>> ^gwiz665:

Given a limited scope you can absolutely prove a negative. "There are no muslims in congress" is provable. "There is no God in the United States" is also provable.
The problem is that if you have an unlimited scope, then it becomes impossible.
"There are no fairies in my basement."
vs.
"There are no fairies."


As already pointed out, by *definition* you can't prove a negative.
As per your other threads shinyblurry, we can argue semantics all day so it's kind of pointless, but I'm going to anyway, because it's actually at the nub of the statement "you can't prove a negative".
I've also used an online dictionary you've sited in your other posts.

prove/pro͞ov/Verb
1. Demonstrate the truth or existence of (something) by evidence or argument.
2. Demonstrate by evidence or argument (someone or something) to be.

Note the use of the affirmative "the existence" / "to be". There is no scope for a negative here.

Also it's worth pointing out the etymology of the word "proof". It comes from the Latin "probare" meaning "to test". So it you've got proof of god's existence, it's got to be testable. Similarly if I want to "prove" there is no god I need to formulate a test that will give a definitive result.

Now, moving away from semantics....

So yeah, he's using a linguistic trick to try and recontextualize the statement "you can't prove a negative". That statement is generally used as a shorthand in an argument not only as a reference to the above definition, but also as a more general indication of the vast impracticality of proving a blanket negative statement such as "there is no god". In that context it is never meant as an absolute.

By adding a very restricted location, as William Lane Craig has in the video above, a negative statement of course becomes provable. I don't think any atheist would disagree that the statement "there are no coins in my pocket" could be proven simply by looking in my pocket.

For example - If as an atheist I was to say "there is no such object as the holy grail in existence" in order to prove it I would then have to trawl through every every steet, house, closet, drawer, toilet cistern, dessert, mountaintop, quarry pit, top secret inaccessible military bunker in the world, then undertake extensive excavation all the way to the earths molten core.

At his stage a believer could say "Well I have just had a personal revelation from God who spoke directly to me and told me that the grail is being kept safe underneath the icy surface of Jupiter's 6th moon Europa"

So after I've convinced NASA to undertake "The Program for the Recovery of Christs Holy Grail from Under the Surface of Jupiter's 6th Moon Europa" I'm told by the believer that they've had another personal message received directly from god that he was angry at being tested, and so has moved the grail to a divine and indestructible vault at the heart of the distant sun Omicron Beta....

However, if I make the statement - "there is no such object as the holy grail in existence in my desk drawer" - I just have to open the drawer to look and the statement can be proven.

And the above examples are with definite physical objects. Think how impossible it is to prove the statement "there is no god" when the idea of how god is defined is so widely and radically disputed depending on what religion you subscribe to, and when almost every individual within each of these religions will have their own definition of what god is.

^Crake: Sub sends signal to the "nuclear torpedo", which is connected by wire to the surface landing module, which relays the signal to the orbiting craft, which uses the powerful antenna array to send it to Earth. Complex and one-way communication, but nothing NASA hasn't attempted to solve before. Unless they send it in metric...

^cybrbeast: I'm aware of the Drake Equation and it's implications on finding life within our own solar system. But when we're going specifically into places where we expect life to be possible, it's best to be too cautious than to assume there's nothing there, imo.
As for the likelihood of life under all that ice with no sunlight: If you watch the entire film, you see that they are in fact following a team of ocean explorers which take subs to the deepest parts man can survive in, in order to find new life, new species and understand how life survives there at all.
Europa is believed to have a molten core (which is the reason there's an ocean there at all, presumably), and is not just a big slab of ice. If that's the case, there might be Thermal Vents there, which allow life to exist on Earth in environments previously thought to be impossible.

So I guess what I'm trying to say is, let's go on a mission to see if there's life on Europa, while actually preparing to find said life, and not just doing it to mark a checkbox and say "Europa? Meh, been there, done that, got the T-Shirt".

I'd rather play this than have to actually raid Molten Core ever again!

dupe of http://www.videosift.com/video/The-Molten-core

Tags for this video have been changed from 'WoW molten core sound eight directions' to 'WoW, warcraft, warcrack, molten core, april fools' - edited by uhohzombies