The difference is that there is evidence of our existence. I think the point Michael is making is that not only can god be proved to be "improbable", but add that to the absolute lack of any evidence that he actually does exist, and you have your reasonable prove of nonexistence. Proof of existence negates it being "improbable", but when there is no proof of existence (even the slightest circumstantial evidence) along with evidence on nonexistence, that provides reasonable proof of nonexistence.

I also believe that if one can prove something to be contradictory, that in itself is reasonable proof that thing is nonexistent. "An inconsistency cannot exist in reality; not in part, not in whole". It is as simple as that.

A previous post explains about how "nothing can be said" of God is not entirely accurate. Many things can be said of God (and boy howdy are they!) the problem is that there is nothing that can be said of God of any certainty (which is addressed in the post). This, I believe, is the long held belief that God can be neither proved nor disproved.

Dealing with those mystically inclined, the *I-feel-god-in-my-heart* crowd, and in general all irrationalist believers requires a different approach from dealing with rationalists.

Their usual spiel: I know that my god exists -- but he/she/it cannot be described, or is beyond human understanding.

The philosopher Wittgenstein, in one seemingly cryptic utterance announced, "A nothing would be as good as a something about which nothing could be said."

Spelled out: you claim that something exists, but no property (like, being blue) could ever be ascribed to it. This is the famous Western "via negativa" - negative path to god - also the "neti, neti" not-this, not-this of Hindu mystics. God is not blue, is not evil, is not good . . . .

Logically, however, a claim that something exists does not ascribe a property to it -- or, as you ought to have learned in logic class -- existence is not a predicate. (Non-existence is not a predicate either.) Nobody can talk about Nothing. True.

Nobody can talk about Nothing? Who's doing the talking here? (Nobody?) And what's being talked about? (Nothing?) And what did Nobody say about Nothing? Zen Buddhism figured all this out long ago -- hence, koans if you're lucky or a hard slap in the face when you're persistently obtuse.

‘A god exists’ seems to be saying something, but the sentence is meaningless. You might as well be saying bar-bar or saying nothing at all. The Viennese novelist, Robert Musil wrote "The Man without Qualities." The man who can't be there. A nobody. Nothing.

If a god "is a something about which nothing can be said," then this putative something is equivalent to "a nothing."

So-called mystics in India, China, Japan, and even Europe apprehended that any *god* without qualities was nothing.

And, they said so. And, they were right.

bipolar2 © 2008

Religions generally are based on three presumptions:

- "free will", i.e. that you are responsible and have to struggle for salvation;
- "moral order of the world", which means: there is an eternal and invariable thing called "the will of God", which once and for all time determines what man ought to do and what he ought to abandon; that the value of an individual or a people is measured by the extent to which they fulfill this will of God; that the destinies of individuals and peoples are CONTROLLED by this will of God, which rewards and punishes according to the level of obedience;
- the existence of "moral deeds" ("non-egoistic" etc.).

All these ideas are just errors. It can be proved APRIORICALLY. E.g. to disprove free will you even don't need determinism, fatalism (necessity vs chance, foreknowledge and such) is just enough.

You know what it means if there is no free will. And you know what it means if there is no moral order of the world - then, evil is more powerful, and goodness (in the church sense, that is: piety) dies.

But what is most funny - and what is probably the strongest argument against God ever possible - two ideas "free will" and "moral order of the world" contradict each other...