"YOU CAN'T PROVE A NEGATIVE!"
The statement above is uttered repeatedly by theists and atheists alike. Professors make the above statement as frequently as high-school students. Is it true?
Here is an article that will help people more accurately understand why we want to consider the claim more carefully before we mindlessly repeat it.
https://departments.bloomu.edu/philosophy/pages/content/hales/articlepdf/proveanegative.pdf
After engaging the argument weigh-in on the claims and if you were able to change your position or at least soften entrenched beliefs on the matter.
I would suggest that logical reasoning is not designed to provide 'proof' of anything. Rather I suggest that logical reasoning is best used to provide guidance to decision making either in one's life, one's business or just where one might look for something that is lost.
Since all logic is based on premises, it is important make the premises represent what is true as best that we know truth or based on some other criteria we can all agree on.
Let me give an example that I've used in the past:
I'm given a book which some people want me to believe is 'God's Word' (no I'm not picking on anyone here, it could be the Bible, it could the Koran, or any other book like the Da Vinci Code) and I want to use logic to determine the validity of their claim.
I go the the classical definition of God which says that God is perfect in all ways. I use that a my first premise. Then I read the book looking for errors of all kinds to determine if the book appears to be perfect. I use the outcome of that as premise two.
The result of my logic is:
1. God is perfect in all ways
2. The book is not perfect
Conclusion is that the book is NOT the product of God.
The catch with all logic is that there is no way to be absolutely certain you have correctly found the truth. But the exercise provides one with solid basis to make a decision on whether I should accept the claims of the people telling me it is 'God's Word' or not. In this case, it would be clear the best thing for me to do is reject that claim based on logic.
If one were to change the premises, the conclusion may also change. In this case, if I decide that while God is perfect, it is also acceptable that God 'could' deliberately make something that is imperfect. THEN my conclusion about the book would have to change to 'it is unknowable' whether the book is the product of God.
In truth, one can make one's premises in pretty much any way one wants and achieve different conclusions. Logic in the hands of a trickster can be difficult to recognize that one is being tricked into taking a likely poor decision. That happens a lot on forums as people attempt to make their POV appear to be logically proper.
