Burden of Proof

[James Cizuz]

Who do you think has the burden of proof when it comes to anything?

It should be the claimant that has the burden of proof. Because if you make a claim, are people going to believe you with no proof? Science proves stuff does not exist by proving they do exist. Simple reasoning if you can not prove it exists, it does not. Your killing two birds with one stone.



Reason i'm doing this is because some people think the burden of proof should be on the negative view. Say with people believing in god. They could not prove it, no proof what so ever, so instead of doing the rational thing by saying it does not exist, since scientifically it does not. They then go to the people who don't believe and tell us to prove it doesn't. No one can prove something does not exist, without trying to prove it does exist. They tried and failed yet still cling onto it. Of course this also sprung the belief in agnostism about it's impossible to disprove something. However, scientists don't say abosultly it does not. They just say, no proof for the postive, leading to a negative in existence. Could it still exist? Sure. Should you believe it exists? If you think rationally no.

I just want to know, how can people first make a claim and expect the people who do not believe it to prove the negative, or why people think it's not their job to do the work.

[Decado]

Who do you think has the burden of proof when it comes to anything?
It should be the claimant that has the burden of proof.
that's how it is anyway, and yes, that's how it should be. Innocent until proven.


Reason i'm doing this is because some people think the burden of proof should be on the negative view. Say with people believing in god. They could not prove it, no proof what so ever, so instead of doing the rational thing by saying it does not exist, since scientifically it does not.
You don't know that.
Yes. "Scientifically" hasn't been able to prove it yet They say: God left no trace of his existence.
However every time evidence is found that revolutionises thinking, due to a discovery made in the galaxy, isn't that evidence ? since the evidence has been found however, it's just "science" now.

I'm not gonna go into a religious debate since this is wat it seems like, and i don't really support nor negate the view of the existence of God, but through Philosphy arguments which are irrefutable, God does exist. and through more of the same, it does not.
science is still catching up

i'm in the best position since i'm not looking at one POV, namely: "nope. no matter wat anyone says i will refuse to keep an open mind about it."
or: "God exists and he ( did so and so ) <--- this last part remember, is wat MAN says. Man is always wrong. don't think God doesn't exist b/c of wat man has said God can/cannot do.
Yes, holy scriptures could have been (most definitely in my view) written by man. and if u r an aetheist, u know this. u know man is the one making this up, thus man's writing should be ignored, and not whether the true Omniscience exists or not.

anyway

They then go to the people who don't believe and tell us to prove it doesn't. No one can prove something does not exist,
u can..

I just want to know, how can people first make a claim and expect the people who do not believe it to prove the negative, or why people think it's not their job to do the work.
quite broad final question..
in the God example u gave, the ppl who 'make the claim' aren't the ones saying they need evidence of His existence. They merely defend that he exists when ppl say he does not.

Disbeliever: "How can u prove he exists?"

The believer's words are merely a reflection of the antagonist -
Believer: "How can u prove he does not?"
^ in the above, the believer "knows" He exists and thus needs no further proof, and so they don't need to do "any work" in "proving"

[James Cizuz]

Actually, you can't prove something does not exist. All you can prove is their is no proof for it's existence, and the rational answer then is it does not exist. If you say with an absolute then your wrong. You could say God does not exist, because their is no proof. Which is how I follow it, I do not believe for that reason. However because we can not prove it today does not we can never prove it. As of today god does not exist, maybe 100 years they'll find he does. Such as the study their doing today with the partical accelerator to try and find the "god particle". They however have not found it.

Also, the use of existence can not prove something made it. Because that would only raise the question what made the thing that made this. Also the law of conservation of energy states energy can not be destroied, nor created, only changed. If you wanna argue god energy always existed fine. However when you then try to argue nothing can come from nothing when it comes to the big bang, the big bang does not state that, it states the energy was always their. It just gathered to create the big bang. Energy and mass, or mass-energy always existed, thats what science found. Also aruging against that the person would lose, since they think gods energy was eternal. The big bang is taken seriously by the scientific comunity not because it's "cool" or "explains orgin" it's simply because of proof. All galaxies in this universe lead back to a central point, and are moving away, suggesting an explosion. Background radiation shows us the left overs from the big bang. However the creationists never showed any proof. The only proof they tried to get was "Were to perfect to have just formed". Thats a lie, since were farm from perfect. We destroy, infest, were like a virus clinging to life on this planet. Our bodies are horribly designed, the universe is choatic trying to destroy itself all the time. Suggesting also, a violent start.

When you make a claim, no matter how much you believe in it, or have faith it means nothing to proof. You made the positive claim give the proof, if not accept the alternative or accept your wrong until you can prove it. All scientists work like that, god or not their are no exceptions.

Also I did not want to make this into a does god exist, or why does god exist or not exist thread. I should of used a different example, it's just the best one that everyone can relate to example.

[II Xion II]

Burden of proof is both a philosophical and a legal term (the latter is more common), but in both cases the burden of proof almost always falls on the side of the claimant or observer. I do not at all argue with this fact and neither should anyone else. If I go to court and claim that someone has shot me, then I would need proof, like the bullet hole and perhaps a link to the gun used. The same goes with science, if I claim to have found a talking rock, then I sure as hell need proof.

However, I do not sense that this is an argument about where the burden of proof should lie, but is more a debate about whether or not God (amid other supernatural things) can exist if there is no proof on the part of the observer who has the burden of proof. Let me clarify what the burden of proof is for, to have others acknowledge what one is trying to prove as true and/or existent. Burden of proof is limited to three-dimensionally observable phenomena and objects, you cannot "prove" anything else.

That is where the logic trap fails. We all know thoughts exist, but can you prove it to someone else? Can one say, "see this thought I have, its right here, it exists!!!"? Thoughts, images, and scenarios of the mind cannot be three-dimensionally proven, but they exist. How do we know that they exist? Simply, because we all have them in common and thus do not need to "prove" it, since we know they already exist.

A similar situation can be observed by people who say that they have seen ghosts or had premonitions. To everybody else, it is hogwash and impossible because it cannot be proven. But the people who have seen and heard these things do not need to prove it to anybody, because they themselves know what is true. There is a similarity between thoughts and ghosts (which I am simply using as an example), both cannot be three-dimensionally proven to exist; however the thoughts are known to exist because thoughts are common to everyone, while ghosts, OBEs, etc. are only known by the few who have experienced them.

People who have experienced similar phenomena and know certain things to be real do not need to prove them to anybody. Science is a process which is continually modified and edified, what is "proven" true today is "proven" false tomorrow. There is no continuity, as our understanding of the universe increases, theories are modified and hypotheses are corrected (or incorrected). It is very close-minded of anybody to accept any one thing as fact and to reject everything else, science is not perfect, and neither is religion. However arguing about burden of proof is inconsequential when realms of observability are completely different and when science officially states that "such matters do not belong to science because they can neither proven nor disproven."

[James Cizuz]

Exactly.
When I said it's impossible to prove something exists. Such as even if I was beside you you could never prove I did or did not exist. However things can be more proven then other things, and when making a claim any claim you should need atleast one piece of evidence before going to the next stage. I never said absolutly god does not exist, I don't believe for well already said it. I simply said why do people expect the people who never made the claim to prove it.

We don't need to prove the negative, because we never came up with the claim. Actually, if you can not prove the claim you made, saying for us to prove it doesn't all we would have to do is state you did not prove it as our proof. Even though it still could exist.

Thought is also a very interesting subject, ourselves we can never trust our thought. When I get out of bed and look at the floor, the floor seems solid and will hold me. However it could actually be a cliff, and I will fall to my death. We do make asumptions that everything we see is real, however people who battled a mental desease know all to well about how much we can trust our brains. Our brains process 400 billion pieces of information a second. We only percieve 2000 pieces during consious(eyes, thought, touch, feel, smell, taste, etc). We all, no matter the person have mental desease. However we don't know it, and usually the average person the mental desease is at a safe, or low level. Such as everyone has delusional tendacies, however at normal levels all that happens is you might hear, or see something for an instant. This is also known as imagination affecting our reality. All you would need to understand thought can not be trusted, just look at your dreams. If you remember your dreams, or have ever had a dream where you knew it was a dream you can see how delusional and choatic the mind can perceive reality.

To me, I don't drink, or smoke, or do drugs because that stuff can fuzz the edge of my reality. I want to be as aware, and sure of my reality as possible, I know how bad it can be without that stuff so why make it worse.

Thats the problem with our brains. When I hear someone who believes in say(just an example no meant to be insulting) Jesus, and Jesus talks to him. First I think hes lying, then I realize he actually believes it, and he is either fooling himself, or his brain is fooling him. Imagination is a strong tool, if you believe hard enough anything you believe in you will develop a kind of altered sense of reality where you actually hear voices of people. Is it Jesus talking? Well, no(I know this answer is not absolute because it could be true).It is most likely your mind playing tricks, trying to console your imagination with reality. Same can be said with seeing ghosts, or anything for that matter. Heck I can not be sure I am sitting in this chair because it might be my reality, or brain which is forcing my consious reality to make me believe i'm on this chair. The brain could be so complex, you yourself could be the only consious in the universe, your consious might of thought up all these people your talking to. It happens to schizophrenic's all the time. They create whole worlds in their head without them knowing, and a lot of the people they talk to are not really real.

I'm not saying that is true that you are the only person, or I am, or no one is real. I'm just saying with our reality, we must accept a certain level as the zero level. When we find the zero level, meaning the lowest level proof can exist, then we can find the evidence for anything above that. The zero level for humans would be what we can observe. It is not the absolute zero level, however for the average person it is the level they accept as proof.

[II Xion II]

I believe that assuming people who may have experienced paranormal phenomena or higher conscious states are "delusional" or "sick in the head" is vastly cynical of human conscience and nature, and oversimplifies the issue. It is easy and scientifically proper to do such to those claims, simply because it allows science to explain or make sense of things beyond its dogma and theories. Sure, there are always a few people out there who are genuinely crazy and say that talk to Jesus and such, but attributing the overwhelming number of cases to that alone is just too convenient and cynical of human nature.

Think of all of the Tibetan monks and yogis who have practiced attaining perfect concentration for years and who have a sense of a awareness and silence of the mind that literally we cannot even imagine. These people claim they have achieved higher states of conscience and have investigated the deepest crevices of their mind through in-depth meditation. Are to we to say that these people are delusional and mistaken? Perhaps we are the ones that are so. We are so bombarded with thoughts, stresses, theories, polemics, and emotions that we ignore the simple power of a free, unadulterated, and concentrated mind. At a whim we could turn to anger or to sorrow, while these people who have practiced dominion over the mind for years do not let themselves get carried away by foolishness. To attribute their experiences to ignorance or delusions demonstrates true ignorance by those very scientists whose only means of getting data involve complex formulas and laborious laboratory procedures like titrations. Ignoring one's own ignorance is a very Socratic principle to become adjusted too, but people do it all of the time.

Think of life the way you saw it when you were six, thirteen, and now. Your level of conscience was different on each occasion and your level of comprehension was different as well. Try explaining lambda calculus or particle physics to a six year old. Even the ones that wanted to learn would be able to wrap their mind around it. The same goes for a thirteen year old. I remember when I was those ages and how different my level of consciousness and comprehension was. The same can be said of someone who has achieved dominion over the mind and true mental silence. Such people may be able to observe every single thought they have and to control their emotions and their bodies to an obscenely minute level (there have been documented instances of such people actually stopping their own hearts and restarting them). I am 100% positive that they look at us as ignorant and as having a lower level of conscience much like we have as compared to much younger individuals. I believe that that is the best way to describe the difference in conscience. How can a scientist who goes home to a noisy house, has financial troubles, is in a constant state of thought and theorizing over hypotheses, has deadlines and problems possibly be qualified to label such individuals who have this understanding and control of their own mind that cannot be just quantitatively measured or understood via a few opinions.

To label the mind as "just a series of electrical impulses traveling very quickly," is also profoundly ignorant of the utter complexity of the mind. Scientists even admit that they do not know much of the mind and that much of its functions are still mysteries. How does a thought of a scenario, a mental picture, translate as a series of electronic impulses? How does a mind without active thought (it is possible) differ electronically from one burdened with it? This is similar to labeling a computer as a bunch of 1s and 0s. It may be fundamentally true, but computers rely on microcode, microprogramming, complex architectures, advanced implementation algorithms, and a myriad of both electronic and functional parts to even use those 1s and 0s, let alone turn them into the screen you see now and the OS and browser you use to see it with. Let's take as an example the issue of lucid dreaming and/or astral projection. Scientists attribute dreams to one's own mind, encapsulated within one's own body while the body rests. The proof they have is twofold: electronic impulses measured by instruments during REM sleep, and the other, pure speculation and theory. Do they really know what dreams or these similar experiences are? No, they simply believe without direct, experiential proof that the electronic signals measured correlate to various states of the mind and they use many theories (see the Wikipedia article on dreams) to attempt to account for them.

My point in writing all of this is that proof is limited to one is capable of understanding. The frenzied, mentally chaotic scientists has no right to say that the experiences of the disciplined and steadfast mind of the Tibetan monk are attributable to mere delusions or "electrical misfirings." Would you have to prove to a six year old that Hess's Law, the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus, or LeChatlier's Principle is true? No, because it would be impossible to hope that they would understand it. The same can be said of people who have attained that extreme degree of control and serenity over their own mind. One who knows and can control their own mind and urges does not expect one who can't (literally everyone else in the world) to understand. That person knows what is true and does not need the petty justification or self-appraisement that comes with proving it to someone else, simply because such things are beyond the trite and intangible concepts of polemical reasoning and mental conflict and beyond the muddied waters of the chaotic and unfocused mind.

P.S. When I make my argument, I am not referring to the few crazies or religious fanatics out there, but to the people who have practiced true meditation, achieved true peace of mind, and who have comprehended the very functionalisms and foundations of their own mind.

[James Cizuz]

I believe that assuming people who may have experienced paranormal phenomena or higher conscious states are "delusional" or "sick in the head" is vastly cynical of human conscience and nature, and oversimplifies the issue. It is easy and scientifically proper to do such to those claims, simply because it allows science to explain or make sense of things beyond its dogma and theories. Sure, there are always a few people out there who are genuinely crazy and say that talk to Jesus and such, but attributing the overwhelming number of cases to that alone is just too convenient and cynical of human nature.

Think of all of the Tibetan monks and yogis who have practiced attaining perfect concentration for years and who have a sense of a awareness and silence of the mind that literally we cannot even imagine. These people claim they have achieved higher states of conscience and have investigated the deepest crevices of their mind through in-depth meditation. Are to we to say that these people are delusional and mistaken? Perhaps we are the ones that are so. We are so bombarded with thoughts, stresses, theories, polemics, and emotions that we ignore the simple power of a free, unadulterated, and concentrated mind. At a whim we could turn to anger or to sorrow, while these people who have practiced dominion over the mind for years do not let themselves get carried away by foolishness. To attribute their experiences to ignorance or delusions demonstrates true ignorance by those very scientists whose only means of getting data involve complex formulas and laborious laboratory procedures like titrations. Ignoring one's own ignorance is a very Socratic principle to become adjusted too, but people do it all of the time.

Think of life the way you saw it when you were six, thirteen, and now. Your level of conscience was different on each occasion and your level of comprehension was different as well. Try explaining lambda calculus or particle physics to a six year old. Even the ones that wanted to learn would be able to wrap their mind around it. The same goes for a thirteen year old. I remember when I was those ages and how different my level of consciousness and comprehension was. The same can be said of someone who has achieved dominion over the mind and true mental silence. Such people may be able to observe every single thought they have and to control their emotions and their bodies to an obscenely minute level (there have been documented instances of such people actually stopping their own hearts and restarting them). I am 100% positive that they look at us as ignorant and as having a lower level of conscience much like we have as compared to much younger individuals. I believe that that is the best way to describe the difference in conscience. How can a scientist who goes home to a noisy house, has financial troubles, is in a constant state of thought and theorizing over hypotheses, has deadlines and problems possibly be qualified to label such individuals who have this understanding and control of their own mind that cannot be just quantitatively measured or understood via a few opinions.

To label the mind as "just a series of electrical impulses traveling very quickly," is also profoundly ignorant of the utter complexity of the mind. Scientists even admit that they do not know much of the mind and that much of its functions are still mysteries. How does a thought of a scenario, a mental picture, translate as a series of electronic impulses? How does a mind without active thought (it is possible) differ electronically from one burdened with it? This is similar to labeling a computer as a bunch of 1s and 0s. It may be fundamentally true, but computers rely on microcode, microprogramming, complex architectures, advanced implementation algorithms, and a myriad of both electronic and functional parts to even use those 1s and 0s, let alone turn them into the screen you see now and the OS and browser you use to see it with. Let's take as an example the issue of lucid dreaming and/or astral projection. Scientists attribute dreams to one's own mind, encapsulated within one's own body while the body rests. The proof they have is twofold: electronic impulses measured by instruments during REM sleep, and the other, pure speculation and theory. Do they really know what dreams or these similar experiences are? No, they simply believe without direct, experiential proof that the electronic signals measured correlate to various states of the mind and they use many theories (see the Wikipedia article on dreams) to attempt to account for them.

My point in writing all of this is that proof is limited to one is capable of understanding. The frenzied, mentally chaotic scientists has no right to say that the experiences of the disciplined and steadfast mind of the Tibetan monk are attributable to mere delusions or "electrical misfirings." Would you have to prove to a six year old that Hess's Law, the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus, or LeChatlier's Principle is true? No, because it would be impossible to hope that they would understand it. The same can be said of people who have attained that extreme degree of control and serenity over their own mind. One who knows and can control their own mind and urges does not expect one who can't (literally everyone else in the world) to understand. That person knows what is true and does not need the petty justification or self-appraisement that comes with proving it to someone else, simply because such things are beyond the trite and intangible concepts of polemical reasoning and mental conflict and beyond the muddied waters of the chaotic and unfocused mind.

P.S. When I make my argument, I am not referring to the few crazies or religious fanatics out there, but to the people who have practiced true meditation, achieved true peace of mind, and who have comprehended the very functionalisms and foundations of their own mind.
Did I not say pretty much what you wrote down? No ammount of belief makes something fact. James Randi said that, he investigates the way the mind works, and investigates the paranormal. He even offers a 1 million dollar prize for proof. No one has one it however. He even said one of the most rational things, that I stick to myself. "I'm not saying it does not exist, however this is the evidence, take it how you like". The tests comprized of say, find water under ground. He let them make sure no water was interfearing, then put 10 pipes underground. 1 pipe has watering flowing through it, if they can find it then they get the million dollars. Of course they need around a 70-80% success rate, and the final test a 80-90% sucess rate. Boom, million dollars. Same goes with all paranormal events, thousands tried, thousands failed. Sad thing is, he debunked faith healers, and was called satan(even though he found the radio frequenzy of for on example Peter Popof, he was getting information sent from his wife. No one was really healed and that guy is still tricking people).

I never said were all delusional, however to some extent we are. Being delusional at the level of people "sick in the head" you can't tell reality from imagination. It's said 30% border on the line of "hard to tell imaginate from reality" and 5% are "can not tell imagination from reality" the rest still have some level of delusion to. If you even see something glance in the corner of your eye, or hear a noise. Your clasified as delusional, however a basic level. It's not like it's really their, your mind sometimes forces something you might imagine into reality for a split second. That doesn't mean the brain is less complex, that just adds to the complexity, and the mystery of the mind.

That leads into proof, if you can not tell reality from imagination, or lets it change your way of thinking, then how can you accept any evidence, or make any?

As for monks, myself I do meditate. Not to attain a higher level of consiousness, but to collect my thoughts of the day, think, process, calm, and rest for a hour or two. It works great, sometimes when meditating I find the imagination when meditating can come into reality more often. Meditating is great though. Does it mean people are not attaining this "higher consiousness" no i'm not saying that. I'm saying their is no proof. If you can fool yourself into believing your a giant bunny with nukes destroying the world in a dream(Yes I dreamt that a few nights ago :|) then you can certainly trick yourself into believing in a higher consiousness and you attained it. Besides, when your calm, cool, and collected you do feel like your in a higher state, but your not.

[II Xion II]

If you can fool yourself into believing your a giant bunny with nukes destroying the world in a dream(Yes I dreamt that a few nights ago :|) then you can certainly trick yourself into believing in a higher consiousness and you attained it. Besides, when your calm, cool, and collected you do feel like your in a higher state, but your not.

You have gotten most of what I have said right, but you missed the point when I was referring to these monks. They are not "fooling" themselves into believing that they are experiencing higher levels of conscience, because such levels of conscience are beyond rational thought and beyond mere belief! The mind of the common man is bottled among so many dogmas, theories, and actions that people tend to think that beliefs are the only truth to the whole world. There is a difference between the apathetic Christian who believes in God and the accomplished Tibetan Initiate who knows him. I know that what I am saying sounds ridiculously foreign, abstruse, and arcane; but this philosophical view of the world is very Eastern and ancient. It is a shame that the West cannot grasp it and instead dismisses it as a system of beliefs or a cultural archetype. It is hard for a Western mind so caught up with the external world to actually comprehend an internal world like many Tibetan Initiates have (this is just my stereotypical group for the point of discussion). There is no tricks or beliefs, true meditation can lead to truth and is a method of finding truth within oneself. There is an ancient saying, "Man know thyself and thou shall know the Universe and its Gods."


As for monks, myself I do meditate. Not to attain a higher level of consiousness, but to collect my thoughts of the day, think, process, calm, and rest for a hour or two. It works great, sometimes when meditating I find the imagination when meditating can come into reality more often. Meditating is great though. Does it mean people are not attaining this "higher consiousness" no i'm not saying that.

The Western notion of meditation is an adulterated beast of the true form taught to those who truly yearn for change. Sitting calmly and collecting one's thoughts for an hour or calmly concentrating on a candle for twenty minutes is NOT meditation. Those are extremely preliminary steps for it. Real meditation (as taught by the Maitreya Buddha and numerous other names I cannot remember) first requires that one try their very best to maintain constant vigilance over their thoughts, actions, movements, etc. It involves separation from one's thoughts, becoming the observed and the observer. Meditation also requires near-perfect concentration (shamatha) and imaginative insight (visspanna). It is actually a seven-step practice that takes years or more to learn and its true purpose is to gain knowledge of both oneself and the universe. Meditation is terribly difficult to do, confusing time out with it is a most egregious error.

I once again apologize for being so abstract, but it becomes impossible to communicate these things with words, since these experiences can be beyond rational thought. To collect one's thoughts and to start ignoring them is epochs away from the true level of consciousness that these people are able to achieve. Reasoning these things with scientists is like you or me trying to talk to a cat, scientists and most people of the world do not want to leave their comfort zone and seriously explore these endeavors. There can be no external proof because such things are an internal science which requires training, awareness, discipline, and suffering that 99.9999999999% do not want to go through (and honestly cannot). I was a skeptic of these seemingly incredulous things at first, but I tried a few things out, stuck with it over the years, and have had glimpses of what it is truly like (though I am in now way even near the level of the decent practitioners). I finally saw that science did not have answers to the many philosophical and deep questions that all of us have, despite my earlier near-worship of it. Every single argument that atheists and skeptics have thrown towards me I have retorted and have a valid explanation for. I do not claim to know everything, and I do not know everything; but by having one's mind go beyond the debate about proof, one can find proof for themselves. Although this proof may not be verifiable to others, it is verifiable to the one who experienced it and integrally comprehended it. I would go on, but I am kind of ranting and raving at the moment trying to translate thoughts to words and making summaries of my "beliefs" with respect to years worth of accumulated knowledge of Gnosis, Buddhism, White Tantrism, Theurgy, Occultism, etc etc et al.