Part of the reason for my current pondering is that I've read quite a bit of literature by and about atheists recently, having found myself not very knowledgeable on the subject. It's been rather disappointing; I think I expected more analytical philosophies than I've found. I haven't yet read Dawkins' new book, but I will. I've heard the guy has mellowed a bit, but it remains whether he can live stuff like this down in my mind:

I will respect your views if you can justify them, but if you justify your views only by saying you have faith in them, I shall not respect them.

In context it's not so rude as it is silly, depending on what he means by "justify". It's at Mr. Dawkins' discretion, regardless. The prerogative of a scientist! I thought it was religionists who decried relativism. It turns out that some atheists are just as absolutist.

A frequent argument in much of the atheist literature is an attack on the argument that no universal negative can be proven. That is, a non-atheist will challenge the atheist to "prove" that god does not exist, and the obvious inability to do so means that you can't dismiss the possibility that god exists. There are several responses to this attack; the easiest and most frequent is to say, "Yes, god cannot be disproved. I also cannot disprove the existence of the Easter Bunny, but you probably don't believe in it." Usually the comparison is used with the most absurd entity you can think of, such as the "Flying Spaghetti Monster", as the point was put to Stephen Colbert. "You can't disprove anything!"

Now, I'll put aside the fact that this is a blatant propositional fallacy ("A and B cannot be proven, and you don't believe A, so you can't believe B" — a disjunct affirmation); after all, it's television, even when you're an academic. In this case, he's making a generalization to make a point about probability. The real issue with phrasing the problem this way is that it's likely to also be a straw man, depending on who is speaking, and to whom. I mean, what is meant by "god" anyway? Before deciding whether something is disprovable, you need a hypothesis, or at least a specific statement. I could propose the existence of Nessie thus:

"A large animal, at least 5 meters long, lives in the Loch Ness."

This is a testable hypothesis; it's not practical, because you'd need to drain the lake or something, but it is testable. Moreover, if a gigantic eel was discovered there, it would be a proven hypothesis. If I changed the statement to be "a plesiosaur lives in the Loch Ness", that too would be testable. How I phrase the thesis determines in large part whether it's disprovable or not. By consistently and regularly lumping God in with the Tooth Fairy, this point is completely lost. (This is pretty much in line with the other common argument for disprovability: the incompatibility of gods, like Jehovah and Allah, since by definition each says the other cannot exist. Fallacies abound.)

If you really want to discuss "undisprovables", I suggest a more appropriately scoped comparison: alien life. Bear with me.

Statement A, regarding god: "A nonhuman being somewhere in the cosmos, dimension unknown, had a part in the formation of the universe and life."

Statement B, regarding aliens: "Nonhuman life exists somewhere in the universe."

Now, before you jump all over me for the most half-ass'ed definition of god evar, that's really my point here. It's science-atheists who tend to phrase the problem (and its solution) in terms of "belief in god" as a general disprovable, not me. Note that both statements are not disprovable. But they are also not testable, unlike many other specific statements regarding Santa Claus or reindeer. Even speaking in probabilities, they are not comparable. For example, scouting the north pole may give explorers a 99.5% confidence that Santa Claus does not live there, if he does exist; refraining from a 100% assertion is just their way of retaining some scientific accuracy. But what about the god/alien hypothesis? Can they be tested? Probably not by earth-stranded humans. If you're going to compare universal negatives, you need to make fair comparisons that involve hypothesis whose testability can be gauged.

Few people — including Dawkins — would not concede this point, but would go on to protest that the definition of god I have provided is not prevalent. This is rather missing the point, assuming that the "debate" is really supposed to be about the "existence of god", since my definition is probably one of the few that could be applied universally. In any case, I'd respond that my definition *is* prevalent, even universal as a common subset of religious belief, at least deist religion. Does this make it a baby-bathwater problem? Perhaps.

Lastly, please again note that I'm not attacking the atheist position: I'm responding to the attack on the disprovability theory. I have no problem whatsoever with the atheist disbelief in god based on the lack of evidence for god. I do have a problem with the position that leads someone to say that they "cannot respect" someone's belief in god's existence, because it is not provable, which is the position taken by a good many atheists.

This is a conversation I'll be having with myself for at least a year as far as the blog is concerned. I have a list of religion-related thoughts I want to write; I've started with atheism mainly because of my own reading of late. Lest anyone think this meandering isn't going to offend them at some point. ;-)

Speaking of which, I've been asked why I don't re-enable comments. This site as I wrote it is simply ill-suited to comments and spam prevention, so I'm waiting at least until we have glassbead.net ready for blogging to enable comments. I think being able to leave comments is overrated, though.