Well, just think about that question for one second. ‘Can God be disproved?’ …It starts with an affirmation in the positive, as if God already exists to be disproved. Read it again and you will get my meaning.
If I said, ‘can flying pigs be disproved?’ – one can see the point I’m making, the question starts with an assumption in the positive, that flying pigs exist to be disproved, which is a nonsensical oxymoron.
The reason that such questions are nonsensical and have no real meaning, is that they are formed, based on a proposition in the negative, it is like saying, ‘can one prove an unprovable event’ …It is a negative claim, because there is no positive information that could be applied to produce evidence, either for or against.
Can God be Disproved?
The correct question, is not for a theist to ask an atheist: ‘can God be disproved? – Which starts with the assumption that God is there to be disproved, this question can be dismissed as meaningless. The correct response towards a theist is ‘it is you who are making a claim that God exists, it is therefore up to you to produce evidence for your claim’ …In other words, put up, or shut up. Now, I know that a theist might then say, ‘yes, but I don’t have to produce evidence, because my position relies on faith’ …Well, the correct response to that then is, ‘OK then, if your position is purely based on faith and does not require evidence, stop asking me to disprove God then, you cannot have it both ways’.
It is not a strength in a theists argument to say ‘you cannot prove God doesn’t exist’ …although they like to claim it is. In reality it is an incredibly weak argument. Imagine an inventor who made a claim that he had invented a perpetual motion machine, but then said he had destroyed it and the plans. Now suppose that same scientist then said, ‘you cannot prove I didn’t invent it’… This is absolutely true of course, one could not prove it, but the fact that one cannot, does not make it true, it is just that one cannot prove a negative claim or assumption, because there is no evidence with which to work with to prove it…
One can of course, produce good scientific evidence, to show why a perpetual motion machine, could not be invented and this of course is a process of shrinking propositions, that could allow for a machine, capable of perpetuating its motion, without outside forces. This means that the more evidence one produces for machines needing fuel to be ‘motivated’ into action and if fuel runs down, so does the motion, it means the more evidence one produces against the proposition, the less probability of the likelihood of perpetual motion machines.
Just as the likelihood of perpetual motion machines, has shrunk to essentially zero, because our knowledge of the laws of physics has shrunk the gaps of knowledge to the point, where perpetual motion machines have been pushed into ‘small corners’ of unlikelihood. The same goes for God, one cannot disprove God directly, but the gaps in the universe, where it was convenient to say God did it, are shrinking as we find explanations to fill those gaps, so one could say, that God is being disproved as a needless concept, in a World that is being understood through scientific findings. In this regard the God concept is being disproved as a nonsensical proposition.
In Newton’s day, most people believed in God, Including Newton. But look at the statistics for atheists within the scientific community. In particular, biologists and physicists, seem to be the most atheistic of all scientists. Once you get to the elite in the scientific community, the top 10% of scientists, then you are talking about a figure in the 90% region for atheism. The reason seems to be, the confrontation with reason within their own scientific disciple. It becomes virtually impossible to make those identifications in nature, that shrink the gaps for God and still believe in God.
Of course science does not work like that, if a scientist comes up with a hypothesis, it is his or her job to prove or disprove that hypothesis through evidence. A scientist would not simply make a claim that it is true and unless you can disprove it, then it must be so. Only the dishonesty of religion gets away with this.
Can God be disproved, no… But then again, neither can flying pigs.
I have never seen a flying pig and if someone made a claim that they existed, by asking me to disprove them, what should I do? …Nothing. The point is that there is no means by which I could disprove them. The same logic applies to the concept of God, it belongs in the same arbitrary category as flying pigs and so, if someone asks me to disprove God, what should I do, again, nothing whatsoever, other maybe than asking the person to present a shred of evidence in the favor of God, something I could work with, to disprove his or her claim. But then here we go again, they then immediately pull out the ‘faith card’ and say, ‘I don’t need evidence, because I have faith’. Fine, but in that case, don’t expect me to waste my time trying to prove a negative speculation.
