Prove there is a god. lol
Originally, I was just going to watch you all get all excited for some religion war to break out and then get disappointed when it comes to it's anti-climactic ending. But dkamm65, you always rile me up in some way. Stop that.
This has nothing to do with whether God exists, it's just in the way you argue (and in the way most people argue). You cannot prove a negative statement. Saying something like "there is no God" would only be true if you knew everything about everything in the entire universe, which is impossible. A statement like "there are no watermelons" is seemingly easy to disprove because we have watermelons right here on Earth, easily findable at our grocery stores. But that's missing the point. Having to disprove a negative statement with evidence is ridiculous because negative statements assume omniscience. Negative statements are immediately torn down because of their assumption.
It's the fallacy of the argument from ignorance, which is closely related to shifting the burden of proof, which you just did. If I said that the inside of a watermelon is blue until the moment you cut it open, and then asked you to prove it, you wouldn't be able to, because you have to cut open a watermelon to see what color its insides are. However, I'm shifting the burden of proof. I'm making a positive claim (that watermelons are blue until you cut them open), and I have to prove that statement myself, I can't rely on it not being disproven.
Man, I've been doing too many logic studies recently, I can't help but correct someone when they make a fallacy.
'Nuff said.
Congrats, you just proved yourself wrong. Mr. Gervais is saying "prove I can't fly", and you're saying "prove that there's no God". Both are negative statements. You're doing exactly what he's denouncing. It also shows that Mr. Gervais doesn't have a good understanding of what he's talking about either.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_ignoranceEDIT: I phrased that last paragraph entirely wrong. Silly me. Thanks to dkamm for pointing that out. I'll have to think about this tomorrow, as I'm quite tired now.
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