Why do people claim that proving God's non-existence is proving a negative?

[PetrusRomanus]

The fact that theists resort to this level of philosophical cowardice is one of the reasons I think they are wrong. God’s existence is not obvious, and anyone with any intellectual honesty will admit as much.

Sorry but I do not agree with you at all. His existence is clearly obvious. So obvious that even primitive humans had belief in afterlife even. It is instinctual to know of a Creator on the most basic level.

Secondly, I did specify that particularly “to me” it is self evident. Really, it should be self evident to everyone but I thought I already explained that in posts after that there are other various reasons why it may not be so obvious to others. Some of these things being our natural weakness being exploited, giving whoever making the opposing claims the upper hand, not because the claims are true but because we as humans have our intellect clouded by our wounded state.

 

[ThinkingSapien]

I don’t think this absolves us of the burden of proof - but I don’t think anyone is absolved of the burden of proof. Both sides should make arguments and see who convinces whom.

There is a burden of proof for both the claims “There is a God” and there “There are no gods”. If some one says “I dont know that there is a God” is only making a claim about their knowledge, but not a claim about God. So this person has no burden of proof for the state of anything outside her own mind.

 

[nmgauss]

Sorry but I do not agree with you at all. His existence is clearly obvious. So obvious that even primitive humans had belief in afterlife even. It is instinctual to know of a Creator on the most basic level.

Secondly, I did specify that particularly “to me” it is self evident. Really, it should be self evident to everyone but I thought I already explained that in posts after that there are other various reasons why it may not be so obvious to others. Some of these things being our natural weakness being exploited, giving whoever making the opposing claims the upper hand, not because the claims are true but because we as humans have our intellect clouded by our wounded state.

If God’s existence is clearly obvious, why didn’t the Greek and Roman pagans believe this? Why don’t Buddhists believe this?

 

[PetrusRomanus]

Interesting example. Because it isn’t self-evident that the the sky is blue.

Go outside around midnight and look up. Does the sky look blue?

The sky is still blue at midnight. There isn’t any light, but just because my vision is clouded by darkness at midnight does not mean that the sky stops being blue. It means that I’m limited and my weaknesses or deficiencies have the upper hand over logic and reasoning in the immediate moment of midnight.

You can say, “It’s only blue during the daytime.” But that isn’t self-evident either. When I look up at an airplane, a balloon or a kite, they don’t look blue either. The ground didn’t look blue when I went skydiving and neither did my chute. If things don’t look blue when you are looking at them through the sky, then how can the sky be blue?

I’m not sure I follow you here. Whether I see 10 airplanes or kites that are yellow doesn’t stop the sky from being blue during the day time. It’s blue. The last I looked out earlier today it was still blue and that was extremely self evident as it ever is everyday.

Saying God’s existence is self-evident is like saying it is self-evident that the sky is blue. Eventually, you have to back it up. You have to give me some reason for believing that God exists.

Well much like simply taking a look at the sky and seeing that it is plainly blue, all one has to do is look around at existence and creation itself and see God in it all. And like I also stated earlier, proving that the sky is blue is unnecessary and proving the obvious. If you want to prove positively that the color I’m seeing is something else in the sky, you’ll have to be the one to tell me it’s not blue and why. Simple as that.

I’ve never been given a consistent definition of what God is. The definitions I have been given are either contradictory, nebulous, or highly dubious. How do you expect me to disprove the existence of something without telling me what the thing that I am disproving is?

I’m not sure what kind of definition of God you’re looking for but I see God as a Creator Being who is love, morality, and goodness itself. It is because He exists that these things exist in life.

 

[PetrusRomanus]

If God’s existence is clearly obvious, why didn’t the Greek and Roman pagans believe this? Why don’t Buddhists believe this?

Is nobody reading what I’m writing? lol.

Clearly they had a belief in something that is beyond this world. That’s a start, first of all. Secondly, the not so obviousness of it all explanation is becoming redundant at this point. The only reason doubt has an upperhand is because of human weakness and deficiency, not because of non-existence.

 

[PetrusRomanus]

Not quite. No one is even bothering to “prove” God does not exist. Not believing in God’s existance does not require proof of that there is no existance of God.

I think it does in fact require proof. If you told me that this world, this life, these discussions and interactions we’re having, the food I ate an hour ago, etc wasn’t real and is all just some kind of illusion or world like in The Matrix, you better believe you’d have the full burden of proof resting on your shoulders to convince me otherwise. So until then, the food I ate an hour ago, this message forum, the world, the bills I have to pa etc continue to exist and is obvious and self evident.

Not believeing in faires does not require proof that there is no existance of faires.
The burden of proof lies upon the one making the positive claim.

The existence of fairies isn’t a given though. They in fact, do not exist. So since it is you making this positive claim, then you will in this case have to prove their existence.

The existence of God isn’t a positive claim, it’s an obvious one. Anyone who makes a positive claim that God doesn’t exist is the one that has some explaining to do, just as one would have to explain that this internet message forum and discussion isn’t real and I’m really just in The Matrix dreaming away.

 

[PetrusRomanus]

Why not god talking to everybody at once?

Strictly materially speaking, since that is the only thing you are concerned with, how would talking to everybody at once be proof for someone who is deaf?

Of course if it actually happened tomorrow everyone would hear it and witness it, but not the deaf person. Now this is kind of my point: the deaf person wouldn’t hear God’s voice not because God didn’t speak, but because of their own deficiency, which happens to be hearing in this hypothetical situation.

God talks to us everyday and showers us with His graces, only everyone (including myself at times) is defected by sin which deafens us to His voice. We do not hear not because He isn’t speaking, but because we are deficient in hearing.

How about the pope giving some scientific advances that are way ahead of our time out of nowhere?

I don’t understand how you would think this to be proof of God? The Pope is a man that is bound by the laws of this earth nor is he a scientist. God has the power to give us scientific advancements and he does with the great minds he lets flourish.

How about a miracle working god-incarnate in reality instead of a book?

Jesus

Your arguments were so terrible that I didn’t feel like addressing all of them. Your emotion=soul argument is one of those. I’m sorry, but the evidence for a soul is not even close to the evidence for emotion… I’m done. I feel like I’m talking to an insane person.

I didn’t say “emotion = soul”. I asked why you’d believe in the evidence for one immaterial thing over another with the same set of evidence. Apparently you never answered that question.

 

[Bradski]

The existence of God isn’t a positive claim, it’s an obvious one. Anyone who makes a positive claim that God doesn’t exist is the one that has some explaining to do.

If it were obvious, then it would be obvious to everyone at every time. But it isn’t. You have to be told about Him otherwise you wouldn’t know of His existence. You may lay awake at nights wondering how everything started or if there is a meaning to life but humankind has done that since we started to walk upright.

Imagine it you had been born 10,000 years ago. Could you explain how it would be obvious to you then?

And it is literally impossible to prove a negative. If StrawberryJam’s dragon actually exists, then you obviously can’t prove it doesn’t. If, on the other hand it doesn’t (but he claims it does), then there is literally nothing you can do to prove it (likewise Russell’s tea pot).

But as Petrus above says: if an atheist makes the claim that God does not exist, then the burden of proof is on her. But then she wouldn’t be an atheist in the generally accepted term. That is, someone who personally doesn’t believe that God (or the dragon or the teapot) exists.

 

[PetrusRomanus]

If it were obvious, then it would be obvious to everyone at every time. But it isn’t. You have to be told about Him otherwise you wouldn’t know of His existence. You may lay awake at nights wondering how everything started or if there is a meaning to life but humankind has done that since we started to walk upright.

Imagine it you had been born 10,000 years ago. Could you explain how it would be obvious to you then?

Whenever the first humans were created, they had direct knowledge of God as they interacted with Him, i.e. Adam and Eve. If it were some time after that, a belief in a spiritual realm would still have been obvious as other early humans and the evidence for their beliefs in an afterlife have shown.

But again, I think I’ve explained it so many times now why it’s not obvious to everyone at every time. Please look through my previous posts.

And it is literally impossible to prove a negative. If StrawberryJam’s dragon actually exists, then you obviously can’t prove it doesn’t.

StrawberryJam’s dragon isn’t a negative though, it’s a positive. It isn’t self evident that dragons exist, so he’d have to convince us otherwise. God’s existence is obvious, so the one making the positive claim against this needs to prove it.

I could state Bradski, you do not exist. Your name isn’t Bradski, the person you see in the mirror every day isn’t Bradski. Your memories and what you see every day is not real. Who has the burden of proof? You or me?

But as Petrus above says: if an atheist makes the claim that God does not exist, then the burden of proof is on her. But then she wouldn’t be an atheist in the generally accepted term. That is, someone who personally doesn’t believe that God (or the dragon or the teapot) exists.

God isn’t the dragon though. God is reality, he is life. If someone says that our life isn’t real, we’d ask them for proof.

 

[StrawberryJam]

I think it does in fact require proof. If you told me that this world, this life, these discussions and interactions we’re having, the food I ate an hour ago, etc wasn’t real and is all just some kind of illusion or world like in The Matrix, you better believe you’d have the full burden of proof resting on your shoulders to convince me otherwise. So until then, the food I ate an hour ago, this message forum, the world, the bills I have to pa etc continue to exist and is obvious and self evident.

The existence of fairies isn’t a given though. They in fact, do not exist. So since it is you making this positive claim, then you will in this case have to prove their existence.

The existence of God isn’t a positive claim, it’s an obvious one. Anyone who makes a positive claim that God doesn’t exist is the one that has some explaining to do, just as one would have to explain that this internet message forum and discussion isn’t real and I’m really just in The Matrix dreaming away.

Tell me who exactly has made the positve claim that your God or any other does not exist, or that faires do not exist.

Who has done this?

Can you or do you understand how philosophy works?
Hint: It does not work by someone making a positive claim without anything behind it.
You simply do not understand what philosophy is, and would be better served in another area here where your simply saying it is so will suffice.

 

[Bradski]

If someone says that our life isn’t real, we’d ask them for proof.

Or if someone says there isn’t a dragon,or isn’t a teapot you might well ask them for proof. How do you prove that something doesn’t exist?

I’m really not sure that you understand the concepts here.

 

[ThinkingSapien]

The sky is still blue at midnight. There isn’t any light, but just because my vision is clouded by darkness at midnight does not mean that the sky stops being blue. It means that I’m limited and my weaknesses or deficiencies have the upper hand over logic and reasoning in the immediate moment of midnight.

For me, thanks to light pollution, the sky is orange at midnight. One day i plan on going on a trip to see dark skys. Makes it very difficult to use my telescope to see faint objects. At any rate the color of an item is dependent of the wavelengths of light thst it emits, absorbs, reflects, and refracts. For the sky this changes with the angle that the sun is entering the atmosphere, the amount of water vapor and other particles in the air, and occasionally interaction with light reflected from Venus.

I dont think there are any places on earth to which you can go where there is no light illuminating the sky. Between the sun, moon, stars, planets, and scattering of light in the atmosphere there is going to be some light. So to say there idnt any light at night doesnt sound correct. Now if you say its so dark that you are not able to sense the light i would not object.

The phydics of light and volors are an interesting topic. But when attributing color to an object at bedt we can talk about things like the color something appears from an angle when illuminated by white light or the color something appears under some other lighting condition.

Pardon my mistakes, sent from my mobile device.

 

[ngill09]

Quit being intellectually lazy. You can’t just say “it’s obvious” and expect people to take you seriously.

 

[ngill09]

God isn’t the dragon though. God is reality, he is life. If someone says that our life isn’t real, we’d ask them for proof.

But that’s the thing - God isn’t just reality or life. God is a person (or in Catholicism, 3 persons), with a specific personality and characteristics. So when you say that God is reality, you are saying that reality is a person. That is a positive claim. In fact, it would be like saying that reality is a computer program. So you are the one who is making a claim like “the matrix is real”. You could say that reality is self-evident. But that reality is a person is not self-evident at all, and desperately needs justification.

 

[polytropos]

There is a burden of proof for both the claims “There is a God” and there “There are no gods”. If some one says “I dont know that there is a God” is only making a claim about their knowledge, but not a claim about God. So this person has no burden of proof for the state of anything outside her own mind.

I agree, to some extent. Much, if not all, of what I take as “proof” is not positive evidence (and what I took as “proof” as an atheist was necessarily not positive evidence either). For this reason I see the shirking of the burden of proof as somewhat silly, because I think everyone can provide some reason for holding the position that they hold. I also don’t have any interest in putting the burden of proof on someone else because, if there is proof, I should think I would like to share it.

Likewise, I imagine someone saying “I don’t know that there is a God” holds their position for a reason and is not just stating that they have not looked into it.

 

[PetrusRomanus]

Or if someone says there isn’t a dragon,or isn’t a teapot you might well ask them for proof. How do you prove that something doesn’t exist?

I’m really not sure that you understand the concepts here.

I definitely understand, but you have it backwards.

If I say the dragon doesn’t exist, that is not a positive claim, because the dragon’s existence is not self evident. Therefore the one making the claim that it does exist needs to do the proving, just as the person making the claim that the sky is always hot pink would need to do, because it is not self evident that the sky is hot pink, it is self evident that the sky is blue.

 

[PetrusRomanus]

But that’s the thing - God isn’t just reality or life. God is a person (or in Catholicism, 3 persons), with a specific personality and characteristics. So when you say that God is reality, you are saying that reality is a person. That is a positive claim. In fact, it would be like saying that reality is a computer program. So you are the one who is making a claim like “the matrix is real”. You could say that reality is self-evident. But that reality is a person is not self-evident at all, and desperately needs justification.

I’m not the person saying the matrix is real. My life, your life, everyone on this message forum’s life is real. God is a Creator Being who is life, love, goodness, and existence itself. It’s only possible that we exist because He exists. For anyone to say our life or life does not exist, we’d ask them for proof. We don’t have to prove to anyone that our life is real, because it is self evident that life is real.

 

[ngill09]

I’m not the person saying the matrix is real. My life, your life, everyone on this message forum’s life is real. God is a Creator Being who is life, love, goodness, and existence itself. It’s only possible that we exist because He exists. For anyone to say our life or life does not exist, we’d ask them for proof. We don’t have to prove to anyone that our life is real, because it is self evident that life is real.

But again, your claim is not that our life is real - your claim is that our life came from a god. Your attempt to confuse the issue is suspicious.

 

[PetrusRomanus]

Now if you say its so dark that you are not able to sense the light i would not object.

Sounds like a good description and yes, that’s actually what I meant. Much like our senses can be so deficient in seeing and hearing in other areas that we are not able to sense God, but that doesn’t mean that light and God do not exist.

 

[PetrusRomanus]

Tell me who exactly has made the positve claim that your God or any other does not exist, or that faires do not exist.

Who has done this?

Can you or do you understand how philosophy works?
Hint: It does not work by someone making a positive claim without anything behind it.
You simply do not understand what philosophy is, and would be better served in another area here where your simply saying it is so will suffice.

Perhaps it is you not quite understanding what I’m talking about here. And quite honestly I do not care how philosophy works and I wouldn’t consider this thread a philosophical one. I am simply stating an observation.

I reiterate…

Making a claim that a fairy exists is a positive claim. You must convince me. Their existence is not self evident.

Stating the obvious that God exists is not a positive claim. There’s no need to prove something that is plainly there.

I feel at this point this thread is starting to go in circles, usually a sign that the discussion has ended or that someone cannot come up with anything else to challenge these statements.