The fallacy of no proof equals proof

I am amazed that atheists claim "There is no God," and in the second breathe substantiate that claim by making the further claim, that they are not required to prove His nonexistence since you cannot prove something doesn't exist.

What does that mean?

There is no God because there is no God?

Baffling logic, really, that leads us right back to square one, stalemating the topic. I keep asking myself why does one think that making such a statement offers a free pass from substantiating their claim?

It confuses me to hear the non-existence of God doesn't have to be proved, since, of all oddities, there is no proof He exists.

So, I wonder what are the requisites of proof desired before belief would be possible?

Still, it is a fallacy that one need offer proof. For when one says, 'There is,' or 'There is no,' that person has made a declaration. That person is truly saying:

"I am stating there is no..."
"I am saying there is no..."
"I am asserting there is no...."

Notice the understood clause before 'there?'

Secondly, the use of the negative term (no), does not negate that that person is making a statement of fact. And when making a statement of fact, a party should be capable of proving it true.

Here is a few examples to consider.....

There is no hard drive in this computer.
There is no water in the faucet.
There is no air in the tire.
There is no light in the hallway.
There is no toilet tissue in the bathroom.

Which of these require no proof? And which of these can you not prove?

We should be in agreement that all of the above can be proven, so it is misleading to insist that just because you state something doesn't exist you are not required to offer proof.

Needless to say, you can prove a negative with the exception of:

A NEGATIVE NUMBER

For example, I opened two cans of chicken noodle soup. One can had 113 noodles; the other had 110 noodles.

Who would believe me if I said one can contains three negative noodles?

On the other hand, I can prove there are noodles in that can, just as I can prove there are NO watermelons in it.

Where does this all lead us?

I accept that it is atheists belief that there is no God, and I accept the fact that no one will ever prove to those party's satisfaction there is one.

But in fairness and honesty, if one believes there is no God, there must be some reasonable proof, beyond the rhetoric "God doesn't exist," that causes them to disbelieve.

Is there anything beside rhetoric to discredit the possibility?

Finally, I would ask: What reason can be made for claiming a free pass in offering proof? When one makes a statement, have they not obligated themselves to prove the truth of it?

Carl Sagan: The absence of evidence does not equal evidence of absence, anyone?

not even that, for what if the Son of the Watermelon was inside? There's always a solution, only the improbable needs abit more explanation. What if it was possible to trick oneself out of any sinful burden through using language alone and an ancient book and leaving the rest up to stars and telepathy. Just an idea...

Thanks! This could be a fun thread if it doesn't turn into a discussion of what constitutes the length of a truth noodle.

I agree with you. If you read the other thread you'll discover how I proved there was no toilet tissue by the same logic. No one bothered to tell me I didn't look in the right places which was a surprise.

Trick oneself out of a sinful burden? No way! Everybody will just get in their time machine and escape damnation!

And what if the can was filled with watermelon seeds from thousands of different species... That would certainly be something. I think you really agree with me for I am taking the oposite side as the non-believers-of-the-church-of-the-once-empty-always empty-toilet-paper-roll. There will always be some traces of the paper left, and I'd bet I'll prove it if I had the equipment and the chance. God is Love.

For every hypothesis that we take to be true we must do everything in our power to find invalidating evidence, if it is out there, to undermine it.

Appealing to a lack of proof is a logical fallacy. It is argumentum ad ignorantiam. It is an error in reasoning.

I agree to some extent, but doesn't this place any adequate solution to a dilemma to be fundamental and no better than the faith system which has lived for nearly 6000 years now, relying on God's revelations and gifts together with spirit and ingenuety. There are ancient nuclear plants in Gabon Africa. Who said they weren't started by some ancient civilisation? Maybe by the servants of the Creator, the stars and messengers of heaven.

They very well could have been. Or they very well could have just popped into existence from the future or from sentient nematodes which no longer exist.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

Atheists believe that there is little to no evidence for a/any God(s).
A-theism is not a Anti-theistic belief system. It is the just the lack of a belief in Theism.

Christians are atheists in their belief of Odin, Zeus, Poseidon, Ra, Horus, Vishnu, Buddha etc. Atheists in America have just gone one god further.

Well, I call myself a Christian and being Norwegian I believe in our forefathers, but I do not worship them, I speek with them through telepathy and language. Being our forefathers they represent wisdom and Love, and the Word of God is all about Love. Love has no name or many names, but only one universal expression. What happened to the Kiss of Life anyway? From Adam to Jesus it has been the path to wisdom and True Light, Water of Life.

reply to post by garyo1954

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The burden of proof always lies on the claimant. You claim god exists? Fine, then show us the proof! Pretty simple premise really, I don't see how you could find that difficult to understand. So this thread is really quite nonsensical really.

J.

Not really, for faith in a scriptual sence like science demands two witnesses to a case. If these two witnesses see God and are the only two to see him, how could they possibly prove they saw anything? Seeing is believing. Science is claiming to being able to prove. Faith use different words and systems to discribe a case, be it of scientific, juridical or theosophical nature. According to our belief God preexisted the universe, i.e. the foretelling of other universes and a limit to where space-time bites it's tail. We believe mass and the great expance, i.e. a melting snowball of subatomic particles in the empty void of space was the first God created. Then he instigated the big bang, or the Light. And this happened roughly between 17 and 13 billion years ago. Reading from the sky today we know that Big Bang happened about 13 billion years ago reading from the background radiation of deep space, while some parts of the universe's globular clusters seem to be a couple of billion years older and others much younger. If Light emits sound it is possible to communicate through time and space using wormholes one could even connect with future and prior people and media. I believe I have this ability to through a coded language being able to communicate with many people throughout the creation period. And if matter could be made from mass or a soup of subatomic particles and Light, it is possible for man to do what God has already done. And maybe we have already created new microuniverses over Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

[edit on 17/5/2008 by Neo Christian Mystic]

I've heard the same expression in many ways. Some claim we are all atheists, they just believe in one less God that Christians do.

But that is not what I'm asking.

In reality and from the stand point of this thread it would not matter if God existed or not, the central question is:

Why does a person stating a nonexistence of God, claim an exemption from offering proof?

I most certainly agree that we should look at counter arguments to the issue, but the argument, "There is no God because there is no proof," is baseless.

That statement intellectually dishonest. It offers what one calls a fact in saying 'there is no God' and then validate that fact with the presupposed notion, "since there is no God, I can't be required to prove His nonexistence."

Is this not the proverbial 'dog chasing his tail?'

I hope others will join in and help shed more light on this. I'm encouraged by the responses so far.

Thanks guys. Now if I can only sucker......errrr......get a few atheists responses.

Trying to prove God is like proving Darwinism. Darwinism or Evolution is the only scientific theory I know of that can't produce a single evidence in a lab. Evolution basically says the same thing as supporters of intelligent design, only the IDists rely on mysteries handed over to us, apparently from God, through our forefathers rather than sorting it all out to the numbers. Scientists have recreated the scenario from Genesis 2 where Eve is created with mice. It's strange that whoever gave us the Torah had a great insight into genetics and science.

reply to post by garyo1954

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In logic, what you are describing is "the fallacy of subjectivism".

Simply put:

I believe/want (the proposition) to be true

therefore

(the proposition) is true

To quote The Art of Reasoning 2nd expanded edition by David Kelley, "The first and most straightforward violation of objectivity is the fallacy of subjectivism. This fallacy is committed whenever we hold that something is true merely because we believe or want it to be true." The logical statement above is also from that book.

Whenever religion enters into logical debate both sides ussually seem to be guilty of this fallacy.

Vas

Thank you sir! It is good to know that I'm not that far gone as to have made this up in some weakened state of mind, or an inebriated binge, as some might call it.

I would agree with your point that logical discussion (of religion) brings out the rejection of objectivity. And while I have never heard a 'believer' claiming God exists because God exists, it could happen, I suppose.

Now, I respect a person's beliefs, and if they say they believe there is no God, I respect that as well.

However, when a person makes the statement there is no God and pronounces himself/herself exempted from offering proof of what they are calling fact, I'm at a loss to understand their thinking.

I fail to see any logic in use when one is saying there is no God because God doesn't exist.

Kudos for naming the problem, sir!

i'm sorry, but i have to point out how you're failing at logical consistency.




...most of us don't claim "there is no god" we claim to not believe in one.



um...duh?
that's how a logical argument works, the affirmative position (in this case "there is a god") must be proven and the negative position is correct or at least equally likely if such proof is not given.




no, just that you don't understand that basic tenets of logical discourse.



it's not a claim, it's saying that you don't believe a claim
the claim is "there is a god"
atheism is a response to that claim of "i don't see any evidence to back it up so i'm not going to believe in it"



well, that's kind of how things work. we don't believe in stuff unless there's evidence for it
there are about 4862 gods of some sort that we don't believe in and thousands more mythical creatures that we all don't believe in because there's absolutely no evidence.



...
...
...i'm saying that tinkerbell isn't orbiting the sun between pluto and neptune in a highly elliptical orbit that passes through the orbit of venus and nearly touches the sun.

not like you're going to ask me to prove that one...



except that you're treating this as if it's a statement in a vacuum when it is truly a statement that someone hasn't proven something else.



the person taking the affirmative position that there are those things can quite easily refute the negative position
unlike the whole god thing.

and also those are statements in vacuum, first statements in a discussion, unlike the atheist position which only began when the concept of god began, so there was really nobody who just randomly stated "there is no god"



*facepalm*
the argument starts waaaay back when someone said "there is a god"
not when someone stated "there is no god"


you fail at logical consistency.

Hello Gary,

I'm on the otherside of the planet in Asia so I just woke up Having my morning coffee. I think the answer to you question is this.

Atheists say they we don't believe in God. What we really mean is that there very well could be a God but we don't see any evidence of there being one. It is however a nice hypothesis. In sight of the lack of any demonstrable evidence in our eyes we choose to remain in our state of disbelief.

Could there be a God ? Sure there could. Yet, we haven't seen even the slightest inkling in rational logical means of there being one. "If God wanted to send us a message, and ancient writings were the only way he could think of doing it, he could have done a better job." Carl Sagan

If there were a God I am fairly certain the chances of him being the God of Abraham is the same as him/her/it being Thor, Mithra, Zeus etc. Alot of Theists think Atheist are mad at god. To Atheists that is the same as being mad at the toothy fairy.

As was said earlier, "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." True. Atheists could be wrong.
(Carl Sagan was an Atheist.)
He also said, "You can't convince a believer of anything; for their belief is not based on evidence, it's based on a deep seated need to believe"

It is just as likely that we are living in a simulation in some Alien kid's computer 2000 years from now, and we all just believe we are alive. Hope we all speak Alien because at reboot time he is deleting everyone that didn't learn Alien.

Okay, y’all can have your oodles of noodles, chicken soup or watermelon in a can. But what, pray tell, is that empty space in between bites? I hold that this empty space contains nothing at all but the loving grace of ‘G-d’, the invisible force behind good eating. I see no label of ingredients to include ‘G-d’ as a reason to ‘prove’ that what I’m eating is indeed food or something else my mind created for my eating pleasure. For all I know, my alternate reality could be that I’m eating cardboard as foodstuff. The point is we cannot rely entirely on logic to define realities for those who don’t see ‘G-d’ as the source of everything. (Disclaimer: I’m rambling again because I’m hungry and it’s past my lunchtime!)

Proof must come prior to ALL other hypothesis as it is the most basic rule to reason.

There is No God *Looks around* Nope don't see any God(s). Now anyone can feel free disprove my hypothesis.

or

There is a God - Provide 1 proof in order to start your hypothesis.

Ahh see this is why i love being agnostic, because i can say everyone could be right and i have no idea. Lovely to sit back and watch it happen, however i will comment.

Firstly, there could of course be a god, i havn't seen any evidence yet but i'm still hopeful. Secondly, if god does not exist proving that would be impossible, proving something isn't there is kind of a tough one.

Like right now, i'm starting a religion, basically it states that a small ant, living on neptune, is controlling all of the things that happen in the universe. The ant is blue and he/she is named Dave. That's right, gods called Dave. Prove me i'm wrong

That's the problem, no one cannot disprove god even if god truly does not exist. However that does not mean god doesn't exist, god still could of course. I have no clue, god bless agnosticism, oh wait erm science bless agnosticism? Well anyway i love agnosticism.