Why is it impossible to prove a negative?

Originally posted by Bosse de Nage
Nietzsche was one too.

A surprisingly large number of philosophers have died or gone insane around age 45. N. & Sp. being two of them.

A surprising number of people have died. I looked at an old photograph of people in a street and realized that everyone in it of every age was now certainly dead. I did not realize this was equivalent to being insane.

Originally posted by finnegan
A surprising number of people have died. I looked at an old photograph of people in a street and realized that everyone in it of every age was now certainly dead. I did not realize this was equivalent to being insane.

Well, now you know.

Originally posted by black beetle
Master Bobby was insane, however his intuition was sharp to the hilt and through time he overcame the dependence on the recognition of the patterns. His analysis became part of his knowledge and, when this superb knowledge annihilated thought, his dynamism was unstoppable.


This sanity of his, was the flip side of his insanity. Who is sane afterall? ...[text shortened]... e or insane, it's enough to inhale and exhale😵


Sanity/ Insanity -just a naïve Yin/ Yang😵[/b]

What is this talk about insanity? Our understanding of mental health has surely made some progress in the past two centuries. It is not surprising that a chess player - or a mathematician, or a theologian, or a philosopher - might have problems of mental health: why should they be exempt? They get colds and STDs as well. It is not coherent to assert that their abilities and disabilities are linked directly without some very specific criteria. The notion of "insanity" as used in this thread smacks of the mad woman in the attic and it has no place in intelligent conversation in this day and age. If you are clever enough to use computers and, in some cases, to play chess, you are surely up to the mental effort of escaping from pre-scientific notions about sanity and insanity. Watch One Flew Over The Cuckoo Nest or Beautiful Mind or something, anything, that might shift your thinking.

Originally posted by amolv06
I have often heard the claim that it is impossible to prove a negative. While I've heard many examples of where it is impossible to prove a negative (i.e. "we can't disprove God", " a ball will never 'fall' up"😉, the examples make me lean towards the idea that it's impossible to prove a negative, but I'm not entirely convinced. Could someone explain this to me from a more philosophical standpoint?

how about this? Nothing is negative... There I proved it

Originally posted by finnegan
What is this talk about insanity? Our understanding of mental health has surely made some progress in the past two centuries. It is not surprising that a chess player - or a mathematician, or a theologian, or a philosopher - might have problems of mental health: why should they be exempt? They get colds and STDs as well. It is not coherent to assert that t ...[text shortened]... Over The Cuckoo Nest or Beautiful Mind or something, anything, that might shift your thinking.

I was talking to a non-dualist about dualism and the way the mind collapses the mind-only wavefunction of the reality, I was not talking about "mental health" as you pose it. It is not surprising neither the fact that anybody "might have problems of mental health", nor the fact that reality is empty. I merely told my friend once more that it's only us😵

Originally posted by Bosse de Nage
Surely you can answer these questions for yourself.

No, I cant. Which is why I was asking. After all, it is you not I that claims to know that all religions have certain attributes (a creator God).

Originally posted by twhitehead
Which of the Greek or Roman gods were creator gods?

If monotheism is different from polytheism, do polytheists always have a single creator god, or multiple creator gods? If so, why the distinction?

OK, I will give you a hint: the Ancient Greeks believed that the "creator" was goddess Gaia😵

Originally posted by twhitehead
No, I cant. Which is why I was asking. After all, it is you not I that claims to know that all religions have certain attributes (a creator God).

I don't believe you're incapable of looking stuff up in Wikipedia. Try 'Greek mythology'.

Originally posted by twhitehead
No, I cant. Which is why I was asking. After all, it is you not I that claims to know that all religions have certain attributes (a creator God).

Methinks you can't, because you are not willing to study the core beliefs and tendencies of the major religions. After all, it is you the one who claims that the definition "God is the ground of all being" is not accepted -by definition!- by all the theists😵

Originally posted by finnegan
What is this talk about insanity? Our understanding of mental health has surely made some progress in the past two centuries. It is not surprising that a chess player - or a mathematician, or a theologian, or a philosopher - might have problems of mental health: why should they be exempt? They get colds and STDs as well. It is not coherent to assert that t ...[text shortened]... Over The Cuckoo Nest or Beautiful Mind or something, anything, that might shift your thinking.

You're making too much out of a passing comment between acquaintances and being a bit of an ass about it.

Originally posted by Bosse de Nage
I don't believe you're incapable of looking stuff up in Wikipedia. Try 'Greek mythology'.

But I would have thought Greek mythology irrelevant in this day and age -- surely it would be more pertinent to consider existing theists and their beliefs?

Originally posted by daniel58
how about this? Nothing is negative... There I proved it

That's not a proof, it's a proposition and requires a proof.

Originally posted by Bosse de Nage
You're making too much out of a passing comment between acquaintances and being a bit of an ass about it.

A post on a forum is not a comment between acquaintances. A post that propagates tiresome and discriminatory ways of thinking merits a response.

Originally posted by finnegan
That's not a proof, it's a proposition and requires a proof.

True I was partly kidding anyways, how about if something is true forward it is true backwards, how about this "There's only One God" therefore they are not other gods???

Originally posted by daniel58
True I was partly kidding anyways, how about if something is true forward it is true backwards, how about this "There's only One God" therefore they are not other gods???

There has existed only one apple. I have just finished eating an entire apple. Therefore you have never eaten apples.

Looks convincing doesn't it? But did you see what I did? I asserted some premise and failed to justify it (that there is only one apple); and this poorly justified premise led to a dubious conclusion.* Certainly not a proof!

Same applies to your premise "There is only one God"




*The statement of the conclusion might actually be true; ie, if it happens to be the case you've never eaten apples anyway. Despite this the argument used is not valid.