I've ran into several atheists online who will often enter groups or pages I'm a part of and start randomly asking questions, asking me to 'prove' several things, and then responding with the argument that if I can't 'prove' something then it must be 'BS'. The only trouble is that this argument just falls apart in most aspects of life. First, I would like to point out that even science is not about 'proving' things. Ask any scientist. Science is about forming theories, but different theories can become popular at different times, and there's no certain right answer which is true all the time.
Now, for the argument itself. As I said before, it just falls apart most of the time. If I stood here and said, "By this time tomorrow I will play as Parthia fighting against Egypt in a game of Rome: Total War, and I will win". Can I 'prove' that this will happen, right here now? No. So according to the logic of this argument, this means that it must be 'BS' then. But it's entirely possible that by this time tomorrow, it could happen exactly as I said. Again, there's the possibility that it wouldn't, but it's not entirely beyond the realms of possibility, and it's certainly not 'BS'.
If someone asked whether I like Byzantine art, and I said yes, but couldn't 'prove' it beyond my spoken testimony, does that make it 'BS'?
Now, I'm not saying that we should just believe anything without any reason whatsoever to do so. But what I am saying is that the argument that something isn't true simply because you can't 'prove' it beyond a shadow of a doubt doesn't always work.
Now, for the argument itself. As I said before, it just falls apart most of the time. If I stood here and said, "By this time tomorrow I will play as Parthia fighting against Egypt in a game of Rome: Total War, and I will win". Can I 'prove' that this will happen, right here now? No. So according to the logic of this argument, this means that it must be 'BS' then. But it's entirely possible that by this time tomorrow, it could happen exactly as I said. Again, there's the possibility that it wouldn't, but it's not entirely beyond the realms of possibility, and it's certainly not 'BS'.
If someone asked whether I like Byzantine art, and I said yes, but couldn't 'prove' it beyond my spoken testimony, does that make it 'BS'?
Now, I'm not saying that we should just believe anything without any reason whatsoever to do so. But what I am saying is that the argument that something isn't true simply because you can't 'prove' it beyond a shadow of a doubt doesn't always work.
