Transcendent Forum

1. “You can’t prove a negative” We prove negatives all the time. In fact, much of human reasoning and scientific methodology relies on doing exactly that. Consider the claim: “There is no money in the safe.” How do you prove this negative? You open the safe and find it empty. The absence of money within the expected location is sufficient to conclude the negative—“there is no money in the safe.” Similarly, the claim “there are no unicorns in my house” is proven by checking every room and finding no unicorns. This is not a philosophical mystery; it’s a straightforward application of logic and observation. Proving negatives is not only possible—it’s routine. 2. “Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence” This claim becomes absurd when taken out of context. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence if there’s no reason to expect evidence in the first place. However, in contexts where evidence should be present, the absence of evidence is indeed evidence of absence. For example: • If your theory is “there is gold in this mine,” then digging through every layer and finding no gold is evidence that there is no gold. • If your theory is “my car keys are on the kitchen counter,” then finding no keys on the counter is evidence that the theory is wrong. In short: Absences of evidence do not exist in a vacuum. They exist in contexts where evidence is predicted by a theory. The absence of predicted evidence functions as a probability modifier, increasing the likelihood of the null hypothesis. 3. God and Spirits: Where Should We Expect Evidence? The same principles apply to metaphysical claims about God and spirits. If these entities exist and interact with the physical world, then their effects should leave evidence in observable locations. God: • If God were to exist, we should expect to find evidence in the natural world: miracles, clear divine interventions, or communication with humanity. If these phenomena are absent where they should be present, the absence of evidence is evidence of absence. Spirits: • If spirits exist as top-down controllers of human behavior, we should find evidence of their influence within the brain. Specifically, we would expect to see supernatural injections of energy or causal inputs into neural pathways. Yet, neuroscience provides a comprehensive account of human behavior through bottom-up and feedback-loop processes, with no need to invoke spirits. When the evidence demanded by these theories is absent in contexts where it is expected, this absence becomes evidence against the existence of God or spirits. These theories are testable and falsifiable, and they fail every time.

Scientific theories are explanatory models that posit ways to predict cause and effect. There are many invisible causes that have visible effects. Gravity, non-visible light, magnetism, atoms - many things that we can't see, yet they still have real effects in the world. Just because you can't see something doesn't mean you can't scientifically test it and falsify it. That is absurd. For the spirit, you need to build your model (definition) for what the spirit is (in terms of what it does). Obviously, we know that spirits are supposed to be the invisible things that cause (effect) our behavior. Hence, according to the definition of spirit, we should be able to see its effects within bodies, even if we can't see the spirit itself. Then we scan bodies and look for the effects of spirits within them. Obviously, when we do brain scans, we don't find spirits puppeteering brains by injecting energy from an invisible dimension (violating the law of conservation of energy), and controlling decision pathways in a top-down invisible fashion. Instead, we find bottom-up processes whereby lower-level activations cause higher level activations that cycle back down to lower-level activations, such that there is absolutely no need for the spirit hypothesis in order to explain behavior. The spirit hypothesis demands that we find injections of energy into the brain from an unknown dimension every time a decision is made. When we test this hypothesis, it is falsified every time. By this, we can rule out the spirit hypothesis and come to the scientific conclusion that spirits do not exist. There are no neuroscientists who support this model of spirit existing. The idea that science is compatible with the existence of spirits is laughable. What caused the hand to move? The muscle. What caused the muscle to move? The neuron. What caused the neuron to move? A prior neuron. What caused the prior neuron to move? A prior prior neuron. What caused the prior prior neuron to move? The brain! What caused the brain to move? Energy from the blood. Where does the energy in the blood come from? The digestive system. We can trace all of the movements in biology and NEVER is it EVER explained by the supernatural. There is no spirit that is activating neurons to move arms. There is biology activating neurons to move arms. We KNOW this because we can SEE energy in the brain. We know where the energy comes from. The energy does NOT come from an invisible source (i.e. spirit). 1. Spirit interacts with matter. 2. We can scientifically test matter. 3. We can indirectly infer things about spirits by virtue of testing the matter they should be interacting with.