Tuesday, January 16, 2007

Proving the Negative

Here's a recent Powerpoint presentation on proving the negative: there is no God.

http://www.csus.edu/indiv/m/mccormickm/SantaGod.ppt

The short version:

1. There are lots of negative existential claims that we believe reasonably and that we have evidence for: there is no Santa, there are no unicorns, there is no Bigfoot, aliens don't make crop circles, dinosaurs don't exist, etc.

2. God has all the relevant features that makes it reasonable to believe that those things don't exist.

3. Therefore, it is reasonable to conclude that God does not exist.

3 comments:

Unknown said...
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Pole322 said...

I think the main difference between god and santa is that we have conclusive evidence that santa was contrived from the beginning. D we have the same for god?

Unknown said...

All 3 reasons in the Santa principle are met by the Judeo-Christian God. I would venture to say that no other idea has been more comprehensively examined in all of history, and there is adequate, even excessive, volumes of evidence. No archaeological dig has ever disproved the bible. And for the third point, God has shown Himself countless times in history. Just because you don't believe the people telling the story of Him showing Himself, doesn't make it untrue. Just because I'm telling you the earth is round, and you don't believe me, doesn't mean its not true.