Evidence for atheism

[Jackalope]

I'm fully aware of that, and I'm pretty sure you know that I do. Your point appears to be that if a claim is not demonstrably true, that it is necessarily false. There's a third opting there.

I know....I'm not giving you shit so much as giving the idea of acquiescence shit. The claim -is- false....that's how this goes. If the -ergo- is not demonstrably true -within the rules of the system, that's game over. That's how "true" is defined in that scheme.

It's "game over" in terms of demonstrating the necessary truth of the argument - which is not at all the same as demonstrating that the conclusion is false. It's unsound or invalid, and not necessarily true [which is, as I've maintained, not the same thing as "false"].

Perhaps some other formulation may be true, but that's a different claim, a different argument, and that -may be- true...but it has nothing to do with the initial claim.

If I say, because a, b.....and I fail to demonstrate a....the claim is "false", a has nothing to do with my conclusion (or I haven't fulfilled the requirements of the system) - the statement does not possess that ability, a to b - without that demonstration.

Ultimately, what I take issue with here is your use of ``"false"`` here. That's not what we're doing when we invalidate or demonstrate the unsoundness of an argument - what we are doing is demonstrating that it's "not necessarily true" - which certainly is sufficient to dismiss the argument but not necessarily the conclusion, and it's insufficient to assign a truth value to the conclusion (as an exercise, it's trivial to construct a valid, but unsound argument that nonetheless has a conclusion which is true [for all the wrong reasons]).

To put it another way, you may get it right for the wrong reasons (call it dumb luck), but that won't change whether or not your -reasons- were right, whether or not the statement itself -and thusly the conclusion, were true.
(yes, I know, more things that you are aware of...lol - but some of our members are clearly -not- aware of this)

On this we are in violent agreement.