Why asking for proof that God doesn't exist makes no sense

Today I watched a recorded episode of Bill Maher's Real Time HBO show. Scott Galloway, one of Maher's guests, was really down on TikTok, the video sharing service owned by a Chinese company, ByteDance.

Galloway thought TikTok should be banned in the United States because he believes the Chinese Communist Party is using it to undermine the patriotism of American young people. 

But he couldn't provide any evidence that this is happening.

Galloway just believed that the Chinese government was messing with the minds of our youth. At one point he said that it wasn't up to those opposed to TikTok to prove that the Chinese Communist Party was doing nasty stuff, it was up to those who support TikTok to prove that the Chinese Communist Party wasn't up to no good. 

Which made no sense to me.

That's the sort of argument I've heard a lot of from commenters on this blog who believe in God and don't like my skepticism about the existence of God. Prove that God doesn't exist, Brian, they'll say.

I'll usually respond with something like, That isn't how proof usually works. For it's very difficult, if not impossible, to prove that an entity doesn't exist. 

Yes, I realize after some Googling just now that some people do consider that it is possible to prove a negative. But reading some of those arguments made my head hurt, because they involved philosophical logic rather than common sense -- which is how I see the situation.

It seems to me that rather than arguing this question abstractly, it is easier to grasp by looking at a specific example. 

With TikTok, how could anyone be certain that the Chinese Communist Party isn't using the video sharing service to make young people have less faith in the United States?

Even if a diligent search of TikTok videos and the algorithm used to share those videos with TikTok users (i'm one of them) showed no evidence of dirty tricks by the Chinese Communist Party, it still would be possible, albeit unlikely, that the CCP was using a very subtle undetectable means of screwing with the minds of American young people.

That's why I believe that TikTok shouldn't be banned in this country unless there's actual evidence of malfeasance by the Chinese Communist Party. The First Amendment to our Constitution guarantees freedom of speech, which includes the freedom to view online content even if it is critical of the United States.

Meaning, while private companies can put limits on what people can read and see, the United States government can't ban a service like TikTok just because some politicians think it might be used to undermine confidence in our way of life. 

So someone who wants to ban TikTok needs to have solid evidence that this is justified, not just a belief that TikTok might become an arm of the Chinese Communist Party.

Likewise, someone who claims that God exists needs to provide solid evidence of this if they want skeptics like me to agree with them. There's no way to prove that God doesn't exist, since even if we assume that a search for God will come up empty -- as has been the case since the dawn of history -- the possibility that God is lurking behind some cosmic veil can't be ruled out.

In another blog post on this subject, I quoted Armin Navabi:

"There's no evidence that God doesn't exist."

When confronted with criticism, some theists will pull out this argument in an attempt to shift the burden of proof toward the critic. Although this tactic can feel very clever, it opens a door to absurdity.

This argument seems to suggest that we believe in everything, even things we have yet to think about, until that belief is proven false. That's simply not a logical way to perceive reality.

If the criteria for something being accepted as true was based purely on there being no evidence against it, an endless number of hypothetical objects could suddenly become "real." This has been the source of numerous playful thought experiments by skeptics around the world.

-- The flying spaghetti monster, who created the earth with his noodly appendage.

-- The invisible pink unicorn, whose "believers" logically know that she must be invisible because she has not been seen, yet have faith that she's pink.

-- The dragon in Carl Sagan's garage, a thought experiment he describes in The Demon-Haunted World. The dragon is invisible, floats in the air, generates no heat and is incorporeal, thus evading all forms of sensory detection.

-- Russell's Teapot, a hypothetical teapot that you cannot prove isn't orbiting the sun.

Of course, all of these examples were designed in good fun. Bertrand Russell does not actually believe that there is a teapot orbiting the sun. However, there is no way to definitively prove that these fanciful claims aren't true, which demonstrates the total absurdity of this line of thinking.

 

Comments

[Appreciative Reader]

Haha, true. Burden of proof is such a simple thing, and what's more it's like foundational to rational thinking, kind of like Logic & Rationality 101. And yet such astonishingly large numbers of people seem to be completely innocent of this very basic concept. Specifically when it comes to the God question, I must have faced this question like literally a hundred times, both online and IRL, and in all seriousness, not jokingly, "Well, can you prove that God does NOT exist?"

I read such colossal ignorance about such simple things as an indictment of our education system, that "teaches" kids for years and years, and then sends them out into the world without the ABCs of how to think straight.

...And agreed, that comment about Tiktok bespeaks that same ignorance. Sure, there could be other reasons, rooted in politics or political messaging or precedence or caution, that sort of thing, for banning the thing even in the absence of clinching evidence; but it is clear from what he says that this guy doesn't know the first thing about how to think straight.