If you are claiming something doesn’t exist you should prove it. Why should I take your argument seriously without proof? You see how this goes both ways?
No it doesn’t go both ways.
If something exists it should be easy to prove.
There should be some form of sign of it.
On the other hand it is hard to disprove the existence of anything at all.
How do we know there is not some teapot in outer space?
We can’t.
But that is no reason to believe there is one.
No it doesn’t go both ways.
If something exists it should be easy to prove. There should be some form of sign of it.
This is absolutely not true. Things can exist without being accessible to you directly in a manner that makes it easy to prove their existence.
On the other hand it is hard to disprove the existence of anything at all. How do we know there is not some teapot in outer space?
Proving non-existence is not always hard. If we were arguing about the food in your fridge and I were claiming you had food in your fridge when you did not you could easily prove me wrong by just showing me the contents of your fridge.
More importantly, why does the hardness of doing a thing give you special status to make claims without proof? Seems like you are artificially constructing rules here solely because they benefit your position.
We can’t. But that is no reason to believe there is one.
The universe is massive. There are teapots here. Why is it not plausible to believe some other alien race would not also construct some kind of teapot? Also, consider the fact that all teapots here on earth are literally teapots in “outerspace” in some sense.
More importantly, why does the hardness of doing a thing give you special status to make claims without proof?
It doesn’t. But, “God doesn’t exist” is not a claim, it is a counter-claim to the claim “God exists”. The very concept of a higher power didn’t even exist until people started claiming without evidence that it did exist, and it’s been many branching games of telephone of that original unproven claim since then that has resulted in basically every major religion.
The counter-claim of “God doesn’t exist” needs no proof beause it is countering a claim that also has no proof. If and when the original multiple millenium old claim of “God exists” actually has some proof to back it up, then the counter-claim would need to either have actual proof as well to support it, or debunk the “evidence” if possible. But again, the original claim is literally thousands of years old and still has absolute bupkis to prove it, so… I’m not too worried.
ETA:
The universe is massive. There are teapots here. Why is it not plausible to believe some other alien race would not also construct some kind of teapot? Also, consider the fact that all teapots here on earth are literally teapots in “outerspace” in some sense.
The other person you replied to worded this bit poorly. The original analogy is trying to convince people on Earth to believe that there is a teapot(which is too small to see with a telescope) orbiting the Sun independently somewhere in between Earth’s and Mars’ orbits. It’s completely illogical to believe seeing as humans haven’t sent anything without scientific value beyond maybe the moon, and there’s no evidence aliens have visited our solar system let alone left a teapot in orbit. But since it can’t be proven there isn’t a teapot orbiting by itself, does that mean you should believe there is? No, of course not.
I agree with your points. I just want to add that what OP was talking about is that the existence of a deity or higher power is not falsifiable and thus is impossible to logically disprove. I’m sure many, many, many people have tried on both sides.
My favorite proof against any higher power is from the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy:
Now, it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mind-bogglingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some have chosen to see it as the final proof of the NON-existence of God. The argument goes something like this:
“I refuse to prove that I exist,” says God, “for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.”
“But,” says Man, “the Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn’t it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves that You exist, and so therefore, by Your own arguments, You don’t. QED.”
“Oh dear,” says God, “I hadn’t thought of that,” and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.
“Oh, that was easy,” says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing.
Edit: changes “logically prove” to “logically disprove” as that’s why the concept of a higher power cannot be disproven.
