I think a better way of phrasing it is that I don’t know that a god exists (as in, any god, I can be quite certain that the god of the Torah or Bible is too logically incoherent to exist). I admit I don’t know. But that doesn’t mean I should act as though one does, especially as I wouldn’t know which mutually exclusive one it would be if it did exist.
The burden of proof is on one who makes a claim to knowledge, either that a thing does exist, or that it doesn’t exist. The default state is agnosticism, or admitting that you don’t know, not simply disbelief.
Edit: In fact, the OP’s original statement seemed to be agnostic in nature, admitting that they couldn’t prove that god didn’t exist, but since they couldn’t prove that god did exist either, that they shouldn’t waste their time acting as though it did (‘pretending’).
It was only the believer who misunderstood them as seeming to claim that god definitely didn’t exist, but then they got into a sidetrack discussion about the burden of proof, rather than just correcting the believer’s assumption about OP’s belief.
It’s the claim of knowledge that requires proof, whether that knowledge is about a thing existing or about it not existing, of about anything else, such as it being red. The only belief that doesn’t need proof is a lack of knowledge.
Edit: if I’d never seen a black swan, and therefore concluded that since I had no proof that black swans existed, to believe that black swans definitely don’t exist, but then one day I was shown a black swan, my initial belief would have been proven incorrect.
However, if I instead initially believed that I didn’t know if black swans existed, and that I had no evidence to believe that they did, when I was shown one I could update my belief to that they did exist, without my previous belief being wrong - it was simply a lack of knowledge.
You are conflating ignorance of something existing (lack of knowledge) with lack of evidence despite many attempts to prove something exists (failure to find evidence to support something or finding evidence it is actually something else).
Let’s take a myth that something causes something else, like say vaccines cause autism. What is initially an “I don’t know for sure” turns into a “no they don’t because all tests show zero causation or correlation” which doesn’t prove that they don’t directly but does prove that they don’t by evidence not supporting the claim. Religions have claimed for millennia that deities exist but there has never been any proof and when tested scientifically all of the claims have been disproven by showing the actual causes of ‘miracles’ and other signs.
We know a lot of ‘alternative’ medicine is not effective because there is no proof that it is effective, because you can’t prove a negative. Your approach means we have to be agnostic about literally everything because we can’t prove that anything exists either as we might all be in a simulation!
If you think the scientific method claims knowledge then you may be misunderstanding it. It is a way of constructing the best model we have of the universe, until a better one comes along to replace it. That means it is always evolving in light of new evidence and research, and any current model we have is almost certain to be wrong in some ways. We should act on the best model we have, but that is very far from claiming knowledge and true certainty.
This way leads to brain in a vat theory and the impossibility of knowing if other beings has consciousness
It’s a simple tautology that following the best model has the highest chance of success in achieving the goal you modeled. The real difficulty is in figuring which that model is, thus the scientific method
It is invisible and pissed that you haven’t let it out to eat in days!
You do realize you are claiming the same thing as someone who claims there is no god because all evidence points to a lack of a god the same way you would have proven the lack of a unicorn, right?
Atheism is a response to the claim that deities exist. They are fictional characters who are said to exist with literally zero proof of their existence.
How much evidence is needed to prove something doesn’t exist? How do you prove that something doesn’t exist?
Reserving judgement is a geeat stance, but how many more thousands of years of disproven religious and spiritual claims are needed to be enough to say gods don’t exist any more than bigfoot, ghosts, vampires, and werewolves?
The lack of evidence for something to exist is not inherently a problem. Take for example black holes, they were only theorized before discovery.
You don’t need to prove something doesn’t exist, it’s just a moot point. For any skeptic, as a matter of epistemology, not having any proof is as redundant as having proof for its nonexistence.
The lesson religious people need to learn, is as aforementioned; not having proof should be the disqualifying factor, not proof to contradict their established beliefs
Yeah, no. Any claim has the burden of proof. If you say, “there is no god,” then it is absolutely on you to show your work. If you say, “I do not accept the claim that there is a god,” that requires no proof because it’s not a claim. This is basic logic.
You’re absolutely wrong. You cannot prove a negative. In a strictly logical sense it’s the person making the positive claim that is required to show proof. A negative claim can only ever be strongly inferred.
I agree that negative claims cannot be proved, but that is actually a completely separate point t and doesn’t just give free reign to anyone to make any and all negative claims without the burden of proof. If I claim there is no universe, it’s still true that the burden of proof is on me and that I cannot prove my claim. Both are true.
Yeah that is true. It’s not free reign to make a negative claim and skip out. But it’s also true that religion relies on an unprovable thesis. So asking anyone to prove they aren’t real is a bit ridiculous.
Technically true, but it’s childishly easy to disprove almost any god as defined by popular religions. It’s easy because the followers make it easy, with their claims of action.
“Just pray and God will always reveal himself”
Well, that’s easy then. I did A, B didn’t occur, so obviously this god as defined doesn’t exist. Of course, most religious people will immediately walk back their claims if you do this, but that’s basically them changing their definition of god.
Yeah. Even as a kid I understood God as having free will too and sooo many religious people treat their God(s) as a service transaction. Like they’re the customer and they paid in prayer. Which is ridiculous. This all powerful being is supposed to be attentive to you personally?
I think a better way of phrasing it is that I don’t know that a god exists (as in, any god, I can be quite certain that the god of the Torah or Bible is too logically incoherent to exist). I admit I don’t know. But that doesn’t mean I should act as though one does, especially as I wouldn’t know which mutually exclusive one it would be if it did exist.
The burden of proof is on one who makes a claim to knowledge, either that a thing does exist, or that it doesn’t exist. The default state is agnosticism, or admitting that you don’t know, not simply disbelief.
Edit: In fact, the OP’s original statement seemed to be agnostic in nature, admitting that they couldn’t prove that god didn’t exist, but since they couldn’t prove that god did exist either, that they shouldn’t waste their time acting as though it did (‘pretending’).
It was only the believer who misunderstood them as seeming to claim that god definitely didn’t exist, but then they got into a sidetrack discussion about the burden of proof, rather than just correcting the believer’s assumption about OP’s belief.
An even easier way of saying it is “I’m not convinced god exists”
Yeah, no. It isn’t the claim that requires proof, only the claim of something existing that requires proof.
Repeated attempt to verify whether something exists not supporting the thing’s existence is strong evidence that it doesn’t exist.
It’s the claim of knowledge that requires proof, whether that knowledge is about a thing existing or about it not existing, of about anything else, such as it being red. The only belief that doesn’t need proof is a lack of knowledge.
Edit: if I’d never seen a black swan, and therefore concluded that since I had no proof that black swans existed, to believe that black swans definitely don’t exist, but then one day I was shown a black swan, my initial belief would have been proven incorrect.
However, if I instead initially believed that I didn’t know if black swans existed, and that I had no evidence to believe that they did, when I was shown one I could update my belief to that they did exist, without my previous belief being wrong - it was simply a lack of knowledge.
You are conflating ignorance of something existing (lack of knowledge) with lack of evidence despite many attempts to prove something exists (failure to find evidence to support something or finding evidence it is actually something else).
Let’s take a myth that something causes something else, like say vaccines cause autism. What is initially an “I don’t know for sure” turns into a “no they don’t because all tests show zero causation or correlation” which doesn’t prove that they don’t directly but does prove that they don’t by evidence not supporting the claim. Religions have claimed for millennia that deities exist but there has never been any proof and when tested scientifically all of the claims have been disproven by showing the actual causes of ‘miracles’ and other signs.
We know a lot of ‘alternative’ medicine is not effective because there is no proof that it is effective, because you can’t prove a negative. Your approach means we have to be agnostic about literally everything because we can’t prove that anything exists either as we might all be in a simulation!
It’s not about lack of knowledge, everyone lacks some knowledge. Rather, it’s about noticing and acknowledging if you don’t know.
The ignorant says he knows, when he doesn’t; he is unaware of his lack of knowledge.
Somone who says ‘I don’t know’ is aware of his lack of knowledge.
If you think the scientific method claims knowledge then you may be misunderstanding it. It is a way of constructing the best model we have of the universe, until a better one comes along to replace it. That means it is always evolving in light of new evidence and research, and any current model we have is almost certain to be wrong in some ways. We should act on the best model we have, but that is very far from claiming knowledge and true certainty.
Prove that we should do that.
This way leads to brain in a vat theory and the impossibility of knowing if other beings has consciousness
It’s a simple tautology that following the best model has the highest chance of success in achieving the goal you modeled. The real difficulty is in figuring which that model is, thus the scientific method
Are you the guy in the screenshot?
You’re currently typing on a machine that came from this method. Although maybe that’s not quite the support I thought I was…
My claim is “there is not a unicorn in my garage”, and I can prove that.
It is invisible and pissed that you haven’t let it out to eat in days!
You do realize you are claiming the same thing as someone who claims there is no god because all evidence points to a lack of a god the same way you would have proven the lack of a unicorn, right?
Perhaps a bad example. My definition of unicorn is that it can’t be invisible, and is the size of a normal horse.
Still, you can prove the non-existance of a thing given certain parameters like location or time.
So all of human history when we are proving that deities don’t exist.
Not exactly, because we can’t prove the non-existance of a spiritual realm we can’t measure.
In this case it’s less about burden of proof, and more about the basic epistemological stance of reserving judgment until evidence has been provided.
Atheism is a response to the claim that deities exist. They are fictional characters who are said to exist with literally zero proof of their existence.
How much evidence is needed to prove something doesn’t exist? How do you prove that something doesn’t exist?
Reserving judgement is a geeat stance, but how many more thousands of years of disproven religious and spiritual claims are needed to be enough to say gods don’t exist any more than bigfoot, ghosts, vampires, and werewolves?
The lack of evidence for something to exist is not inherently a problem. Take for example black holes, they were only theorized before discovery.
You don’t need to prove something doesn’t exist, it’s just a moot point. For any skeptic, as a matter of epistemology, not having any proof is as redundant as having proof for its nonexistence.
The lesson religious people need to learn, is as aforementioned; not having proof should be the disqualifying factor, not proof to contradict their established beliefs
Yeah, no. Any claim has the burden of proof. If you say, “there is no god,” then it is absolutely on you to show your work. If you say, “I do not accept the claim that there is a god,” that requires no proof because it’s not a claim. This is basic logic.
That’s actually not how claims work, see https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell’s_teapot
You’re absolutely wrong. You cannot prove a negative. In a strictly logical sense it’s the person making the positive claim that is required to show proof. A negative claim can only ever be strongly inferred.
I agree that negative claims cannot be proved, but that is actually a completely separate point t and doesn’t just give free reign to anyone to make any and all negative claims without the burden of proof. If I claim there is no universe, it’s still true that the burden of proof is on me and that I cannot prove my claim. Both are true.
Yeah that is true. It’s not free reign to make a negative claim and skip out. But it’s also true that religion relies on an unprovable thesis. So asking anyone to prove they aren’t real is a bit ridiculous.
Technically true, but it’s childishly easy to disprove almost any god as defined by popular religions. It’s easy because the followers make it easy, with their claims of action.
“Just pray and God will always reveal himself”
Well, that’s easy then. I did A, B didn’t occur, so obviously this god as defined doesn’t exist. Of course, most religious people will immediately walk back their claims if you do this, but that’s basically them changing their definition of god.
Yeah. Even as a kid I understood God as having free will too and sooo many religious people treat their God(s) as a service transaction. Like they’re the customer and they paid in prayer. Which is ridiculous. This all powerful being is supposed to be attentive to you personally?