"You cannot prove a negative". Really?

in #religion8 years ago

Notice, for a start, that "You cannot prove a negative" is itself a negative.

If you don't believe in ETs, it is because of the lack of evidence, nothing more.99% of the things you do not believe is because of the lack of evidence for it.

List of things that science has proven that does not exist based only on the total lack of evidence for it: luminiferous ether, phlogiston, the planet Vulcan, the atom Thomson, ultra-mundane corpuscles, vis viva, elan vital, calorie fluid, miasma, ciclol.

Sort:  

Nice logic (upvoted), but I don't think it's so easy as it seems.

About God: having not proof of existence it's not a proof on nonexistence (note that I'm agnostic, which is the best logical approach to this "problem")

If I tell you that I have an elephant in my garage, and you search for evidence and find none, should you be agnostic regarding my elephant? Or should you disbelief my claim and why?

If you limit the search to your garage, it's easy to say if the elephant is there or not.

But I think that for other problems it may be a little harder to decide.

EDIT consider subatomic particles, psychic phenomena, parallel universes etc

So in fact you can prove a negative, but in some cases it can be harder than in others.

I think that every truth and proof we may reach as humans is always limited and temporary. We rely on five senses or scientific tools but we always must be ready to revise our conclusions when incoming new data and technology arrive

How can you prove there isn't a way to prove a negative? ... Good one.

But your argument doesn't mean the argument isn't sound, it just means that we shouldn't believe something just because we cannot disprove it.

Penn Jillette puts it wonderfully when he says that atheism and agnosticism are answers to two different question. Agnosticism is the answer to the question: "does a god exist?". Atheism is the answer to the question: "do you believe god exists?".

Coin Marketplace

STEEM 0.17
TRX 0.13
JST 0.028
BTC 59467.52
ETH 2609.98
USDT 1.00
SBD 2.38