Quote:
Originally Posted by Janszoon
I would say making a "negative claim" about something for which there's no evidence is a perfectly acceptable position.
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That doesn't make any sense. Can I then prove that there is no god by saying there is no evidence for him and not providing any other reasons?
Oh, and Wikipedia says you're wrong too.
And this random site too.
Quote:
The burden of proof is always on the person making an assertion or proposition. Shifting the burden of proof, a special case of argumentum ad ignorantium, is the fallacy of putting the burden of proof on the person who denies or questions the assertion being made. The source of the fallacy is the assumption that something is true unless proven otherwise.
The person making a negative claim cannot logically prove nonexistence. And here's why: to know that a X does not exist would require a perfect knowledge of all things (omniscience). To attain this knowledge would require simultaneous access to all parts of the world and beyond (omnipresence). Therefore, to be certain of the claim that X does not exist one would have to possess abilities that are non-existent. Obviously, mankind's limited nature precludes these special abilities. The claim that X does not exist is therefore unjustifiable. As logician Mortimer Adler has pointed out, the attempt to prove a universal negative is a self- defeating proposition. These claims are "worldwide existential negatives." They are only a small class of all possible negatives. They cannot be established by direct observation because no single human observer can cover the whole earth at one time in order to declare by personal authority that any “X” doesn't exist.
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And that's after two minutes of Googling. There seem to be many more such sites backing me up that just happen to be far too long winded for me to bother with ATM.