"You Can’t Prove A Negative"

[Aetixintro]

Yes you can! By not proving a positive! That is, as far into the work of analysis, you are "proving" a negative everything you must admit to not finding anything under a certain scope of research, whatever this may be! The LHC looking for the Higg's boson or something else...

Dr Michael V. Antony writes in his article, The New Atheism - Where’s The Evidence?, that "2. You Can’t Prove A Negative" and I disagree with this, obviously, in naming a "category"/research "null"/"nothing"/"zero finding".

[Edit:] It's as simple as identifying an empty place! [End of edit.]

Cheers!

[Metadigital]

It sounds to me like you're trying to use the laws of inference on an informal, rather than formal, argument. If so, I wouldn't agree that this is reasonable to do.

[Aetixintro]

Should I write down a deduction for you given some premises? Would it help? I am fully aware of the Paradox of Ravens.

Example for your thoughts:
You look for a highly valuable object on a public square. Well, the square is empty. There is nothing there that's highly valuable to you ie. golden necklace by Gucci or some. So you have proven by time and place that there is not a highly valuable object for you in this public square! Comprende?

Cheers!

[Impenitent]

for you...

the square is filled with breathable air...

your idea of valuable is misplaced...

-Imp

[Metadigital]

Example for your thoughts:
You look for a highly valuable object on a public square. Well, the square is empty. There is nothing there that's highly valuable to you ie. golden necklace by Gucci or some. So you have proven by time and place that there is not a highly valuable object for you in this public square! Comprende?

Actually, you missed the hidden treasure of Captain Neckbeard hidden underneath one of the cobblestones and a wedding ring abandoned in an Easter Egg that was never found in the spring.

(These wouldn't be found in your lifetime anyway, so no one would blame you for missing them)

[horntooth]

new atheism?

as for the positive/ negative- when you say "god doesn't exist" this is also a positive assertion. you are claiming that you have positive knowledge about god, i.e. his non-existence.

i could go on and say "your brain doesn't exist". would i have to prove such an assertion? of course i would, because it's not a negative assertion, it's a positive one, where i claimed i have positive knowledge about your brain, i.e. about it's non-existence.

"your brain doesn't exist" and "your brain does exist" are both positive, the first giving a positive answer, the second giving a negative one; both are positive in essence, but are different in contents.

as for the proof- not proving an assertion with "a positive contents" doesn't prove the opposite position, because you cannot know that it will not once be proven, or that it's not already proved by someone else, but above the level, or outside of our comprehension (just because some people have never seen snow doesn't mean that it doesn't exist).

[Aetixintro]

...but it definitely means snow doesn't exist where they have been up to this point ie. there has not been snow "here", place, in this period, time. And this is indeed proven!

However, this "negative" usually is understood in the context of (natural) laws, but even these must have the possibility to be "proven", confirmed - so consequently I'd say one should be able to "prove" a negative law as well because they need to apply to reality and they need a possible set-up of scientific equipment which the absurdly asserted so-called laws never will have the possibility of because they are simply false!

Cheers!

[Rortabend]

Given up on brains in vats!?

[Aetixintro]

Coming... (Please make these comments in the appropriate thread. It's also possible to send a PM.)

[horntooth]

...but it definitely means snow doesn't exist where they have been up to this point ie. there has not been snow "here", place, in this period, time. And this is indeed proven!

because snow "doesn't exist" in nigeria, doesn't mean that it doesn't exist in norway. so, the essential non-existence of snow is not proven by the fact that there's no snow in nigeria, even thou there's could be a tribesman there who is a "asnowist".

[Aetixintro]

Yes.

[evangelicalhumanist]

Should I write down a deduction for you given some premises? Would it help? I am fully aware of the Paradox of Ravens.

Example for your thoughts:
You look for a highly valuable object on a public square. Well, the square is empty. There is nothing there that's highly valuable to you ie. golden necklace by Gucci or some. So you have proven by time and place that there is not a highly valuable object for you in this public square! Comprende?

Cheers!

Your argument is far too narrow, and does not reflect what Antony (and others, usually) mean when the state that you cannot prove a negative. They mean in a general sense, rather than in a quite specific and local sense. Although I can prove by ostension that there is no such thing as a unicorn in my bathroom, that proof says nothing whatever about the possible existence of unicorns anywhere, and at any time, in the universe. In order to prove that (by ostension), I would need simultaneous access to the entire universe. If my access was not simultaneous, it is perfectly possible that an existing, but so far unfound, unicorn might move into an area I've just looked at and am thus unlikely to return to. My not finding a unicorn in such circumstances does not in any way prove their non-existence.

[Aetixintro]

Yes. (I'd leave out "ostension", though.)

[chaz wyman]

Should I write down a deduction for you given some premises? Would it help? I am fully aware of the Paradox of Ravens.

Example for your thoughts:
You look for a highly valuable object on a public square. Well, the square is empty. There is nothing there that's highly valuable to you ie. golden necklace by Gucci or some. So you have proven by time and place that there is not a highly valuable object for you in this public square! Comprende?

Cheers!

Ravens aside, and proofs of Boson's aside. If we get the the matter at hand...
The New Atheists claim is: that Theists insist that their assertion for the existence of God is as valid or more valid than the Atheists claim that God does not exist.
Theists then claim that Atheists have a belief system whereby they believe that god does not exist.
Conversely Atheists insist that Atheism is not a belief but an absence of a belief.
As atheists demand a proof, theists respond by demanding the same...

However, there is no symmetry in these two views. Theists are the ones making the claim, and the burden of proof is on them to establish what it is that they mean by God and to support that with some sort of evidence, reason, or combination of the two.
For Atheists it is then to refute any statements made. There is no burden of proof here.

As it goes, atheists have made some pretty good inroads into refuting the claims of theists on logical grounds, but this should not be seem as proof.

PS - As for the valuables in the square - the theists claims are of the order of - well you can't prove they don't exist just by looking - the valuables can only be seen by people that believe in them, otherwise they are invisible.

[Aetixintro]

I think I can give this version:
Theists claim they can rightfully believe in God and some other.

Atheists in my opinion are counter to this claim (and the hosts of others). Some atheists even deeply resent to have a possible notion of something extraordinary.

So in the modest view, being reasonable people, people should shut up about other people's (religious) beliefs.