: : You've challenged us to prove the existence of God apart from belief. I'll reverse the challenge to you or to anyone else: Without using faith or testimony, prove that atoms exist.: Hiroshima and Nagasaki really were destroyed. If atoms did not exist, and they did not have the properties that we ascribe to them, Hiroshima and Nagasaki would still be standing. They are not. The most reasonable explanation is that atoms have the properties (including existence) that we have ascribed to them. God, on the other hand, has maintained a steadfast refusal to interfere with the world or leave any traces of his existence. The challenge stands.
: -Floyd
(As you doubtless well know) two basic schools of thgought exist as regards unobservable entities.
On one side we have the realist school. Adhereents of this doctrine contend that observable facts provide good evidence for the existance of entities that cannot be observed. Thus they hold that scientific theories can be regarded as accurate descritptions of the unobservable world.
On the other hand there are instrumentalists who contend that we are not in a position to make proper judgments about what we cannot perceive. tTheories about mechanisms may be useful instruments to simplify calculations and generate predictions, but this is as far as it goes.
An instrumentalist could quite clearly contend that atoms do not in fact exist.
None.
