Hi, all. This is not an off-shoot of the C.S. Lewis thread.
I’m kind of a refugee from another board, www.e-budo.com. There, we usually discuss martial arts, but in the off-topic forum we are constantly, constantly butting heads on the God issue.
One of the anti-God crowd is constantly arguing that logic can and does disprove the existance of God. He also says that science has disproven God, and since science has shown “the absence of God,” “the burden of proof is on the religious folk.”
Now, I don’t speak logic. I mean, aside from an intro philosophy class as an undergrad, I know nothing of its structure and use. You logicians, is this true? Can you logically prove or disprove God? The PC answer is, no, we can’t, so let’s just let science and religion peacefully co-exist.
I should be up front: I’m don’t have an agenda beyond actual curiosity, but if I did have an agenda, it would be on the pro-God side, as I am a Jesus freak.
I don’t think you can disprove the existence of God. Certainly the “burden of proof” is on those who would assert that He exists. However, even so, the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
Just change God to E.T. and you’ll see how it works. Certainly I can state that extraterrestrials exist. The burden of proof would be on me to prove that they do exist. However, my failure to provide proof doesn’t mean that they, in fact, do not exist.
Likewise, short of a direct revelation, I don’t think you can logically prove the existence of God either.
Another problem with disproving something is that in order to know that something does not exist, one must know everything that does exist and see that it’s not on the list.
For example: If I wanted to disprove the existence of a number evenly divisible by 10 between 22 and 29, I’d need to know every whole number between 22 and 29 and see that none of them are divisible by 10.
Likewise, to disprove God from existing in the universe, you’d have to have a list that lists everything in the universe and see that God’s not on it.
OTOH, the above is not proof that God does exist either…
You can find a proof of God’s existence (God being defined as necessary existence) in the What Contains the Universe thread, and another version in the older Ontological Argument thread.
Isn’t the quick and dirty answer here that you can’t prove a negative?
For example, prove that Invisible Pink Unicorns don’t exist (I think if you search this board for Invisible Pink Unicorns you will find more discussion about what I’m talking about).
Also, to be nitpicky about it, the guy on the other board can’t even prove he exists much less disprove God. Throw that at him and see how he responds (probably with something like I’ll karate chop you in the head to prove I exist but that doesn’t technically prove anything either…violence never does).
Because it’s not a myth so much as an a catch phrase to shorten the logical rule “It is the responsibility of the person making an argument to provide evidence for that argument.” and also “You should not assume a thing is true unless there is evidence that it is true.” It’s not a myth…it’s just empiricism.
I’m glad you brought that up. Newer modalities have been mapped (turns out this is one of the busiest and most exciting areas of modern philosophy!), including the one I showed in this thread by Trent Dougherty. I would reprint it here, but I fear the board rules about cross-posting. He used Bouer’s Theorem to greatly simplify the modal tableau. Let me know what you think of it.
Something else I’d like to know. (Maybe I’ll first search some old threads.) What’s with intelligent design theory? Sometimes I read that it’s great, sometimes I read that it’s bunk, both sides seem credible (regardless of my personal beliefs.)
Intelligent Design (“ID” to some) is an evolved (:D) creationist view that, yes, the earth is quite old. It also appears that evolution, in small stages, is did occur.
However, by looking at some things (molecular motors) we see irreducible complexity (“IRC” to some.) That is, if you take a part of the machine away it breaks. Ergo, evolution couldn’t have done it. Ergo, a designer. I leave it to some one else to explain the holes in that.
The scientific problem is that ID is not falsifiable.
The theological problem is that it suggests that G-d couldn’t or didn’t get it right the first time. If he couldn’t, well, that counters the idea of omnipotence and would require restructuring our ideas of G-d. If he didn’t (as opposed to couldn’t), why? Is he a weasel? Is he trying to test us?
I don’t see it as much of a theological problem. A friend of mine was describing a homework assignment in his computer class, that would have had him typing lines upon lines of code. Instead, he wrote a smaller piece of code so that the program would manufacture itself. Sounds like intelligent design to me.
Sure, but there’s absolutely no reason to assume that that’s the way life was designed. Someone who knows more will be along to showcase the biological problems with ID, but in the meantime, check out talkorigins. They have something there.
Also, there are two ways to prove a negative. The first, called perfect induction, is to consider everything that exists and show that the positive doesn’t hold for anything. This is rarely useful. The second, more useful way, is to show that the positive leads to a contradiction. This is called an indirect proof, and is much more widely used.