How do you Prove Something Does Not Exist?

If you are dealing with the subject of the paranormal, aliens, UFO's and such, how do you prove that the do not exist? Can't you only prove that they do?

For example, aliens.

Somebody could not say, without a doubt, that aliens do not exist. Maybe they don't exist, but you can't say. How would somebody possibly know what goes on way out in other places in space? Like somebody once made a thread about, we are a very, very tiny place. Nobody can no what is out there, so nobody can say aliens don't exist. So unless you travel to every single planet and universe and whatever else is out there, you can not say aliens aren't out there. Because you simply do not know.

But they can be proven to exist, with a picture, video, encounter, any real evidence. (I'm not saying that the all evidence is 100% real by the way). But it is possible to find evidence that stuff does exist.


It's like if you take a large group of people and ask them to do a task. If you ask if they are done, and only 1 person answers, they can only say "No", because they know there is at least one person (themselves) is still doing the task. But if they say "Yes", they would have to know if everyone is finished.

So for a person to say something doesn't exist, they would have to know...I don't really know how to word it...they would have to know things that no human could ever possibly know. But things can be possibly be proven to exist.

Make sense to you?

Me either

Intresting i feel the only things that excist are the things i belive exsist like of course there are things that exsist even if we dont belive because science proves these things excist.....i was just watchin parrallel universe on the science channel and now i have diffrent thoughts about god..like i believe in him 50/50 because if god has to do with christianity or w/e religion that we worship who was there before god..like before jesus christ and christianity was created nobody really belived in one god the egyptians believed in more than one god...idk if there are more universes out there what do they belive in...like i belived in god all my life and i still do but i see things kind of diffrent now because everybody believes that god has to do with religion but religion didnt always excist...in the pangea or paleolithic ages nobody belived in god or religions so how did we come to earth....it is all confusing but i feel our brains are like god because i think if we believe somethin then that is it...its like when u do somethin bad and it back fires do u think it back fires because of god or because u think i will back-fire maybe everything you think of exsist but only to you like if i think i am going to be rich then i am going to be rich the brain is like god i think

That's what religion verses atheism have been hashing out forever! God or no God?
One thing we have here on this planet is free will. And with freewill comes personal responsibility. You make decisions all of your life and choices tend to define who we are potentially at first, and then with time and experience we begin to mold the clay of our lives so to speak.
When you stand up for what you believe to be true, you are making decisions. When you make a decision you are either for or against something.
As time passes and you learn and grow on the subject whatever it is, and considering it not something imposed on you but that you have come to your own conclusion,you will have taken a stand on any given subject. The lines are clear cut at that point , you are either for or against the idea.

Thats easy. First you stop talking about it. The more you talk about something the more you raise awareness of it. Therefor, the more you attempt to disprove something, the more difficult it's non-existance becomes.

so wat you are trying to say is that when u dont believe in something then it doesnt exist??

Originally posted by the reaper
so wat you are trying to say is that when u dont believe in something then it doesnt exist??

I guess hes going by the theory that if something isnt observed than it does not exist.

I think that it doesnt matter that its impossible to prove non-existance. The reason for this is that if a person makes a claim they have to prove it exist, not the other way around. The idea is the basic burden of proof. If you do not agree with what people claim exist do not challenge them by saying that the item in question does not exist, but rather challenge them by disproving their reasons for stating the item exist. If you can prove that the other persons logic or facts are flawed then you have successfully disproven the existance of something until more conclusive evidence appears, but then again thats all that can be expected.

there are many things that we don't need to disprove the existence of... like teapots orbiting the sun in between the earth and mars, stuff like that.

But there might be a teapot orbiting the sun.
The probability is rather low, but it's possible. Some tea drinking NASA technician accidentally leaves his pot inside a probe... very unlikely, but possible.

Nothing is impossible, they just have degrees of likelihood.