Proving a universal negative

J

Jeff 152

Registered Senior Member
Most atheists on this forum including myself define atheism as a lack of belief rather than disbelief because it is impossible to prove a universal negative. Since you can not prove that the IPU or FSM or god do not exist, then it is seen as faith based to claim that any of these do not exist, and thus so called "strong atheists" are hypocrites.

But can we prove a univeral negative for something that is contradictory? Can we confidently assert that cubic spheres do not and can not exist because they have mutually exclusive attributes? If god were the same way, wouldn't it be possible to disprove his existence? I still believe that we can never disprove god 100% because there will always be ways for the religious to weasel out of any contradiction. I am just curious how others feel about this because numerous atheist sites are upset about this "lack of belief definition" and stick fast to an active disbelief based on logical contradictions in the nature of gods existence, mostly some form of the impossibility of an entity being omniscient, omnibenevolent, and freewilled simultaneously.
 
My view is actual disbelief, because I do not require 100% certainty for everything I believe. It's enough that the existence of anything supernatural has never been shown to exist to any degree.
 
Logically speaking agnostic atheist is the most sound.
Strong atheistism is logically flawed because its impossible to prove a negative, but perhaps its more intellectually honest.
Yes, it is possible to disprove the typical God most people do believe in but people, a point one_raven has made, can redefine omniscience and omnipotence to mean only that which is logically possible and then basically your left with a superman type being with good predictability and that is God.
 
Jeff 152 said:
Most atheists on this forum including myself define atheism as a lack of belief rather than disbelief because it is impossible to prove a universal negative. Since you can not prove that the IPU or FSM or god do not exist, then it is seen as faith based to claim that any of these do not exist, and thus so called "strong atheists" are hypocrites.

But can we prove a univeral negative for something that is contradictory? Can we confidently assert that cubic spheres do not and can not exist because they have mutually exclusive attributes? If god were the same way, wouldn't it be possible to disprove his existence? I still believe that we can never disprove god 100% because there will always be ways for the religious to weasel out of any contradiction. I am just curious how others feel about this because numerous atheist sites are upset about this "lack of belief definition" and stick fast to an active disbelief based on logical contradictions in the nature of gods existence, mostly some form of the impossibility of an entity being omniscient, omnibenevolent, and freewilled simultaneously.
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Modern civilization suffers from an unfortunate propensity to idolize the human mind. People tend to believe that famous scientists have some extraordinary power to sculpt a perfect model of the world from a block crystalline logic, this logical world being the pure form of reality. But because intellectuals are in difficulty, their so-called logical worlds are likewise full of difficulties. With a bit more sophistication, intellectuals just do what even lower creatures do: they mentally impose their own subjective values upon what their senses perceive. These values end in the physical affairs of eating, sleeping, mating and defending, which in turn end in death.
 
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Why the obsession with absolute proofs?

There are no absolute proofs or disproofs. Strict mathematical logic provides proofs that are merely consistent with a set of axioms. The axioms themselves are not provable. They are accepted as "Self Evident Truths." That is just jargon for "based on faith." I happen to accept the axioms and most find it difficult to reject any. However, mathematical logic, even though close to acheiving absolute proofs, does not quite make it.

BTW: Mathematics has a lot of negative proofs. For example: it has been proven that there is no possbile method of solving for the roots of 5th degree & higher order polynomials. You can find numerical solutions and you can find solutions for special cases, but there you will never find a general formula or algorithm as has been done for quadratics, cubics, & quartics.

Neither atheists nor theists have any basis for requiring that the other side prove or disprove the existence of god. The quest for such a proof is a waste of time and the demand for such a proof by those who disagree with you is either deliberate obfuscaction or an indication of ignorance on the part of the demander.

The most you can hope for is a consistent set of beliefs. In general, atheists usually have the most consistent set of beliefs and fundamentalists are at the opposite end of the spectrum, with views that are not even close to anything resembling consistency.

I am an atheist and I could do a better job of supporting creationism that that done by most fundamentalists. Those who believe in a creation 6000 to 25,000 years ago hardly ever provide any reasonable support for such a belief, although a few use a mature universe argument, which helps a lot (unfortunately for them, that is also consistent with a creation which happened last week).
 
What is this "can't prove a negative" stuff? I prove negatives all the time. It's a matter of constraints. Within the constraints of a given circuit or program, I prove that "thus and such isn't the problem" all the time.

The best (or most well known) negative proof in science is the Michaelson - Morely experiment where it was proved without a doubt that a medium with the attributes claimed for the "luminiferous ether" does not exist.

The problem with proving that a generic god or "universal intelligence" dosen't exist is that there are no constraints or they are so vague that they can be interpreted and revised at will. It's beyond nature or analysis or some such nonsense (and then the claimants will of course proceed to tell you how certain they are that "it" exists - laughable).
 
lightgigantic said:
But because intellectuals are in difficulty, their so-called logical worlds are likewise full of difficulties.
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What an incredible dream world you've created for yourself.

The triumphs of the intellect have opened up the universe to us, you troglodyte.

There are no difficulties of consequence for modern science.

Now you will pull out your worn and ragged arguments based on the nature of consciousness and the origins of the universe.

Let's see, we know that consciousness stems from the physical operation of the brain, without a doubt. It's exact mechanisms? It's just a matter of time.

We know the history of the universe to within 10[sup]-33[/sup] seconds of it's birth.

So you apparently think our "difficulties" are the same as those of the pre- Copernicans and the pre-Hubbleians, right? Just because we didn't know that the earth was not the center of the universe, and that our own galaxy was not the entire universe, it must have been some crisis of intellect that required the Vedas to solve.
 
No... your thinking of the Planck Length, which is 1.616 x 10-33... No, you need to think about the Planck Time, which is 5.3 x 10-44.
 
Could someone explain clearly how God (a negative) can be "proven" not to exist. I'm positive that the God negative has not been proven.
 
superluminal said:
What an incredible dream world you've created for yourself.

The triumphs of the intellect have opened up the universe to us, you troglodyte.

There are no difficulties of consequence for modern science.

Now you will pull out your worn and ragged arguments based on the nature of consciousness and the origins of the universe.
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if you can't indicate absolutely ANYTHING in the universe and say what it ultimately is or where it ultimately comes from, you are simply performing the same function as those machines in public toilets that enable people to dry their hands
Let's see, we know that consciousness stems from the physical operation of the brain, without a doubt. It's exact mechanisms? It's just a matter of time.
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indicative of your faith perhaps but not of science I am afraid

We know the history of the universe to within 10[sup]-33[/sup] seconds of it's birth.
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Supe has one view
Karl Popper has another

We cannot identify science with truth, for we think that both Newton's and Einstein's theories belong to science, but they cannot both be true, and they may well both be false.
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At no stage are we able to prove that what we now know is true, and it is always possible that it will turn out to be false. Indeed, it is an elementary fact about the intellectual history of mankind that most of what has been known at one time or another has eventually turned out to be not the case. So it is a profound mistake to try to do what scientists and philosophers have almost always tried to do, namely prove the truth of a theory, or justify our belief in a theory, since this is to attempt the logically impossible.

draw your own conclusions


So you apparently think our "difficulties" are the same as those of the pre- Copernicans and the pre-Hubbleians, right?
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as far as the inevitability of disease, old age and the frustration of desire, culminating in death are concerned, yes, most definitely ....

Just because we didn't know that the earth was not the center of the universe, and that our own galaxy was not the entire universe, it must have been some crisis of intellect that required the Vedas to solve.
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no matter how many brownie points you think you and your friends have collectively amassed, it still merely a bunch of empiricists between a macrocosmic infinity and a microcosmic infinity twiddling their thumbs
 
Jeff 152 said:
But can we prove a univeral negative for something that is contradictory? Can we confidently assert that cubic spheres do not and can not exist because they have mutually exclusive attributes? If god were the same way, wouldn't it be possible to disprove his existence?
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I can imagine some physicist using particle and wave instead of cubes and spheres as their example and later finding themselves humbled by changes within their own field. Might want to talk to a topologist and see what adding a few dimensions does to what seems to be a sure paradox.
 
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