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This website is being renovated throughout 2008.
Pages and the content of pages will continue to change until the end of the year and
there may be some inconsistencies and missing links. Please
do not quote from or link to specific pages (apart from the home page)
without contacting the webmaster first.
Some negatives can be proved - so perhaps we can prove that God does not exist.
There's a common fallacy, often used by believers, that you can't prove a negative.
They argue:
a. you can't prove something doesn't exist
b. that means you can't prove God doesn't exist.
Convinced that this argument makes sense, some believers go on to claim that:
c. therefore God exists.
Unfortunately for believers all these statements are false.
We can easily dispose of the last argument. Replace God with any
other imaginary thing and you see how ridiculous the argument is:
"you can't prove three-headed whales don't exist, therefore they exist";
"you can't prove there isn't a man drinking tea on the surface of the sun, therefore there is a man drinking tea on the surface of the sun".
Argument c. is therefore pointless. But what about a. and b.?
Can you prove that anything doesn't exist? More specifically, can you
prove that God doesn't exist?
Take these two examples:
1. No man called George Maria Washington has ever sat for half an hour naked
drinking tea on the top of Mount Everest.
2. No man called George Maria Washington has ever sat for half an hour naked
drinking tea on the surface of the sun.
Can we prove 1.? Perhaps there are showing everyone who has
climbed Everest and that name doesn't appear - but those records may be incomplete or false. The fact is, we have no
means of verifying every single person who has climbed the mountain to the
top and whether they have drunk tea there, clothed or unclothed. We may suspect that
no-one with that unusual name has made their way to the highest point
on the earth's surface and drunk that refreshing drink there, but we cannot
prove it.
So we have a negative statement that can't be proved. If we can't prove this simple negative, does that mean we can't prove any negative at all?
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How good is your reasoning?
Can you distinguish lies from truth? Or a good
argument from a false one? Can you when tell someone is trying to pull
the wool over your eyes?
We keep physically fit by exercising regularly and eating healthy
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food. The same is true of our minds - we need regular mental exercise and a good diet of
solid facts and logic.
This chapter offers basic reasoning skills to help you understand the contradictions
that lie at the heart of all religion.
0.1: Basic principles
Start at the beginning
0.2: What do we know?
Separate fact from fiction
0.3: Start with the question ...
... not with the answer
0.4: All the evidence ...
... not just some of it
0.5: Cause and correlation
They're not the same
0.6: Don't jump to conclusions ...
... or you could land in the ...
0.7: No way
Proving a negative
0.8: Occam's Razor
The simplest solution
0.9: Facts, knowledge and science
What we know and how we know it
0.10: Reason and faith
Understanding the difference
0.11: Summary
Finished the introduction? Move on to
Chapter 1
Defining God
Does God exist? Before we try to answer that question we
need to have a clear idea of who or what God is. How do we
describe God? What versions of God are on offer?
Not sure what you're looking for?
If there's a word that you don't recognize, it might be defined
here.
If there's a topic you're looking for, check one of the Search
boxes on this page.
If there's something you want to ask, send an
e-mail. We can't guarantee an answer,
but we'll do our best.
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No, it doesn't. We can prove some negatives. Look at sentence 2.
We know that this never happened. Even if there was a forgotten civilization that somehow sent a man to
the surface of the sun (which doesn't technically exist, but that's a side-issue)
it is physically impossible for a human
being to sit there naked doing anything except burn to a crisp within half a second.
In other words, you can prove a negative if it applies to impossible phenomena. There is no giraffe having a conversation
in mediaeval Dutch with a group of geraniums as they sit around a swimming-pool in orbit around Mars.
There is no Santa Claus flying around the world bringing presents to millions of children
every Christmas Eve. No man or woman is capable of flying like Superman. Impossible phenomena by definition cannot exist.
Does this apply to God? If God exists, he transcends natural laws and can do anything? Does that mean we cannot prove he does not exist?
That is the key question that comes up repeatedly on this website. We could jump ahead of ourselves and come to the conclusion that no god, even one that transcends our physical universe can exist (and if you want one of the arguments that confirms that point, click here).
But it would be better to remind ourselves that we are the second detective - the one who takes all evidence into account - and at this stage in our investigation all we can say is that we are not sure.
Next:
Introduction: Section 8
Occam's Razor
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If God existed, he would...
admire the beauty of a universe that he did not create
recognize that eternity is meaningless
deny both heaven and hell
disown all men and women who speak in his name
denounce the harm caused by religious "morality"
help the human race to thrive without him
If God existed, he would be an atheist.
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