Atheism Question?

Question

If the belief that God does not exist where a hypothesis, what evidence would be required to falsify it?

If person A said I believe that ducks do not exist, I could falsify that by bring him a duck. Good science is based on falsification of hypotheses, not by confirming them.

Answer 1

Coming up with proof of God.

Answer 2

One cannot falsify this, but one can provide a Bayesian likelihood and should be able to do so without significant leaps to the subjective.

Let us assume there exists two universes, one with a God and one without. They should look different if having a God matters, there should be differences in operation.

So any attempt to falsify the God hypothesis should look at how the universe operates differently since a God exists. I would specify the God I was using. For example, in the Christian and Jewish scriptures God stopped the Earth from spinning for Joshua and likewise flooded the entire Earth with Noah being the sole survivor. What implications exist for that and what physical evidence would be concommitant with that? These are just two, but if you find that such a claim is either improbable given the laws of physics or impossible, then either the scriptures are false and there is no God, or the scriptures are false and the God that exists is neither the Christian nor the Jewish God.

This does not disprove the existence of a divinity, you would have to work your way through all the religions and then you would not disprove the existence of a divinity, merely those that man can and has conceived.

Answer 3

Hypotheses are always stated in the positive. The null hypothesis is then the negative.

Where a deity is concerned:

Null Hypothesis -- There is no deity.
Hypothesis -- There is a deity.

The null hypothesis is accepted until such time that there is evidence to show that the null hypothesis is rejected at a certain given probability (typically 95% for the soft sciences, 99% for hard sciences, 99.95% before being accepted as 'absolutely true').

I'll grant you this -- if you can establish with even 80% probability the null hypothesis is false, you'll make a believer out of me. Since you assert the hypothesis, however, the burden is on you to prove, not on me to prove the null hypothesis (after all, the null is accepted until discounted).

Answer 4

Atheism is not a belief - it is the lack of a belief. We don't go around trying to prove gods don't exist, because that's the believers' job if they want to convince us (and to save you a bunch of time, quotes from 'holy' books don't qualify as evidence).

The other problem - which is rarely brought up - is that there is no consistent definition of what a 'god' actually is, so questions of existence or not are premature anyway.

Once a person has rid himself of worrying about this unanswerable question life gets a whole lot easier and you can concentrate on things that are or can be, rather than things which only might be.

Answer 5

Atheism is the lack of a belief in god, not a belief that god does not exist. There is an important difference if you think about. Since the lack of belief in god is not a hypothesis there is no need to attempt to prove it. The existence of god however, even if you generously call it a hypothesis, puts the onus of verification on the proponent of the hypothesis which certainly isn't the Atheist.

Answer 6

The belief that an omnipotent creator god, according to Buddhist teachings, makes no logical sense (yet with due respect to those who choose to believe in such a being). There are many Buddhist discussions, teachings and such that show the logical progression of thought, but way more than I can write about in here... because it IS logic and takes time and time to think about it, but you can find it for yourself and chew it over, or not. It's not been refuted in thousands of years, so it's not likely to be refuted anytime soon... even science is starting to prove the Buddha's teachings, even while many lamas keep an open mind that if science were to prove the Buddha wrong, they'd have to rethink, and it's not happening. Makes one wonder doesn't it?

_()_

Answer 7

What an incoherent question. Are you asking what evidence would prove god exists? (Falsifying a hypothesis that god doesn't exist)

Science doesn't need to disprove god, its not its job, science just searches for truths, and changes its mind and facts and evidence change.

Answer 8

The only way Believers could prove to Atheists and Agnostics that God does exist, is if they could produce God, himself. Then maybe we would believe in Him.

I say maybe, because in this day and age people are a lot more suspicious. Especially in light of advancements in technology.

If, however, it should be proven beyond reasonable doubt that God does exist, He who claims to be God would have a lot of questions to answer.

As an example "Where was He when..........?" and "Why didn't He..........?"

If he should be unable to provide the question asker with a satisfactory response, well then belief in him will dimish even further and contempt for him will rise.

Now you gotta ask yourself do you really want to put your god through this torture......well do ya.......pal.

lol

Answer 9

we live in a natural world nothing in the supernatural world is accessible because we haven't got supernatural senses or instruments with which to measure or record anything in the supernatural realm it is all parlor talk and nothing that can be substantiated
if we work on assumptions as to what impact an outside realm might have we can build upon evidence of influence or lack of influence in a speculative manner but still assumptions argue without the solid bases of proof.

Answer 10

I think it is really a question of agnosticim vs. atheism. Most atheists are in point of fact and in a very technical sense, agnostics.

Because we can't prove God doesn't exist. But in reality, if our doubt of God is 98%, we are, for all practical purposes, atheists.

Read the Bible. Working up 98% doubt for THAT God is pretty darn easy!

Answer 11

if good science is based on falsifying a hypothesis, falsify this:

Santa is real, baby. And so are his reindeer, sleigh, and magic bag.