Can You Prove a Negative?
Updated May 15, 2020 Of course, you can't prove negative -- usually. Proof applies to existence, and the nonexistent is nothing, an absence that can leave no trace. Thus the idea of direct proof of nonexistence makes no sense. However, might we have indirect ways of (in effect) proving that something does not exist. Why not? Someone charged with a murder could prove he did not do it (at least not personally) by demonstrating that he was somewhere else at the time; he had an alibi. He's hasn't directly proved the negative -- I did not kill the victim -- but by proving a relevant positive -- I was somewhere else -- that logically conflicts with the negative, he has indirectly proved he did not commit the murder. Yet some negatives are disproved all the time -- even by atheists who say you can never prove a negative. When a theist presents, say, the first-cause argument for God, the atheist will most likely reply, "That argument is not good (or bad or specious); t