–“I’m a philosopher and you can’t prove that “— Some Well Meaning Fool.
Well, let us play a game then. Because while you state are a philosopher, I state that I am a scientist specializing in testimony (Truth).
And that means that proofs (tests of internal consistency in axiomatic and therefore declaratives systems) only assist us in falsification outside of reductio (trivial) conditions. And that justificationism in philosophy and theology in all its forms is a sophism for the purpose of deception.
And that tests of truth in existential systems (hypothesis, theory, law) require due diligence against ignorance, error, bias, and deceit. And that fablsificationism in all its forms (science and law) evolved for the purpose of defeating deceptions.
And that the possible dimensions of criticism we are aware of are consistency, correspondence, existential(operational) possibility, rational choice (volition), reciprocity, completeness, parsimony, and coherence.
In other words, while in textual interpretation, scriptural argument, and application of extant law, one justifies a proposition, one does not and cannot prove a statement – instead we seek to falsify propositions and test whether it survives criticism.
My assertion is:
(a) that one cannot testify to the existence of a creator;
(b) that one cannot testify that the works attributed to a creator are not fictions and fictionalisms (lies);
(c) that those who created and perpetuated those lies had motives for spreading those lies, and;
(d) that the consequences of spreading those lies has been the cause of the thousand year dark age, the destruction of the five great civilizations of the ancient world, and the death of somewhere between half a billion and a billion people;
(e) that the argumentative technique invented in order to perpetuate those lies (sophisms), in both via positiva (pilpul and justificationism, using idealism and supernaturalism, with promise of reward/thread of lost opportunity) and via negativa (critique using loading, framing, obscurantism, overloading, suggestion, straw manning, and heaping of undue praise) are open to scientific measurement which defines them as successful methods of deception,
(f) that Boazian anthropology, Freudian psychology, Cantorian Infinities, Marxist History, Economics, and Sociology, Scientific socialism, Feminism, and postmodernism, all make use of this same technique, this time with pseudoscience as a substitute for supernaturalism, and economic and political reward as a substitute for reward in current or afterlife.
(g) And that only warranty of due diligence under the available dimensions of human action: consistency, correspondence, existential(operational) possibility, rational choice (volition), reciprocity, completeness, parsimony, and coherence (Testimony), can defend an assertion (proposition, argument) against ignorance, error, bias, fraud, and deceit, and the spread of consequences thereof.