My plates are trying to murder me. They made a concerted attempt to burn me only this morning but I was too quick for them.
Seriously, the word "prove" is misused all the time. There may not be proof for a universal negative (there can be proof for negatives confined by time or space, such as, "My plates are not jumping out of the cupboard just now,") but there is evidence. Reasonable people usually live their lives based on evidence rather than proof anyway; most things in real life are difficult to prove in formal mathematical terms.
The problem when one tries to translate this into discussions about atheism and religion is that many people do have sensory evidence of the divine. Not necessarily accurate sensory evidence, mind you; but from whatever cause, their brains interpret certain neural firings as a physical sensation of Something There. It's really hard to argue against what someone's own senses are telling them -- just try to explain to a hallucinating person that their skin isn't covered with bugs when they see them and feel them. It's not unreasonable to point out the bugs aren't actually there, but it's a real uphill battle because your empirical sensory evidence and theirs do not match. And most people, not really unreasonably, go by their own in case of conflict.
Exactly why most people's brains do this is unclear; the material I've read on the subject seems to suggest it's probably genetic, but what it was an adaptation for is the subject of much scientific speculation. There are people who are apparently just born without it -- I'm one of them. I come from a line of five generations of atheists on both sides, and as far as I can tell, whatever it is which constitutes a "spiritual sense" in most people is something I don't have. Even in the times of my life when I've tried to be religious, I didn't have the wiring for it.
It can be really hard to talk successfully about a lack of external evidence to someone whose own senses are telling them there is evidence, though.
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Date: 2009-02-26 04:55 pm (UTC)Seriously, the word "prove" is misused all the time. There may not be proof for a universal negative (there can be proof for negatives confined by time or space, such as, "My plates are not jumping out of the cupboard just now,") but there is evidence. Reasonable people usually live their lives based on evidence rather than proof anyway; most things in real life are difficult to prove in formal mathematical terms.
The problem when one tries to translate this into discussions about atheism and religion is that many people do have sensory evidence of the divine. Not necessarily accurate sensory evidence, mind you; but from whatever cause, their brains interpret certain neural firings as a physical sensation of Something There. It's really hard to argue against what someone's own senses are telling them -- just try to explain to a hallucinating person that their skin isn't covered with bugs when they see them and feel them. It's not unreasonable to point out the bugs aren't actually there, but it's a real uphill battle because your empirical sensory evidence and theirs do not match. And most people, not really unreasonably, go by their own in case of conflict.
Exactly why most people's brains do this is unclear; the material I've read on the subject seems to suggest it's probably genetic, but what it was an adaptation for is the subject of much scientific speculation. There are people who are apparently just born without it -- I'm one of them. I come from a line of five generations of atheists on both sides, and as far as I can tell, whatever it is which constitutes a "spiritual sense" in most people is something I don't have. Even in the times of my life when I've tried to be religious, I didn't have the wiring for it.
It can be really hard to talk successfully about a lack of external evidence to someone whose own senses are telling them there is evidence, though.