At the end of a long debate about where lies the burden of proof with regard to proving the existence of a divine being, a frustrated believer might concede a certain level of defeat about lacking the ability to prove the existence of God with evidence outside the bible, but will undoubtedly make what is often considered the final unchallengeable thrust against atheism — that God cannot be disproven.
I beg to differ.
Get your invisible teapot detection kit ready, and let’s disprove God!
To gain an understanding of the concepts involved, and to set the stage for the argument that you can successfully disprove God, start not with what it takes to disprove God, but rather what it takes to prove God. In other words, you’ll need to take the position of the believer who has the burden of proof. To make it easy, ask yourself what it would take for you to believe in God? Notice that it’s very important here that we’re not asking what it would take for you to believe in “a” god. The distinction is critical. For, “a” god is one of the most widely interpreted concepts; proving or disproving such ambiguity is pointless for both sides, since what would follow from the proof wouldn’t support the tenets of whatever scripture the believer wants to claim as true.
What would it take for you to believe in God? For me, it’s the following.
When:
1. God is defined by a specific, unwavering set of characteristics;
2. Sufficient evidence of each and every one of those characteristics is presented to me in such a way that I believed those characteristics to exist, or very likely to exist; and
3. None of the evidence can be attributed to anything other than the “god” as defined.
We can easily make an analogy here to any other proof of the existence of something. Let’s say you claimed to have a Ming vase in a locked cabinet, and you ask me what it would take for me to believe it exists, and to buy it from you for what you claim it’s worth. Well, I’d have to be convinced beyond reasonable doubt (reasonable for the situation) that it’s a Ming vase, so I first ask you to open the cabinet — eyesight is sensory input which would give me at least some starting data. You tell me that you cannot open the cabinet until the vase is purchased — say that it’s some obscure inheritance rule. As a skeptic, what should I do next? Say, “Well, if you can’t show me, then it cannot be true?” I could, certainly, but then what would be the fun of that? I would say, for it to be a Ming vase, it must have some defining characteristics. Can you prove or disprove any of those characteristics without opening the cabinet? I expect so.
There are scanning tools that should give an indication of the contents of the cabinet. You might be able to determine the shape of the vase (if it’s even in there), and with even more fine-tuning, perhaps “see” engravings with sonics. You could also show me documentation, authentications, affidavits, photographs, samples, etc. There are myriad bits of evidence you could toss my way to help convince me that you really do have a Ming vase, and do you know what the kicker is? It might actually work. I might be convinced, with enough proof, and I might pay you for whatever it really is. When we open the cabinet, we’ll have more evidence one way or the other, and at the end of the day, it still might not be a Ming vase, and if I found evidence that it wasn’t, then I should adjust my view on the matter accordingly.
That’s the way we should handle proof of God. A believer isn’t saying there’s “some sort of god” in the cabinet. The believer is saying “my God” is in the cabinet. That’s the important distinction I mentioned. The believer’s god better have some characteristics. What are they? It varies from believer to believer. What should the skeptic do? Ask: What are the characteristics of your god?
The response could be:
1. Omniscience
2. Omnipotence
3. All-loving
4. Able to produce miracles
5. Trinity
6. Created everything
7. Answers prayers
8. Wrote (directly or indirectly) scripture
Any, all, or a selection of those, or other characteristics may be chosen.
The next step is for the believer to gather and present what evidence is available for each characteristic, and then for me to determine whether I feel each characteristic has been sufficiently proven by the evidence. The key here, as it was with the vase, is that these are defining characteristics – necessary characteristics. Take any one of them away, and it’s not the same god that was originally proffered. If you take one away, the believer must either give up or redefine. This continues until that happens, or I am satisfied with the evidence.
I’m not actually going to challenge any of the characteristics or evidence in this article, as all of them have been discussed repeatedly elsewhere. However, I will say that, for me, and for the vast majority of scientists and skeptics of the world, the evidence isn’t sufficient to prove the existence of God.
And that’s where the believer jumps in with, “Well, you can’t disprove God!”
Yes, I can. The same way the believer failed to prove God. By definition.
God is fully and wholly disproved when:
1. God is defined by a specific, unwavering set of characteristics; and
2. Sufficient proof is provided that at least one of those characteristics is not true.
Let’s test this. The believer decides to define God as omniscient, creator of everything, answers prayers. The believer offers up various arguments trying to prove each characteristic. When we test each one, we realize that prayer has repeatedly not worked as advertised. Reply to the believer: prayer is not answered, therefore your god does not exist. Why can I say that with such authority? It’s simple math (math/logic).
God (G) is the set of characteristics with the elements: omniscience (O), creator of everything (C), prayer-answerer (P).
So,
G ≡ (G = {O,C,P}) & (O & C & P)
~P
∴ ~G
Translation:
God exists if and only if the set of God’s characteristics is omniscience, creator of everything, and prayer-answerer AND each of those characteristics is True. (for each rehash of the “definition” of God, the set of characteristics is changed to match — there’s no cheating!)
Prayer-answering is not True.
Therefore God does not exist.
(sorry if my notation is rusty — I’m using a mix of math and logic)
So, even if we stipulate O and C, the god as defined (G) does not exist, because we’ve determined that a necessary element of G (P) is not true. At this point, the believer might reply that it’s fine to just drop the prayer part, but God exists otherwise. As a skeptic, you might want to respond, “Okay, assuming God as defined by omniscience and creator exists, what then?” The believer (and these are responses I’ve received from this argument!) might go on to say that it follows that if God exists, then the bible is true, or that the quran is true, or that God loves you, or that if you don’t believe in God, you’re going to hell, or that all morality derives from God and therefore religion. Something like that. Proper retort? None of those were characteristics of God as defined (i.e., they weren’t elements of the set of G). If the believer would like to start over again, adding to the set of elements, then we can analyze the revised definition of God. Merely because one characteristic might be plausible or even true does not make another characteristic true by its scriptural or alleged intuitive relationship with that characteristic. In other words, even if everyone in the room agreed that an omniscient being exists, it does not follow that the omniscient being, by nature of it being omniscient, created the universe, answers prayers, or sends people to heaven or hell.
So, you can definitively say that God does not exist.
One factor not to be overlooked is alternative natural explanations. If a believer attributes lightning to God, but it’s shown that lightning is a product of nature, God cannot have the characteristic that it is the only thing that can produce lightning. If the believer claims that everything is God, including nature, that potentially resets the characteristics, which need to be defined further if we’re not meant to just shrug our shoulders at the declaration that “God” exists (and that non-believers merely call it nature). In short, if a believer wants others to do something based on interpretation of scripture, or a subjective interpretation of what “God” is telling the believer, then the believer must provide more specific and thorough characteristics, and they must not be able to be explained by way of natural phenomena. If something is a characteristic that is not evident (i.e., something that cannot be currently proven or disproven (string theory, for example) ), it is not logical to attribute it to anything definitively — so, god of the gaps arguments are insufficient. Until then, everything that exists is nature, natural, and not God, and therefore God does not exist.
If desired, the model above can be modified to reflect the “if not explained by natural phenomenon” restriction:
T ≡ ( (T = {Th,L}) & (Th & L) ) & ( (Th OR L) ≠ N)
Th = N
L = N
(Th OR L) = N
∴ ~T
Thor exists if and only if the set of characteristics of Thor is Thunder and Lightning, AND Thunder and Lightning are true (exist), AND Thunder OR Lightning aren’t explained by natural phenomenon.
Thunder is Natural, Lightning is Natural, so one of the characteristics is Natural.
Therefore, Thor does not exist.
If it works for Thor, and you really think Thor doesn’t exist (you don’t, do you?), then why can’t it work for something called “God” with characteristics that either don’t exist, or can be easily explained by nature, just like Thor’s lightning and thunder?
If a believer makes one last shot in the dark by saying that with all these logical restrictions, it’s impossible to prove that anything exists, let alone God (and therefore, we can’t disprove God, either), then the proper response is that if God is such that God’s characteristics lack the sufficient presence to be tested, such that we cannot prove or disprove God, then if God did exist, God has absolutely no influence on anything in the world — for if God did, then we’d be able to detect it, test it, and prove or disprove its relationship to God. If the believer says we wouldn’t be able to detect it, then that proves the lack of influence, and therefore effective lack of existence. In other words, if God lacks detectable influence, God is irrelevant.
Faults in my logic? Hit me!
-Procrustes
Endnote: If you haven’t figured it out, this analysis is really just about rejection of religion, not necessarily the rejection of the potential for there existing some greater being. There’s no reason not to believe there is something greater out there, but there is a better reason not to believe. Where the above analysis comes in handy is discussions with people who intend to use their proof of God to link back to the alleged truth of scripture or other divine intervention claimed to exist by the religious. When that is the case, there is always some link back to text, and that will always include some reference to an act the god allegedly committed, which helps define that god, at least subjectively with regard to that specific text or the specific religion being touted. When I say I can disprove God, I’m not saying I can disprove the existence of every potential incarnation of everything anyone can possibly call “God” or a greater being. I’m saying that if someone proffers a god with specific characteristics, and those characteristics don’t pass muster, that god does not exist. It’s interesting how our society has been coerced to believe that it is the duty of the unbeliever to continue to battle this pointless fight while the believer “fights” by way of smug stagnation.
Endnote2: Much of the feedback I’ve received from this analysis regards an argument that “answers prayers” is not necessary characteristic of God, nor is it even uniform among believers. My general response to that criticism is that the system of disproof I’ve proffered doesn’t require that God have that characteristic. It merely uses that characteristic as one of many potential example characteristics that can and have been used by believers to define what they call “God.” The sets of characteristics vary from belief to belief, but that has no bearing on whether this disproof works, because this concept is based on identifying whatever characteristics for “God” are proffered at the moment of analysis, not, however, on potential characteristics. In other words, whoever is advocating in the existence of something must define it in a substantial way, and if any bit of that definition is false in such a way that negates the possibility of that thing existing, then it doesn’t exist. So, to answer the criticism with regard to “answers prayers,” I merely say, then how do [i]you[/i] define what you call “God”?
Sometimes I get the rebuttal of “Well, lots of people claim that God answers prayers, and you can’t disprove them, so your disproof is wrong.” Merely because a lot of people claim something doesn’t make it true. More importantly, if we performed extensive studies that showed with reasonable accuracy that those prayers are, in fact, being answered, then that would be evidence in favor of “God,” as defined, but it would not make my disproof equation incorrect. My disproof equation doesn’t say “God does not exist.” The equation is merely a tool. Insert data, and it’ll spit out “God does not exist” or “/shrug.” If you look at the equation without entering data, it says nothing. Therefore, even if God really exists, my equation is not incorrect.
