Fine. Here we go:
God exists.
I cannot prove this claim, so it must be untrue.
There, I fixed it.
So the logic is that, whoever speaks first is the one who has to prove it? In that case we can go back to the earliest time these guys ever came up that there was this single deity named God. They never proved him back then, never did so now.
no but see that was olden times so it doesn’t count, only now once it’s an established assumption does this rule go into effect and count.
unless I think of a new thing I want you to believe. then it has a teensy weensy time-out while I say that, then it’s back in effect again.
That’s a triple negative. So Zenith there, having made the third strike, is out.
Wait, that’s not what the three strikes rule means? Well I mean according to Zenith’s logic it is. You can’t tell me he’s right and I’m wrong twice. My double negative cancels out to a positive.
More like zenithAIBot
That’s a well charged battery
Well since you said it… I now need you to prove its well charged.
Well since you said that you need to prove to me it’s not well charged.
Clearly they are miss-underestimating the implications of the axiom habet multam industriam or… something like that?
Now that you all said your stuff, I want proof that you said it, as per the lorem ipsum eunt romanes axiom
What is this supposed language you SAY exists? I need proof of this alleged… “Latin”.
Simple: just deny his denial. Now he has to provide proof.
Oh shit, he said something in Latin. Saying something in Latin means it’s always correct since it sounds so clever. Quod erat demonstrandum, the argument ends there.
Wingardium leviosa mf
Levi-oh-SAAAAAAAAAAAH you pleb
Latin and Greek are like the Ornstein and Smough of Western prescriptivism.
Everyone knows quiquid latine dictum sit altum videtur
I just want to add Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet
Catapultam habeo. Nisi pecuniam omnem mihi dabis, ad caput tuum saxum immane mittam
1: I’m not afraid of the inferior siege engine.
2: that’s an amazing quote, where is it from?
Used to be an old BBS thing back in the day
The technique used by many propagandists is to make a claim, then when someone says “that doesn’t seem right…” immediately demand proof. See you can make any claim you want, then require others to prove you wrong, and then declare victory when they don’t bother. The more of an ass you are, the less likely someone will want to make an effort to continue the conversation, so the propagandist will always “win” the conversation. Of course by “win” I mean the propagandist convinces everyone they’re an insufferable asshole that’s not worth talking to.
“God does not exist” is a claim. Declaring that your claim is unprovable, while also trying to demanding others to prove you wrong is a particularly malignant form of this technique. You’re declaring that you’re not required to prove your claim, while demanding others to prove you wrong.
Religion is about metaphysical concepts that are neither provable nor disprovable. Atheism is all about promoting fallacies, being insufferable assholes towards people that have different beliefs, and therefore “winning” the conversation.
Actually, “God does not exist” is not a claim. “God exists” is a claim, though. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell’s_teapot and my other comment for clarity on this
I prefer the more accurate “there is no evidence that God exists.” What proof do I have there is no evidence? “Behold, my field of evidence of God’s existence, and notice it is barren. To my knowledge, there is no evidence. If you have any non-anecdotal evidence of God’s existence, I’d be happy to look at it, but absent that, there does not appear to be any evidence.”
If pressed, there’s no evidence of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, unicorns, or leprechauns either. Does that mean they don’t exist? I guess that depends on who speaks first, right?
The only reasonable way to think and live is to only believe in things that have evidence they exist. To, as a default, believe in something and then require proof of its non-existence doesn’t make any sense. There is literally no end of things that “exist” if you just believe in things without evidence. Therefore, requesting “proof of non-existence” makes absolutely no sense in any context except when evidence of existence has already been established (e.g. someone declaring the moon landing was faked, where there is established evidence showing the moon landing having been real. A case would have to be made why that evidence was somehow illegitimate).
If we did away with organized religion, we wouldn’t be in the mess we’re in now.
Greed, fear, and ignorance are the causes of all our woes.
Religion is just how the worst people look themselves in the mirror afterwards.
You could say this at basically any point in hunan history and it would still be true
Oh! I disagree! I think religion probably served an incredible useful purpose in our social development.
Think about this: 500 years ago, or 1000, in some village somewhere, John hates Micheal. Or maybe John just wants Michael’s cow or land or pants. What’s stopping John from killing Micheal? Like, who’s gonna even know it was him? Some magical man in the sky who sees all and knows all? And what would that guy even do! Does he have powers to send you to a horrible place? Or curse you?
Oh…
So does he have rules you gotta follow? What’s the payoff?
Oh…
So how do I learn these rules, and stay on this guys good side?
Guess John probably won’t kill Micheal. Not yet anyways. Best keep sky daddy happy.
Now did the “good” outweigh the bad? Did it ever? And at what point in human history did that ratio shift and the good no longer outweighed the bad? Are there reasons/situations/people where this is still a valuable tactic?
Discuss.
Most people don’t want to kill other people. It turns out this is true with or without religion. We never needed it to do this. However, religion does tell people it’s good to kill people from other religions.
Edit to add this quote I remembered:
The question I get asked by religious people all the time is, without God, what’s to stop me from raping all I want? And my answer is: I do rape all I want. And the amount I want is zero. And I do murder all I want, and the amount I want is zero. The fact that these people think that if they didn’t have this person watching over them that they would go on killing, raping rampages is the most self-damning thing I can imagine. I don’t want to do that. Right now, without any god, I don’t want to jump across this table and strangle you. I have no desire to strangle you. I have no desire to flip you over and rape you.
-Penn Jillette
I also like and agree with that quote but I feel like you might be missing the point of it… It’s not saying 'humans don’t like to do that." It’s specifically saying “I don’t like to do that, so why do I need God?”
It’s pointing out that maybe people can be good people without a sky daddy, and also kinda hints that maybe people use sky daddy as an excuse not to do things they otherwise maybe want to…
At least that’s my take.
I don’t think so. The vast majority of people don’t want to kill people. It’s not that they don’t do it because of religion. They don’t even think about that. It’s not something they consider. Maybe it stops some psychopaths, but average people aren’t out there constantly thinking about murdering other people. It does create an excuse to view people as other though, which then allows them to view murdering them as justified, because they aren’t as good as them.
I think the lens you are looking though might be a bit more modern than what I mean. Well fed, warm, secure people in general don’t have a need or want to steal from, hurt or kill other people. Hungry, desperate people will steal, no problem, and they will “defend” themselves and their own (families, social groups, tribes, ect) and they will kill and take if it means they and their own get fed and get to live.
In addition, you are saying it will stop the occasional “psychopath” or other small percentage of the population who maybe doesn’t mind killing, even if their isn’t a good “reason”. That alone is advantageous… If 1 in 50… 1 in 200 ? is disposed to that, it would be ideal to “bring them into the fold” so they aren’t murdering and stealing ect ect.
Cause for everyone who ain’t in the murdering way, it only takes one guy in the village to start picking people off in the night…
So I think having religion would have benefited communities like that. Could it have worked without the religion? I mean, yeah I guess? Creating large social groups with shares goals and values is ideal. But that’s kinda starting to blur the line… Like what is religion compared to a group of people with shared values?
Hungry, desperate people will steal, no problem, and they will “defend” themselves and their own (families, social groups, tribes, ect) and they will kill and take if it means they and their own get fed and get to live.
They sure will, and religion has never stopped that. We see this happen in all groups when resources are low, regardless of what religion they follow or how fervently they believe it.
In addition, you are saying it will stop the occasional “psychopath” or other small percentage of the population who maybe doesn’t mind killing, even if their isn’t a good “reason”. That alone is advantageous… If 1 in 50… 1 in 200 ? is disposed to that, it would be ideal to “bring them into the fold” so they aren’t murdering and stealing ect ect.
Maybe, assuming it actually does stop them. Frequently, from what we see today, is they view others as following the wrong version of what they believe and use it as justification to kill. I don’t know if it’s more common to stop them or encourage them. It’s probably a wash.
So I think having religion would have benefited communities like that. Could it have worked without the religion? I mean, yeah I guess? Creating large social groups with shares goals and values is ideal. But that’s kinda starting to blur the line… Like what is religion compared to a group of people with shared values?
I think this is key. It isn’t that it does “good” or “evil.” It creates communities who view themselves as better than others. This allows them to take resources to help themselves and oppresses others. This for sure benefits that community, and prevents infighting to some extent. It focuses them against an enemy.
Religion is a tool for control. I would argue this is inharently bad. You could argue this is good because it allows some groups to out-compete others. I wouldn’t agree with that, but the argument could be made.
A lot of religions were quite progressive at the time they came up. The proplem is that the world changed a lot, while religions didn’t.
Yes that’s my conclusion as well. But I do find it interesting to discuss at what point in human history we went from “maybe it isn’t so bad if my neighbour believes in a magic guy who will keep him on the straight and narrow.” To “this is doing more harm than good”.
For every John and Micheal there are an Achmed and Peter who have been murdering eachother specifically because of religion.
I’m not sure I agree. Yes religion has been causing people to kill each other for a very long time, but keep in mind for a lot of human history John and Micheal just never geographically came anywhere near Achmed or Peter, so it was a moot point.
That’s probably a good data point for when religion maybe overstayed it’s usefulness, and possibly also means that in some places, religion would do more harm than good sooner than in others.
1000 or 5000 years ago most human cities and towns were not very mixed when it came to religions, so except for a few men that are sent on some stupid crusade, the rest of that society would probably benefit more from the positives of the religion than that negatives.
A thought experiment could help: if everyone was the same religion, would religion be as bad?
It has to be like the axiom said otherwise the axiom doesn’t work.
Gee thanks pal.
“That’s an awful nice axiom you have there. Would be down right awful if something should happen to it.”
it’s fairly easy to prove that no god exists.
jainism is a religion which negates the existence of god. islam is a religion that negates the existence of any god but their almighty.
if there did exist a god, s/he would not allow a situation where both these religions can co-exist. because any god except allah is excluded by islam, and allah themself is excluded by jainism.
ergo, god does not exist. quad erat demonstrandum.
if there did exist a god, s/he would not allow a situation where both these religions can co-exist.
All this proves is that he doesn’t care about the intricacies of organised religion, not that he doesn’t exist.
ah. if she does not care about the intricacies of organised religion, can we then conclusively state that all organised religions proselytising the word of god are therefore bullshit?
surely the all-powerful god, glory be in her name, would not allow false organised teligions to exist?!
If a traditional God exists, it’s most likely a trans dimensional being that is vastly beyond our comprehension. It’s silly to assume anything by it’s behavior or lack of such.
But yes, organised religion declaring they talk for or understand such a being are obviously bullshit.
This reminds me of Ricky Gervais joke:
So you believe in one God I assume… there about 3,000 to choose from. So basically you deny one less God than I do. You don’t believe in 2,999 Gods, and I don’t believe in just one more.
Well it proves that any religion claiming to have the one true God that doesn’t tolerate pretenders is wrong. There could absolutely be an unfathomable force setting stuff up in the universe.
7 idiots need to leave Lemmy forever.
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.
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?
Prove that we should do that.
You’re currently typing on a machine that came from this method. Although maybe that’s not quite the support I thought I was…
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?
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?
I mean he’s got a point. You brought it up, why are you telling others to prove it?
Bro literally brought up logical fallacies that the first person was using
No, the first person is using burden of proof correctly and the second person is incorrect about any logic fallacies. See: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell's_teapot
the burden of proof is not on whoever “speaks”, like the second person incorrectly states, but whoever makes a specific type of claim. The first person is not making a claim of that type by saying “there is not a God” and therefore does not have any burden of proof, but someone who says “there is a God” is making a claim of that type and must prove it before it can be believed
In the teapot example, if I say “there isn’t a teapot floating orbiting the Sun somewhere between the Earth and Mars” I have no burden to prove this before it can be believed, because there is no evidence of the teapot existing. If you claimed the teapot did exist, you’d need to provide evidence of it
Another way to think about it is, imagine someone says “God doesn’t exist”, someone else says “prove it!”, and, for the purpose of the thought experiment, they actually somehow did produce hard evidence that objectively settles the dispute. Did they “prove that God doesn’t exist” or did they “disprove the existence of God”? You can’t prove a negative, so it is the latter. The existence of God is the actual “claim”, so saying “God exists” requires burden of proof, but “God doesn’t exist” is not a “claim”
The actual words here are, “I’m an atheist because I refuse to pretend to know there is one.” That statement explicitly disclaims belief, and refers only to the speaker’s individual state of mind. It doesn’t ask or tell anybody else to prove anything. The speaker’s own subjective state of mind is actually the one thing that the speaker is qualified to make definitive statements about. “I don’t believe in God” needs no proof. Similarly, “I believe in God” also needs no proof, as it’s a statement about the speaker’s state of mind; “God exists” is a claim about the universe/reality that would require evidence.
The user zenithoclock, as such, has misinterpreted the statement as a positive claim about the universe. As for why, I don’t know for certain, but it does seem that quite a lot of people who believe in God can’t abide and feel threatened when other people don’t.
“A prayed for car gets better gas mileage”, or alternatively “praying for a car does not effect gas mileage.” Are either of these a true or a false statement? Well, at the very least there is no evidence to suggest a correlation. You could argue that you would need to collect data in order to prove or disprove either statement, but how could you even design an experiment let alone measure it? What is praying? Does it matter what time it is, or which direction you’re facing? What if it only works on certain days, or with certain props? Which language? Does it only work on domestic cars? And besides, if at the end of the day you desire better gas mileage the most productive thing you could do is simply drive more conservatively.
Now, is there a god? There is no way to determine what the evidence even looks like. A scale measures weight, but what is the unit which measures god? What can it even be measured against if we can’t have a control? If at the end of the day you believe there is a god, and that good an evil are definable, and there will be a big performance review in the sky, then the most practical thing to do would be to live conservatively.
But if we’re talking evidence. It’s, not, looking, particularly, promising.
Removed by mod
Well, you’re wrong. That’s not how the burden of proof works.
If I may re-state the issue here: Lanky_Pomegranate630 says, “You haven’t proved your claim, so I don’t believe it.” Religious person says, “I’m axiomatically correct. You have to prove that I’m wrong.”
