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[MrWiggles]

There is no negative proof! It's impossible!

[Frumple]

To prove something positive, it only needs to show that one example.

This depends very heavily on what the positive claim is. All Xs are Ys, ferex, is one of the common ones where that holds very much unture. Indoor ornithology and all that.

[Graknorke]

Depends on if you believe the universe to be infinite or not, and also for what.
I could say "This box is blue", and you could prove it wrong by bringing over something a different colour and showing that the light they reflect is of the same wavelength. You have then proven that my box is not blue by proving it to be a different colour.

Negative proof is pretty much proving something that the claim cannot be true by proving something contradictory.
Or you could have, say, a ballpool. And you could say that one of the balls in there is smaller than the others. And I could prove you to be incorrect by measuring every ball and showing them to all have the same diameter.

[kaijyuu]

One important thing to note about this is that there are pretty much zero fullproof analogies. There's nothing quite like having zero knowledge or evidence whatsoever.


It's not like going to a lot and checking if there's a house or not, because in this case the lot is completely out of your reach. You can't go there at all, can't see it, can't hear it, can't build something to detect it. Whether a house stands there or not is a question that can't be answered, and consequently, doesn't affect you.

[lemon10]

I'd still say a positive claim should be expected to give more proof than a negative one. I mean, to prove "You have no house", I would have to check through an entire list of residences in the world and show that none were registered under your name, whereas to prove that you did have a house, all you would have to do would be show me it, and that you have the deeds to that house.
Of course, it would be a lot harder for everyone if you said your house was invisible, intangible, did not have any documentation and interacts with the world at only arbitrary points, then it would be very difficult for anyone to prove anything.
That is to say, it should really be expected for somebody with a positive claim to have absolute proof of it, and especially with existance claims, a negative proof would entail a sweep of the entire universe, which may or may not be infinite. Other things such as colour would be simpler for both parties though, where the biggest doubt would be vision problems with one of the participants.

You can't have absolute proof of anything (well, with some very minor exceptions (eg. "I believe that I exist"E: Scratch that, it's absolute knowledge, not an absolute proof (since you would never be able to prove that to anyone)).

Using common sense, people have to generally prove positive claims that aren't consistent with the general consensus, and prove negative claims that aren't consistent from the general consensus (eg. claiming that France is really twice as large as Asia would require proof, as would saying that France doesn't exist at all).

However, that's only using common sense, in philosophy/discussions, the burden of proof is always on the person making any claim, no matter how obviously true/ridiculous it is.

Depends on if you believe the universe to be infinite or not, and also for what.
I could say "This box is blue", and you could prove it wrong by bringing over something a different colour and showing that the light they reflect is of the same wavelength. You have then proven that my box is not blue by proving it to be a different colour.

Negative proof is pretty much proving something that the claim cannot be true by proving something contradictory.
Or you could have, say, a ballpool. And you could say that one of the balls in there is smaller than the others. And I could prove you to be incorrect by measuring every ball and showing them to all have the same diameter.

That wouldn't work, I could say that your equipment is faulty.



That said, can anyone come up with a definition for positive/negative proofs? Because I don't think that they really exist as separate things.

[Frumple]

Ngh. I can't even remember what, if, there's a meaningful difference. Pretty much all statements that go "X is not true" or "it is not true that X is true" can have "it is true that <>" stuck in front of to make it a truth assertion/positive statement, without effecting the meaning of the statement at all. 'Course, you can keep sticking "it is true that <>"s in front 'till the cows come home and have the same effect -- there's something related to solipsism and proof in that I can't really recall, likely something to do with recursion (E:That old "how do you know that you believe X, how do you know that you know that you know, ad nauseum" thing). There's probably a specific term for it in logic that I never actually got around to memorizing, bleh.

[kaijyuu]

Well solipsism stems from the idea that the only thing you truly know is that you exist. "I think, therefore I am." Beyond that, you have to make assumptions; the assumption you're not in the Matrix or equivalent, and the assumption your logic isn't being manipulated (just as your senses could be). Most people are fine with these assumptions and don't think twice about them, but if you really want to get pedantic about knowledge, then there has been no consensus on how to prove empiricism and logic to be foolproof. Most require religion (or other equally baseless assumptions) to get around it.


So yeah. If you're arguing with someone using solipsist arguments and really piling on the requests for proof, you'll likely get nowhere since both of you have to agree on what assumptions to make before a real debate can start. Otherwise it's a circular argument, talking past each other.

[Frumple]

Right, right, solipsism was like the step before. Memory's kinda' rusty at the moment. Skepticism, particularly the extremely hardcore (/batshit insane) kind, goes for that sort of pseudo-recursion of proof as kind of a silver bullet to everything (when all else fails, call on them to prove their proof, and keep going ). Of course, trying to hold yourself behaviorally to that sort of skepticism is basically impossible (or at least almost utterly non-functional), but yeah. Still, definitely tangent, and fairly minor overall. Bringing it up usually gets a sort of roll of the eyes and a "Yes, yes, and? What exactly do you plan to do with that?" response.

Though it is kinda' interesting, sometimes, to see just how far back you can get. It can be a pretty useful analytic thought experiment, in certain cases.

[Leafsnail]

One important thing to note about this is that there are pretty much zero fullproof analogies. There's nothing quite like having zero knowledge or evidence whatsoever.

I think there are plenty of analogies with zero knowledge or evidence whatsoever: invisible pink unicorn, flying spaghetti monster, celestial teapot, whatever.  Any theory that's set up so that it can never be disproved.  It's not possible to consider every single "theory that could be true but wouldn't affect the world in any way" since there's an infinite number of them, so really practically speaking you have to look for both evidence in favour of a theory and its relevance, or if that evidence isn't present yet then a way in which it could be tested in the future.

[Bauglir]

Regarding why God as a concept gets "special treatment"

This is always my question to agnostics: why does god get a special evidence pedestal where you have to have disproving evidence to not believe it?

There's no special pedestal. God gets this treatment because there are people who already believe. In advance, it's not about popularity, but it's about the status quo - no reason to waste energy changing it without a good reason. There are all sorts of reasons to argue against a lot of particular religions or deities, but I don't actually think the existence or nonexistence of the relevant spiritual entities is one of them. Religiously-motivated violence, for instance, is a great one (useful only for religions that encourage violence, whether explicitly or through the actions of religious leaders with non-religious motives). You can approach that argument from similar axioms to the person you're talking to, since you can ground the whole thing in observable fact - you cannot logically prove the nonexistence of God to somebody who takes the existence of God to be axiomatic, and let's be honest here, as an unobservable entity, God can only even make sense as a fundamental assumption.

I'm not going to go out of my way to prove that fairies and wizards don't exist (I consider this a waste of my time, just as I do with regards God) without a situation in which that believe is actually being problematic. And even then it's entirely possible that I'll consider it easier to approach the whole thing sideways and leave the fairies and wizards belief intact and just argue that they aren't a necessary explanation for whatever the mystery is.

[kaijyuu]

I think there are plenty of analogies with zero knowledge or evidence whatsoever:

I'll go through them one by one.

invisible pink unicorn,

Logical contradiction. No *empirical* evidence, but unless you're denying logic, there is reason to disbelieve it.

flying spaghetti monster,

I'll give you this one, though I'm not well versed in this satirical religion.

celestial teapot,

If you're talking about the teapot revolving around the sun one, there's plenty of inductive arguments against it. Most the universe is empty so claiming anything in any specific position is a statistical unlikelihood, teapots don't spontaneously appear, and even if one did it'd probably get annihilated rather quickly by solar winds. It doesn't work as an analogy.

Any theory that's set up so that it can never be disproved.  It's not possible to consider every single "theory that could be true but wouldn't affect the world in any way" since there's an infinite number of them, so really practically speaking you have to look for both evidence in favour of a theory and its relevance, or if that evidence isn't present yet then a way in which it could be tested in the future.

For those, yes there are infinite possibilities but there's no reason to believe or disbelieve any of them. For those, you could come to whatever conclusion you want and end up in the exact same spot no matter what you chose.

You can only concern yourself with things of actual consequence. I'm cool with that. But anything actually analogous to God and religions (that aren't full of holes) is equally unknowable and gets you nowhere in supporting or undermining those theories.

I can bring out Stampy, my invisible intangible elephant, to show that. Isn't he cute? Assuming he exists, of course. I can never tell.

[Leafsnail]

Logical contradiction. No *empirical* evidence, but unless you're denying logic, there is reason to disbelieve it.

It's metaphorically pink.  Stop thinking so narrowly .

If you're talking about the teapot revolving around the sun one, there's plenty of inductive arguments against it. Most the universe is empty so claiming anything in any specific position is a statistical unlikelihood, teapots don't spontaneously appear, and even if one did it'd probably get annihilated rather quickly by solar winds. It doesn't work as an analogy.

I don't get what your first statement means at all (I'm not specifying a position or anything), but the fact that we haven't observed teapots sponteneously appearing doesn't mean that they don't.  I certainly have not seen any evidence from you to show that they do not appear out of nowhere, and even if you produced some it could have been placed there by a celestial teapot maker.  I never said what material the teapot was made out of - it could be made out of a material that can easily survive solar winds, or alternatively it could just be magic.  You have not given me any evidence that magic to shield teapots from solar rays and space debris does not exist.  Please provide evidence if you would like to make that claim.

And so on.  You could defend any theory in this way, and to me that shows it is not a valid method of operation.

For those, yes there are infinite possibilities but there's no reason to believe or disbelieve any of them. For those, you could come to whatever conclusion you want and end up in the exact same spot no matter what you chose.

Yep, there are no reasons to believe or disbelieve any of them.  So why believe or disbelieve any of them over any of the others?

Regarding why God as a concept gets "special treatment"

Sure, and that's why I don't go into churches and tell everyone they're wrong, or challenge friends who have Christian beliefs.  But in an actual discussion, I sortof expect people to be able to justify their beliefs on some level, and will challenge them if I think there's a problem.

There's also a serious problem when people use their religion as an justification for, say, homophobia.  If their interpretation is valid to some degree and you aren't allowed to challenge the basis of their beliefs then their position is bulletproof.  Sometimes the axiom is what's causing the problem.

[EveryZig]

I never said what material the teapot was made out of

Dark matter. ITS ALL TEAPOTS.

I'm not going to go out of my way to prove that fairies and wizards don't exist (I consider this a waste of my time, just as I do with regards God) without a situation in which that believe is actually being problematic.

I would argue that beliefs such as religions* are inherently harmful independently of their actual content. Religions can convey very good ideas or very bad ideas, but the thing they have in common is how they convey them. That common trait is revelatory faith, which is completely unaccountable. No matter how contrary an idea is to evidence or logic, to a true believer it doesn't matter because they received it directly from their god**. Unreasonable and unshakable convictions are hardly unique to religion, but religion is different in that it asserts that you don't need a reason if you have faith.
Why is this a problem, some might ask, when religions can promote good ideas as easily as bad ideas?
This is a problem because religious belief itself contains much more than the actual content of the relevant holy books. A religion's scriptures are relevant, but in a person's actual beliefs they are heavily modified or even supplanted altogether by a number of unconscious factors such as culture and emotions.*** These factors effect everyone's beliefs about life, religious or otherwise, but religion adds one more layer of resistance to change. This effect allows any belief to potentially be considered beyond (or less susceptible to in milder cases) to questioning and reason, which tend to favor good ideas over bad ideas (if only because many bad ideas are illogical or rely on provably false premises).

My argument in short is that religion promotes ideas more or less indiscriminately, which makes it easier for bad ideas to stand against good ideas despite being bad ideas.

* In this post, by 'religions' I mean gnostic religions.
** Many or arguably most followers of religions rarely take things to such an extreme extent, but this effect is much more common in more subtle forms.
*** For example, numerous wealthy people such as bankers believe in and support Christianity, which explicitly condemns wealth and money-lending.

[Frumple]

Unreasonable and unshakable convictions are hardly unique to religion, but religion is different in that it asserts that you don't need a reason if you have faith.

This. This in particular I have to point out. In every major religion that I'm aware of, there are major lines of theological tradition and thought within it that explicitly work counter to this point. Christian theology for a very long time was incredibly logic driven and very, very strongly emphasized logic and reasoning -- many of the big medieval Christian theologians were superlative logicians and spent incredible amounts of time and effort trying to reconcile faith and reason; some of them did a very impressive job of doing just that, and to this day there is a relatively powerful school of religious thought within Christianity that holds that not only is unreasoned faith undesirable, it's actually incapable of being true faith. I might not agree with their axioms, but there are, actually, incredibly compelling and strongly rational cases for theism. It doesn't, even remotely, do the actual work that's been done in the field of theology justice to deny that.

Similarly, both Islam and Judaism have major theologians within their umbrella that explicitly did not hold that faith was irreconcilable with reason. With other traditions, you have similar exemplars.

Now. That said, yes, there are threads of religious thought that work as you describe. I'd just like to make sure that the counter to that is not unknown, and unappreciated. Holding to the belief that true faith is supposed to be irrational unilaterally is simply an uneducated belief... if definitely understandable considering how much louder certain other groups are.

It... it's just, look. A lot of the major public voices related to religion aren't exactly the most rational, yes. This does not mean that all of them are. It does a number of incredibly brilliant and influential figures immense disservice to underestimate the achievements that have been accomplished within the field of theology.

[Bauglir]

Sure, and that's why I don't go into churches and tell everyone they're wrong, or challenge friends who have Christian beliefs.  But in an actual discussion, I sortof expect people to be able to justify their beliefs on some level, and will challenge them if I think there's a problem.

There's also a serious problem when people use their religion as an justification for, say, homophobia.  If their interpretation is valid to some degree and you aren't allowed to challenge the basis of their beliefs then their position is bulletproof.  Sometimes the axiom is what's causing the problem.

The point I was making was about burden of proof, which is a bit different from "day-to-day life" vs "rational argument". If you're both making claims, the burden of proof is on both of you to support that claim in order to convince the other party. Anybody who says, "Prove your side first, I don't have to prove mine," loses. It's perfectly acceptable to say, "There's no proof of God, so I don't believe in God," when describing what you believe, but if you're trying to make an argument about what is the rational belief to hold, it holds about as much water as, "There's no proof of God's nonexistence, so I believe in God". You're both saying, "There's nothing to budge me from the status quo."

Also, I agree with your second paragraph. I would generally prefer to approach that problem by attempting to convince them that homophobia is wrong in God's eyes. Failing that, yes, attempting to demonstrate that their faith is causing real problems and they should modify or abandon it would be acceptable, and I explicitly said that it's okay if the belief itself is problematic. That's entirely unrelated to belief in God having special privileges in the realm of argument. As I said several pages back (easy to miss and/or forget), there are all sorts of reasons to argue against particular deities or religions, but they don't apply to the concept as a whole.