Santa Claus does not exist. And we can easily prove beyond reasonable doubt that unicorns do not exist.

But no atheist here…or anywhere else…has ever, ever provided ‘any’ evidence to back up their claim that God does not exist.

What would define as evidence sufficient enough for you to believe in God?

I will say again I do believe there is a creator and Jesus was his representative. I believe Jesus was who he said he was. I believe this universe that revolves and works in perfect rhythm was no accident. There is a bunch I don't understand but I cannot believe the Hawking theory. As far as the organized religions including Christianity they have all been hijacked for nefarious reasons and used to subjugate ignorant people. Communism and this sexual perversion agenda are nothing more than religious cults themselves every bit as evil and being used to gain power and control much as religion always did.

I appreciate the civility, but the religious discussion over a beer is a bit of a fantasy - if I'm at a bar, it's because I'm there to enjoy myself, not to be preached at - that would not be a good idea. My friends are atheists and, amongst other things, we will occasionally make fun of believers and their beliefs. It's generally accepted and only some of the believers seem to get perturbed by it.

Check out this professor's logic......... I'm not saying he is correct or incorrect, but it certainly gives one something to ponder.....

(Steven Hales is professor of philosophy at Bloomsburg
University, Pennsylvania.)


A principle of folk logic is that one can’t prove a negative. Dr. Nelson L. Price, a Georgia minister, writes on his website that ‘one of the laws of logic is that you can’t prove a negative.’ Julian Noble, a physicist at the University of Virginia, agrees, writing in his ‘Electric Blanket of Doom’ talk that ‘we can’t prove a negative proposition.’ University of California at Berkeley Professor of Epidemiology Patricia Buffler asserts that ‘The reality is that we can never prove the negative, we can never prove the lack of effect, we can never prove that something is safe.’ A quick search on Google or Lexis-Nexis will give a mountain of similar examples.

But there is one big, fat problem with all this. Among professional logicians, guess how many think that you can’t prove a negative? That’s right: zero. Yes, Virginia, you can prove a negative, and it’s easy, too. For one thing, a real, actual law of logic is a negative, namely the law of non-contradiction. This law states that a proposition cannot be both true and not true. Nothing is both true and false. Furthermore, you can prove this law. It can be formally derived from the empty set using provably valid rules of inference. (I’ll spare you the boring details). One of the laws of logic is a provable negative. Wait… this means we’ve just proven that it is not the case that one of the laws of logic is that you can’t prove a negative. So we’ve proven yet another negative! In fact, ‘you can’t prove a negative’ is a negative, so if you could prove it true, it wouldn’t be true! Uh-oh.

Not only that, but any claim can be expressed as a negative, thanks to the rule of double negation. This rule states that any proposition P is logically equivalent to not-not-P. So pick anything you think you can prove. Think you can prove your own existence? At least to your own satisfaction? Then, using the exact same reasoning, plus the little step of double negation, you can prove that you aren’t nonexistent. Congratulations, you’ve just proven a negative. The beautiful part is that you can do this trick with absolutely any proposition whatsoever. Prove P is true, and you can prove that P is not false.

Some people seem to think that you can’t prove a specific sort of negative claim, namely that a thing does not exist. So it is impossible to prove that Santa Claus, unicorns, the Loch Ness Monster, God, pink elephants, WMD in Iraq, and Bigfoot don’t exist. Of course, this rather depends on what one has in mind by ‘prove.’ Can you construct a valid deductive argument with all true premises that yields the conclusion that there are no unicorns? Sure. Here’s one, using the valid inference procedure of modus tollens:

1. If unicorns had existed, then there is evidence in the fossil record.

2. There is no evidence of unicorns in the fossil record.

3. Therefore, unicorns never existed.

Someone might object that that was a bit too fast, after all, I didn’t prove that the two premises were true. I just asserted that they were true. Well, that’s right. However, it would be a grievous mistake to insist that someone prove all the premises of any argument they might give. Here’s why. The only way to prove, say, that there is no evidence of unicorns in the fossil record, is by giving an argument to that conclusion. Of course, one would then have to prove the premises of that argument by giving further arguments, and then prove the premises of those further arguments, ad infinitum. Which premises we should take on credit and which need payment up front is a matter of long and involved debate among epistemologists. But one thing is certain: if proving things requires that an infinite number of premises get proved first, we’re not going to prove much of anything at all, positive or negative.

Maybe people mean that no inductive argument will conclusively, indubitably prove a negative proposition beyond all shadow of a doubt. For example, suppose someone argues that we’ve scoured the world for Bigfoot, found no credible evidence of Bigfoot’s existence, and therefore there is no Bigfoot. A classic inductive argument. A Sasquatch defender can always rejoin that Bigfoot is reclusive, and might just be hiding in that next stand of trees. You can’t prove he’s not! (until the search of that tree stand comes up empty too). The problem here isn’t that inductive arguments won’t give us certainty about negative claims (like the nonexistence of Bigfoot), but that inductive arguments won’t give us certainty about anything at all, positive or negative. All observed swans are white, therefore all swans are white looked like a pretty good inductive argument until black swans were discovered in Australia.

The very nature of an inductive argument is to make a conclusion probable, but not certain, given the truth of the premises. That’s just what an inductive argument is. We’d better not dismiss induction because we’re not getting certainty out of it, though. Why do you think that the sun will rise tomorrow? Not because of observation (you can’t observe the future!), but because that’s what it has always done in the past. Why do you think that if you turn on the kitchen tap, that water will come out instead of chocolate? Why do you think you’ll find your house where you last left it? Why do you think lunch will be nourishing instead of deadly? Again, because that’s the way things have always been in the past. In other words, we use inferences — induction — from experiences in every aspect of our lives. As Bertrand Russell pointed out, the chicken who expects to be fed when he sees the farmer approaching, since that is what had always happened in the past, is in for a big surprise when instead of receiving dinner, he becomes dinner. But if the chicken had rejected inductive reasoning altogether, then every appearance of the farmer would be a surprise.

So why is it that people insist that you can’t prove a negative? I think it is the result of two things. (1) an acknowledgement that induction is not bulletproof, airtight, and infallible, and (2) a desperate desire to keep believing whatever one believes, even if all the evidence is against it. That’s why people keep believing in alien abductions, even when flying saucers always turn out to be weather balloons, stealth jets, comets, or too much alcohol. You can’t prove a negative! You can’t prove that there are no alien abductions! Meaning: your argument against aliens is inductive, therefore not incontrovertible, and since I want to believe in aliens, I’m going to dismiss the argument no matter how overwhelming the evidence against aliens, and no matter how vanishingly small the chance of extraterrestrial abduction.

If we’re going to dismiss inductive arguments because they produce conclusions that are probable but not definite, then we are in deep doo-doo. Despite its fallibility, induction is vital in every aspect of our lives, from the mundane to the most sophisticated science. Without induction, we know basically nothing about the world apart from our own immediate perceptions. So we’d better keep induction, warts and all, and use it to form negative beliefs as well as positive ones. You can prove a negative — at least as much as you can prove anything at all.

Probability, likelihood, Credibility, Justification.

Some things may be possible, but as we haven't found evidence for their existence it cannot be proven that they don't exist.

Other claims that are so improbable that they (having no evidential support), may be dismissed without evidence, Zeus living upon Mt Olympus, Odin, Thor, Yahweh, Allah, Brahman, etc.....

Yet, the absence of evidence where it should be found is evidence for the absence of the object in question.

The presence of a Being that is able demonstrate their Transcendence and Power over the natural world.

An open, honest and objective interaction.

No middlemen, no self proclaimed representative of God purporting to speak on Gods behalf, no 'this is what it says in my holy book...''

Do you believe in anything metaphysical? Time dimensions?Do you make allowances in your thinking that there is the possibility for the existence of anything else that you will never be able to define through the scientific method direct observation or any other physical means?

If something is not proven to exist and doesn't manifest in any detectable way - why consider it at all? Sounds like a description of nothing. Why worry about nothing?

My friend antlers has posted this before and I think it gets right through the BS of the doubters and their blanket assertion that none of it is true because of a passage in the Old Testament or because they haven’t really “looked”. They choose to not “look” because actually “looking” would show how fatally wrong they are and that would be a damaging blow to their little fragile egos. I’ve noticed that their (AACC) have continually ignored addressing the FACT that Jesus was a real man that really lived, he was crucified, died and was buried. His closest friends and followers…..you know the first hand witnesses MANY MANY witnesses saw him and spoke with him following his death and burial. Those FACTS are ignored by the cucks and they’re so enlightened that it’s beneath them to even respond. They can’t use their double talk, verbal diarrhea and typical dishonesty to obfuscate the truth so that’s why they’re always deflecting and using the same tired clichés…..they’re empty, vacuous but never in doubt. Those 2 cucks are so closed minded that NO AMOUNT OF PROOF would change their “minds”. It’s clear that they have made their choice and they will defend it vigorously. That’s fine with me since my salvation isn’t tied to their acceptance.

Interesting. Many others believe in other gods - I think there's something wrong with your "proof".

Why is believing in something intangible or unknowable important? Is it a matter of comfort? To give oneself the impression of truth, having the answers to questions where no answers exist? What is the purpose or point of faith? Why do people adhere to Hinduism or Islam, Judaism, Christianity, etc?

My question wasn’t limited to the idea of God alone. Many people, outside of religious thought, believe that there it the real possibility that time exists in coexisting dimensions. We certainly can’t prove that objectively. Do you allow for that possibility in your thinking or do you consider the concept unworthy of contemplation?

That wasn’t the point of my question. Why do you exert so much energy engaging people in conversation about religion? Why would it matter to you if someone found comfort in religion? You obviously don’t see a point to faith yet you have much to say about it.

Were you too born an atheist or is atheism something that you chose?

Great post!