For the record I don’t believe any of it is real although I wish ghosts etc were since I have a major interest in the paranormal
Strictly speaking, you can’t prove a negative.
To expand for OP and others-
To scientifically disprove such a thing would mean that we have hypothesized and tested every single possible explanation and reached definitive proof in each case.
- We can’t hypothesize every possibility, since many potential explanations are things that are simply beyond our ability to comprehend or conceive of. We don’t know what we don’t know.
- We can’t test for the vast majority of things that we CAN conceive of. How could you disprove that ghosts don’t exist in an invisible, undetectable parallel dimension to our own?
We can’t test for the vast majority of things that we CAN conceive of. How could you disprove that ghosts don’t exist in an invisible, undetectable parallel dimension to our own?
Why would you need to? If they’re undetectable, nobody could have ever seen them. Saying that ghosts exists in an undetectable parallel dimension is effectively the same as saying that they don’t exist at all and every sighting claim is bullshit.
From the article: “Maybe people mean that no inductive argument will conclusively, indubitably prove a negative proposition beyond all shadow of a doubt.”
While you are correct, its fair to assume that the above is what is meant here.
I mean—I did say “strictly”. Thanks, I appreciate you doing the heaving lifting for defending my argument.
That article is straight up delusion that completely ignores the principles of logic it’s falsely built on, asserting assumptions that are not fact or loosely based on fact as “true”. It’s anti-science, anti-logic, and anti-intelligence in all forms.
Formal logic is entirely unconnected to objective truth. It is a tool to reason that starts with assumptions. You can prove something is logically or mathematically consistent. You cannot prove anything is objectively true or false using formal logic, because it is dependent upon the initial assumptions you used, and his assumptions are nonsense.
Wow, you’re not joking. That actually was terrible. He does sort of have a point that if you positively prove something that excludes something else, you have essentially proven a negative. It doesn’t work for stuff outside of abstract logical rules though and the way he argued his case is pretty bad.
you can prove that you aren’t nonexistent. Congratulations, you’ve just proven a negative. The beautiful part is that you can do this trick with absolutely any proposition whatsoever. Prove P is true and you can prove that P is not false. Some people seem to think that you can’t prove a specific sort of negative claim, namely that a thing does not exist. So it is impossible to prove that Santa Claus, unicorns, the Loch Ness Monster, God, pink elephants, WMD in Iraq, and Bigfoot don’t exist. Of course, this rather depends on what one has in mind by ‘prove.’
"Can you construct a valid deductive argument with all true premises that yields the conclusion that there are no unicorns? Sure. Here’s one, using the valid inference procedure of modus tollens: 1. If unicorns had existed, then there is evidence in the fossil record. 2. There is no evidence of unicorns in the fossil record. 3. Therefore, unicorns never existed."
I bet if we wait 10 years, we’ll find evidence of a new creature in the the fossil record. Prior to that point, we could “prove” that the creature doesn’t exist?
“Someone might object that that was a bit too fast—after all, I didn’t prove that the two premises were true. I just asserted that they were true. Well, that’s right. However, it would be a grievous mistake to insist that someone prove all the premises of any argument they might give.”
Hahaha. In other words, some might object that to prove something we need to prove something. How about we just don’t prove it and say we did?
I desperately want to believe it’s some effort at satire but it would be horseshit at that, too.
We have. There’s no evidence for them so scientifically they’re donezo.
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For example, my mom is a jehovahs witness. Ofc doesn’t believe that apes are the closest evolutionary relative. Doesn’t believe animals evolve etc. Thinks everything in the Bible happened even though all it is is he said she said with no evidence of any of it actually happened. I’ve told her time and time again we have scientific proof of evolution through fossils, carbon dating, etc. But ofc “uhhh the Bible says this is actually how it happened.” it’s like talking to a 4 year old that thinks they’re right no matter how much proof you show them otherwise.
Yeah but she’s not interested in evidence and is not receptive to it; she’s decided already and nothing you say will dissuade her.
Doesn’t change the facts.
You just have to move on from being able to persuade everyone of the truth.
True
You can’t argue someone out of a position they didn’t argue themselves into.
For people who say “the Bible says” I ask them to use only the Bible to answer a simple question.
“Which came first? People or animals?”
We know from the geologic record that animals came first. This is backed up by Genesis 1:20-26. Man and woman were created at the same time.
So why does Genesis 2 get it so wrong?
Adam is created first (Genesis 2:7), then animals (Genesis 2:19), then Eve (Genesis 2:22).
The reason for this is that early editors of the Bible combined TWO creation myths together. Genesis 1 is the Elohist tradition, Genesis 2 (no 7 day creation) is the Yahwist tradition.
Of course, they don’t teach you that in Sunday school. ;)
No amount of arguing with her is going to change her mind. Live your life how you think is right, set some boundaries, and deal with things to the best of your ability. If she’s not hurting anyone, and/or doing anything illegal, if her faith gives her purpose and makes her happy, leave it be.
Proving a negative is always hard, which is why the burden of proof lies with any positive claims. Until someone can offer proof that a thing does exist, we cannot in good faith suppose it does.
Because that’s not how rigorous science works.
The burden of proof is on the claimant. And for centuries no claimant has produced any conclusive evidence. Even with ever more modern technology and equipment.
Because you can’t prove a negative, the most common example is “there’s an invisible teapot orbiting between earth and mars”, there’s nothing you can show me that I can’t naturally explain as “you weren’t looking at the right place and the right time” or “it’s invisible, so obviously you can’t take a picture of it”, it’s literally impossible to prove it wrong.
The thing about science is that it’s falsifiable, i.e. it CAN be proven wrong. Everything science claims is easily proven wrong, whenever evidence comes that contradict current theories, a new theory needs to be created that also explains this newly observed phenomenon, and the fact that some theories have standard strong for decades or even centuries without any evidence been found against them is good evidence that they’re the best model we have for how things work.
And this is something most people don’t understand about science, if it’s not falsifiable it’s not science, you can’t make a non-falsifiable claim and call it science, which is why things like homeopathy or astrology are not science, their predictions either fail sometimes or cannot be tested. This means that every theory needs to show how it can be proven wrong. An example is that Einstein relativity theory says that gravity should affect light, so in his papers Einstein said that if we ever found a cluster of galaxies we should see a lense effect, because the light would be curved by the immense gravity of the region. Very recently we did found a cluster of galaxies, and we in fact observed a lens effect like Einstein predicted, had we not then that would mean there’s something wrong with his theory, but so far all predictions that we have been able to verify are correct which leads us to believe it’s the best explanation we have for that part of science.
Also to add to this, science is self-correcting and, unlike religion, allows and even requires questioning in order to function. Newtons’ laws of motion revolutionized classical mechanics and held firm for more than 200 years. But there were some things the laws could not explain. Eventually Einstein formulated corrections to Newtowns laws that took relativity into account. So Newtons’ laws didn’t disappear… they continue to be useful at non-relativistic velocities. But when we need to deal with hyper-fast objects we need to take relativity into account.
I love this explanation, I hope I will be able to reproduce it myself in the future.
To help you remember, the above poster is citing Russell’s Teapot.
Ah, yes, I already knew that one, I meant the “science aims to be falsifiable” part. Or is that part of it? (I suppose by inference…)
Because people believe stuff they want to believe regardless of evidence. The same goes for religion, politics, conspiracy theories, UFOs, homeopathy, and various other assorted nonsense.
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Same reason we haven’t “proven” that bigfoot, the loch ness monster, or jersey devil are “bullshit”. In order to prove something, you need to find evidence for it. If there is no measurable evidence for something, that does not disprove it, it just does not support it.
If you have a falsifiable hypothesis, something that’s testable, then you can either prove or disprove it. But pure speculation and conjecture is often not falsifiable. So when somebody says prove to me that there’s no other intelligent life in the universe… It’s not falsifiable with our technology and our knowledge. We can’t test it.
So well it may be true, maybe untrue, it’s not a proposition we can verify either way.
It’s the same thing as asking me to proof i don’t have money. It’s literally impossible to convince people that think i have money where in reality i don’t.
Same for people who believe those thing exists.
When there is solid evidence for the existence of ghosts and/or demons, they will be considered to be “not bullshit”. Until then…
Wait what? You think we should send some science team around the globe because some hicks claimed to saw a monster?
The fascinating thing is that it very well be a real phenomenon that we don’t fully understand.
Don’t mistake me, it’s definitely NOT spirits of the dead or infernal beings from the underworld.
But what it very well COULD be are things like infrasound or magnetic fields having a field day with our senses, making us see, hear and feel things that aren’t there.
As with all of human history, things we don’t comprehend get attributed to “spirits” and as we learn more, the belief in those things dies off.
Good reading on infrasound and ghosts here:
https://higgs.ph.ed.ac.uk/outreach/higgshalloween-2021/haunted-frequency
On the electromagnetism side, check out “The God Helmet” which can induce feelings of religious fervor.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7966009/
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_helmet
The big problem with this field of science is that “everybody knows” ghosts aren’t real, so why study it?
Scientific explanation:
Science has done it, time and time again. Problem is, normal people did not accept the scientific method.
Legal explanation:
There is plenty of evidence, but all evidence needs evaluation/approval by the judge in order to become valid proof. Problem is, everybody wants to be judge.
To prove something does exist, you bring it into the spotlight by using different forms of what might call evidence to narrow down all the possibilities until the one that remains becomes undeniable. To prove something doesn’t exist, because there’s nothing to bring into any spotlight because the whole point is to show nothing is there, you must argue why something can only be impossible by showing how its existence would conflict with the circumstances of things that do exist. For example, we know Superman cannot exist outside comic books because we now know gravity exists as a byproduct of matter itself and that everything that can be touched is matter, which means nothing like Superman can just randomly fly around in limitless ranges of motion, even with the help of “lift” which is the property that allows aircraft to fly, and even that requires a pair of metal invertebrate wings to manipulate the air around it. The things you describe could technically exist with a workaround (hence we have the genre known as science fiction, whose modus operandi is to argue in favor of unsung possibilities, and I myself am not a disbeliever) but not “as we know them” if ghosts for example cannot follow the same laws of matter. If something is metaphysical and above physical limits, it wouldn’t have some physical properties unless they were already metaphysical properties.
