The Watchmaker: my fav argument

[Ravenshire]

You've made an unfalsifiable claim. You are, in essence, claiming a world where every light is on. Some are brighter than others, some are too far away to see, but every single one is on. Then you challenge us to prove just one is off. In the world you posit, we cannot even know what an off state is concerning lights. How then do we test for offness?

I want to make sure you are clear on what falsification means before we go any further.

A proposition is unfalsifiable when it predicts every possibly outcome of an experiment. The proposition that every light is on, will be falsified by a light that is off. This is true regardless of how hard it is for you to search every light or of every light indeed being on.

The only way for this proposition to be unfalsifiable is if it predicts both off-ness and on-ness. Say, if fairies exist then every light will be on; but if a light is not it's because the fairies turned it off. We cannot test whether fairies exist, because every outcome of the test (lights being on or off) is being predicted.

You obviously missed (ignored?) what I actually said. You've asserted a world where there is no off condition for lights, thus your assertion is unfalsifiable.