WLC: "You can't prove the negative"

[Jehanne]

This is all very well said, I think! Thank you for posting it. 

(It's pretty much what I've been saying, but since you're much nicer than I am people are more likely to read it with an open mind.)

It allows dialogue. So “You haven’t provided sufficient evidence or sound reason" is perfectly fair, and allows the person making the claim to explore what "sufficient evidence" or a "sound reason" might look like to the respondent. 

We saw earlier someone making two claims: 1) there is no empirical evidence for God, and 2) we should not believe in things for which there is no empirical evidence. 

If people were inclined, this is a very reasonable way to begin a discussion of classical theism, which of course never claimed that God would be some sort of physical object accessible to the senses. Since Plato, God is much more like Justice, or Mercy. Or numbers. These are things we don't sense, but can know of in the mind since we extrapolate their existence from actions and objects in the world. 

I know that most people here won't accept this argument either, but it shows how, when someone presents his reasons, discussion is possible.

Well, I think you’re quite nice, intelligent, and very reasonable, but probably a bit misunderstood. Showing an interest in certain topics can get a person boxed, labeled, and summarily dismissed pretty quickly around here, and I’m guilty of it myself. It’s just the sheer amount of dishonest interlocutors that blow in and out of the forums on a regular basis starts to jade folks after a while, and you stop giving people the benefit of the doubt. 

At the end of the day,  some people enjoy digging into subjects like epistemic foundations, and others don’t. It really just boils down to personal preference and interest in the subject matter. Some atheists are more practically-minded; i.e. “no god seems to be impacting my life in a detectable way, therefore I’m not going to waste another second of my precious time considering it” (my husband), while others of us enjoy perseverating on metaphysical questions simply for the joy of it, (or because we can’t turn our brains off, as is the case for me), even if it doesn’t change the way we live our lives or lead to any definitive, tangible answers. But regardless of any personal inclinations, as you mentioned, intellectually honest discussions can’t happen if both parties aren’t willing to analyze their reasons for why they believe or don’t believe something. This gets crudely interpreted as, “you’re saying both participants share an equal burden of proof,” which isn’t necessarily correct depending on the nature of the discussion, but both sides certainly bear a responsibility to explain and justify their reasoning. Otherwise it’s not a productive discussion, or really a discussion at all.

My views have changed since coming here; and, I have learned many new things! This forum is like an online Lucky Charms box, lots of new and exciting things, (almost) daily, from our Community!

[LadyForCamus]

The things that I know, and am most thankful for knowing, I learned here from all of you. That fact is precious to me. ❤️

[emjay]

The things that I know, and am most thankful for knowing, I learned here from all of you. That fact is precious to me. ❤️

I feel the same, you guys mean the same to me This place has been so formative for me - even if now I post far less than I did when I first joined - and places like it are so essential I think these days to help atheists find their feet and find support, as well as just flesh out our ideas. I'm thankful ever so much to Tibs for founding it.

[emjay]

So how do you apply this 'Negative Way' thinking to the God of the Bible? Ie it's one thing to think of God in this abstract 'God of the philosophers' type way... God is Good, God is Being etc... but how you get from that, or can discern that, from reading the Bible, especially the OT, has frankly always been a complete mystery to me. Ie how do you get from the dynamic and seemingly arbitrary, spiteful, jealous (as it is itself claimed to be in the Bible), insecure and indecisive god of the OT - one willing to repeatedly smite whole groups/populations for the sins of a few, just to make a point or advance a narrative - to this somewhat static-seeming abstract concept of a God of the Five Ways... God is capital G Good itself, God is capital B Being itself? Basically I'm asking, how does 'Negative Way' thinking apply in practical terms to reading the Bible?

Those are complex questions well beyond the scope of this thread. That said,  the path from Plotinus's One to the "I am" revelation to Moses is very short. Whereas it takes much contemplation to get to Christ cruxified.

What I will also say is that my personal approach to bible study is more esoteric and heavily influnced by Swedenborg.

I may be wrong, but from what I've gleaned from what you've said about this, both here and in the past (including what you've said in the past about treating the Bible as largely allegorical, far more that I ever did when I was a Christian)... it seems to me that you perhaps have a sort of 'fragmentary' approach to reading the Bible? Ie treating it more like a compendium of literature than a linear historical record... along with Swedenborg's Heaven and Hell (whatever exactly that is... I couldn't tell from a cursory read of the Swedenborg wiki, which looks very complicated, but guessing it's perhaps a work of literature like Dante's Divine Comedy?). I read Dante's Divine Comedy a long time ago and though I found it very interesting, provocative, and entralling, it was at the end of the day just very imaginative literature to me (I don't know if within Catholicism (which seems similar to your views, on account of Aquinas etc) it's meant to be taken as revelation, but it certainly wasn't within my Protestant upbringing). If that is your approach... ie more grounded in ideas and literature, than line by line analysis? Then I could at least understand where you're coming from a bit more, but at the same time could pretty much categorically say that that could never be me, and never was me when I was a Christian in the past (ie I grew up a literalist and a creationist), because, differences in beliefs aside, my mind just doesn't work like that; I am [over]analytical and reductionistic by nature, so I could never approach any of this based on vague ideas and impressions even if I wanted to.

[Anomalocaris]

I really want to add that clown to my list for a high-calibre lobotomy...

how do you lobotomize someone born without a brain.

---

There is some video that youtube algorithm has been recommending to me LINK and that is how William Lane Craig is supposedly "owning" some atheist student who told him how god can't be disproved because "you can't prove the negative". To which WLC says it's not true and that you can prove the negative.

And then WLC gives examples, like:

"We can prove there are no living T-Rexes"

Not really. One (scientists) can give great odds that there are no living T-Rexes but no one can prove 100% that some T-Rex is not hiding somewhere, the probability is extremely small, but it still exists. And indeed, there are some people who believe that dinosaurs still exist, or at least that they could exist.


"We can prove there are no Muslims in the US Senate"

And how can he prove that someone is not a secret Muslim in the senate? Not to mention that many Christians believe that Obama is (secretly) a Muslim because you can't prove with 100% certainty that Obama is not a secret Muslim.


"You can show that if something is self-contradicting that it can't exist"

In that case, God doesn't exist because as an omnipotent being he would have to be able to create a rock that he can't lift. But I guess you could always say "have you looked everywhere?" Even if something doesn't make sense it doesn't mean that it is 100% sure it doesn't exist.

And as a "self-contradicting" thing/ example he goes with:
"There are no married bachelors"

Well, I guess I could say "have you looked everywhere?" but this is wrong because it doesn't mean that if someone is married that he is not a bachelor. Take polygamists men - some guy has two wives, but is still looking for the third one and fourth wife - so he is in a way a bachelor.   Or men who are in gay marriage - an institution that Craig certainly doesn't acknowledge, so to him a gay man married to some other man is a bachelor.

So what do you think, is WLC right? Can one prove the negative, as he says, or does it go so far that one can only give good probabilities that something doesn't exist?

Of course Craig the idiot loves using the exact same argument when he tries to prove god.

---

I gave a bit of reasoning to why the burden of proof is where I said it was. Not sure you if think I'm using it as you mentioned. Then again you did post "some people" use it that way, maybe you're shading someone who you don't like in hopes they are reading.

Anyway, same thing applies to proof of gods/relgion. We shouldn't try to prove "there is no god" because that's impossible, and leaves the imagination to insert any number of gods, monsters, mythical creatures. If a god is proposed, whether it be by viking pagan seers or a monotheistic prophet, the burden of proof would be on the one claiming there is a god.

You're new here so I'll explain belaqua's modus operandi for you.  He starts every argument from the premise that every single time he's right and you're wrong.  He then "logically" deduces from that assumption that for him no amount of evidence is necessary and that from you no amount of evidence is sufficient.  You'd sooner get blood out of a turnip than you'd get an admission of error from belaqua.

if he does not assume he is always right,  what remaining can he possibly see in himself, such as he is?

[Neo-Scholastic]

Well, I think you’re quite nice, intelligent, and very reasonable, but probably a bit misunderstood. Showing an interest in certain topics can get a person boxed, labeled, and summarily dismissed pretty quickly around here, and I’m guilty of it myself. It’s just the sheer amount of dishonest interlocutors that blow in and out of the forums on a regular basis starts to jade folks after a while, and you stop giving people the benefit of the doubt. 

At the end of the day,  some people enjoy digging into subjects like epistemic foundations, and others don’t. It really just boils down to personal preference and interest in the subject matter. Some atheists are more practically-minded; i.e. “no god seems to be impacting my life in a detectable way, therefore I’m not going to waste another second of my precious time considering it” (my husband), while others of us enjoy perseverating on metaphysical questions simply for the joy of it, (or because we can’t turn our brains off, as is the case for me), even if it doesn’t change the way we live our lives or lead to any definitive, tangible answers. But regardless of any personal inclinations, as you mentioned, intellectually honest discussions can’t happen if both parties aren’t willing to analyze their reasons for why they believe or don’t believe something. This gets crudely interpreted as, “you’re saying both participants share an equal burden of proof,” which isn’t necessarily correct depending on the nature of the discussion, but both sides certainly bear a responsibility to explain and justify their reasoning. Otherwise it’s not a productive discussion, or really a discussion at all.

My views have changed since coming here; and, I have learned many new things! This forum is like an online Lucky Charms box, lots of new and exciting things, (almost) daily, from our Community!

"Philosophy is a doggone cereal box."

---

Those are complex questions well beyond the scope of this thread. That said,  the path from Plotinus's One to the "I am" revelation to Moses is very short. Whereas it takes much contemplation to get to Christ cruxified.

What I will also say is that my personal approach to bible study is more esoteric and heavily influnced by Swedenborg.

I may be wrong, but from what I've gleaned from what you've said about this, both here and in the past (including what you've said in the past about treating the Bible as largely allegorical, far more that I ever did when I was a Christian)... it seems to me that you perhaps have a sort of 'fragmentary' approach to reading the Bible? Ie treating it more like a compendium of literature than a linear historical record... along with Swedenborg's Heaven and Hell (whatever exactly that is... I couldn't tell from a cursory read of the Swedenborg wiki, which looks very complicated, but guessing it's perhaps a work of literature like Dante's Divine Comedy?). I read Dante's Divine Comedy a long time ago and though I found it very interesting, provocative, and entralling, it was at the end of the day just very imaginative literature to me (I don't know if within Catholicism (which seems similar to your views, on account of Aquinas etc) it's meant to be taken as revelation, but it certainly wasn't within my Protestant upbringing). If that is your approach... ie more grounded in ideas and literature, than line by line analysis? Then I could at least understand where you're coming from a bit more, but at the same time could pretty much categorically say that that could never be me, and never was me when I was a Christian in the past (ie I grew up a literalist and a creationist), because, differences in beliefs aside, my mind just doesn't work like that; I am [over]analytical and reductionistic by nature, so I could never approach any of this based on vague ideas and impressions even if I wanted to.

Never say never, so I am told. Cultivating an appreciation for the arts in general and of oil painting in particular...that aquired sensibility and understanding gained from craftsmanship has taught me that not all truths can be represented with premises and propositions. They do not proceded step by step to a conclusion: but rather tease and beguile with occational visions of transcendent clarity.

So no, I do not approach scripture like a science text book or pure historical records. If anything, those to me are modern heresies...born of severely limited abilities to recognize truth in its many presentations.

[Belacqua]

Well, I think you’re quite nice, intelligent, and very reasonable, but probably a bit misunderstood. Showing an interest in certain topics can get a person boxed, labeled, and summarily dismissed pretty quickly around here, and I’m guilty of it myself. It’s just the sheer amount of dishonest interlocutors that blow in and out of the forums on a regular basis starts to jade folks after a while, and you stop giving people the benefit of the doubt. 

At the end of the day,  some people enjoy digging into subjects like epistemic foundations, and others don’t. It really just boils down to personal preference and interest in the subject matter. Some atheists are more practically-minded; i.e. “no god seems to be impacting my life in a detectable way, therefore I’m not going to waste another second of my precious time considering it” (my husband), while others of us enjoy perseverating on metaphysical questions simply for the joy of it, (or because we can’t turn our brains off, as is the case for me), even if it doesn’t change the way we live our lives or lead to any definitive, tangible answers. But regardless of any personal inclinations, as you mentioned, intellectually honest discussions can’t happen if both parties aren’t willing to analyze their reasons for why they believe or don’t believe something. This gets crudely interpreted as, “you’re saying both participants share an equal burden of proof,” which isn’t necessarily correct depending on the nature of the discussion, but both sides certainly bear a responsibility to explain and justify their reasoning. Otherwise it’s not a productive discussion, or really a discussion at all.

It's a pleasure to hear something nice around here for a change. I'm glad we don't ALL have to attack each other!

I certainly understand your husband's feelings about the whole subject. It's not an urgent sort of subject, and it's not practical, and it's very much a niche sort of interest. To a lot of people it probably seems like collecting beer mats or trainspotting -- something for obsessed eccentrics. But I've got nothing against trainspotters.

Maybe there are two kinds of people in this world. Or on this forum, anyway. Those who are interested in the subject and enjoy pondering it. So we come here and discuss, not too seriously because we're not exactly aiming for academic publication, but with more than passing interest. And we're in contrast to those who come here because they despise the subject, and wish all religion and theology would go away, and think that somehow posting here will weaken the enemy and make the world better. (As if posting here has any influence on the world at all.) But to me this difference is between those gravitate to what they like, and those who choose every day to fondle their hate. Respectful disagreement in discussion is good, and I'm glad there are a handful of us here who enjoy that.

---

I read Dante's Divine Comedy a long time ago and though I found it very interesting, provocative, and entralling, it was at the end of the day just very imaginative literature to me (I don't know if within Catholicism (which seems similar to your views, on account of Aquinas etc) it's meant to be taken as revelation, but it certainly wasn't within my Protestant upbringing). If that is your approach... ie more grounded in ideas and literature, than line by line analysis? 

You were talking to Neo here, but I'll chime in because when someone mentions Dante I can't help myself. He's my main guy. 

Dante's son said the Comedy was allegorical fiction, and this was the view for centuries. The Catholic church has never included it in canon at all. In about 1950, though, an Italian scholar suggested that Dante meant it as revelation, and he wrote an influential paper arguing that we should read it that way. His argument was that the son downplayed its seriousness because he was afraid the church would ban it, as they had done Dante's essay recommending a separation of church and state. 

This shook things up a bit. And of course it led to all kinds of talk, in the heady days of semiotics, about whether someone who thought he'd had a genuine religious revelation would still express it allegorically, or whether Dante really believed the world was hollow. Galileo once made a lot of money calculating how big Dante's hell would be if it were real -- with Satan at the center of the earth and Jerusalem on the surface directly above. 

Whatever Dante intended, though, I am adamant that it's one of the greatest of all works of art. 

Then I could at least understand where you're coming from a bit more, but at the same time could pretty much categorically say that that could never be me, and never was me when I was a Christian in the past (ie I grew up a literalist and a creationist), because, differences in beliefs aside, my mind just doesn't work like that; I am [over]analytical and reductionistic by nature, so I could never approach any of this based on vague ideas and impressions even if I wanted to.

Blake said that the Bible is the "Great Code of Art." And part of what he meant, I'm sure, is that we should read it as art. 

This will lessen its importance to most modern people, who see aesthetics as intrinsically more shallow than "serious" stuff, and art as entertainment. But (also as Blake saw) we live in a reduced age, when the quantifiable is overly valued against the wholly human.

---

What I will also say is that my personal approach to bible study is more esoteric and heavily influnced by Swedenborg.

Watch out! Swedenborg is a gateway drug to Blake! And that's a real rabbit hole!

[polymath257]

If people were inclined, this is a very reasonable way to begin a discussion of classical theism, which of course never claimed that God would be some sort of physical object accessible to the senses. Since Plato, God is much more like Justice, or Mercy. Or numbers. These are things we don't sense, but can know of in the mind since we extrapolate their existence from actions and objects in the world. 

I know that most people here won't accept this argument either, but it shows how, when someone presents his reasons, discussion is possible.

And the difficulty is that most (not all) atheists reject Platonism as well. I, for one would say that Justice and Mercy are social constructs and no not exists separately from human societies (or perhaps societies of other conscious entities). Numbers are an abstraction: a linguistic trick that, again, do not exist independently.

If God is yet another abstraction, a metaphor for what we idealize, then I have few problems with theism (I might suggest other values, but that isn't as central to the question). Such metaphors are useful for structuring a culture and are a wonderful basis for humor. But most believers don't believe just that. They believe in a separately existing conscious entity that was involved in the formation of the world around us. That is the notion that I find rather silly.

So to really get a discussion of the Platonic deity, we first need to discuss such notions as 'existence', 'causality', and 'necessity'. I have found that believers and non-believers tend to deal with such issues very differently.

[emjay]

I may be wrong, but from what I've gleaned from what you've said about this, both here and in the past (including what you've said in the past about treating the Bible as largely allegorical, far more that I ever did when I was a Christian)... it seems to me that you perhaps have a sort of 'fragmentary' approach to reading the Bible? Ie treating it more like a compendium of literature than a linear historical record... along with Swedenborg's Heaven and Hell (whatever exactly that is... I couldn't tell from a cursory read of the Swedenborg wiki, which looks very complicated, but guessing it's perhaps a work of literature like Dante's Divine Comedy?). I read Dante's Divine Comedy a long time ago and though I found it very interesting, provocative, and entralling, it was at the end of the day just very imaginative literature to me (I don't know if within Catholicism (which seems similar to your views, on account of Aquinas etc) it's meant to be taken as revelation, but it certainly wasn't within my Protestant upbringing). If that is your approach... ie more grounded in ideas and literature, than line by line analysis? Then I could at least understand where you're coming from a bit more, but at the same time could pretty much categorically say that that could never be me, and never was me when I was a Christian in the past (ie I grew up a literalist and a creationist), because, differences in beliefs aside, my mind just doesn't work like that; I am [over]analytical and reductionistic by nature, so I could never approach any of this based on vague ideas and impressions even if I wanted to.

Never say never, so I am told. Cultivating an appreciation for the arts in general and of oil painting in particular...that aquired sensibility and understanding gained from craftsmanship has taught me that not all truths can be represented with premises and propositions. They do not proceded step by step to a conclusion: but rather  tease and beguile with occational visions of transcendent clarity.

So no, I do not approach scripture like a science text book or pure historical records. If anything, those to me are modern heresies...born of severely limited  abilities to recognize truth in its many presentations.

Fair enough, thanks for sharing your perspective. Don't get me wrong, in many ways I admire your sort of perspective and wish I shared it more often... it seems for instance, far more raw and in the moment with regard to general experience as well as art, than what I usually achieve, despite my interest in Buddhism for instance, which has that sort of mindfulness as a key aspect. For instance if you were to be looking at a beautiful sunset, the second you say 'that's a beautiful sunset', that subtle act of detaching into a kind of analytical mode, to talk about or analyse it, means you're no longer truly in the moment with the underlying experience, and is a trap that many Buddhist monks have fell into, in one way or another, in their various anecdotes, and usually entails them getting a bollocking from the master basically amounting to them saying 'stfu and pay attention'... or perhaps more accurately 'stfu and let it be'

Likewise, I appreciate your (and Bel's) perspective on the value and experience of art and literature, transcendental or otherwise. Though by no means a connoisseur of art, and indeed pretty much a Philistine, I still still view art similar to you, at least in principle. Ie I think of it as hugely powerful and important in its ability to capture, combine, manipulate, and convey complex feelings, emotions, and perceptions, and something that with, as you say, craftsmanship, can become somewhat 'transcendental' in many different ways, such as multiple meanings such as with a pun, or multiple layers, such as how we/I have been describing reading Plato... like layers of an onion. And to that extent I agree with you that it at least represents information in new and emergent ways, that probably could not be captured any other way. Like they say, a picture paints a thousand words, but you might also arguably be able to say, with a well crafted poem, that a word creates a thousand... well many... pictures, so that's what I see as the general essence of art/poetry/literature; its ability, when carefully crafted, to trigger and manipulate our emotions and perceptions in different, and inventive, ways.

So back again to my own experience, like I said, I'm generally not as in-the-moment as I could be, defaulting more to that analytical mode that finds just as much, if not more joy, in questioning and addressing the hows more than the whats. So for instance to the limited extent that I sometimes want to create my own art/poetry, it generally comes from this experimental point of view, wanting to try and create these sorts of effects that I've talked about, generally very minimalist in nature, like for instance trying to figure out what's the bare minimum, or essence of an idea I want to try and capture. Or, I don't know about you but very occasionally I've managed to seemingly hold an emotion/state of mind still for a few seconds... a kind of timeless feeling... very elusive... and have often wondered if it might be possible to capture that sort of feeling/state in art or poetry somehow. It's similar to feelings I've felt in lucid dreams (which unfortunately I haven't had for a long time) where the level of 'will' to apply, to direct the dream, seems a very delicate balance; too much and the whole thing can dissipate very quickly, so in my experience, lucid dreaming is/was more about gentle nudging than forceful acts of will, and balancing that state of will felt kind of protracted/timeless. So basically, my interest when it comes to creating art, limited and sporadic as it is, is just as much as much in the what I want to achieve, as in the analysis or how to achieve it (ie experimentally mainly).

[polymath257]

Those are complex questions well beyond the scope of this thread. That said,  the path from Plotinus's One to the "I am" revelation to Moses is very short. Whereas it takes much contemplation to get to Christ cruxified.

What I will also say is that my personal approach to bible study is more esoteric and heavily influnced by Swedenborg.

In my opinion, Moses did not exist as a historical individual, kind of akin to Prester John.

Not just your opinion. It also seems to be the consensus of the archeologists and historians.