God is a CONCEPT

    It is impossible to prove or disprove god because god neither exists nor fails to exist.  It's like trying to prove the number e exists: chances are that you've never actually seen e in real life, you've only read about it in books.  Of course, it would be silly to say that the existence of e is therefore infinitely improbable, since  e doesn't go about existing or not existing anyway.
    This is where /sci/ seems to be stuck, trying to prove/disprove the general concept of god.  For the arguments to progress, you need to understand the relationship between god and religion.  Religion tends to consist of three components: God(s), miracles, and practices.  Miracles are what the religion claims to be god's manifestation on Earth: these range between things that happened naturally(ie the existence of the universe, people recovering from illness on their own) and magical stories of things that never really happened(ie Moses parting the Red Sea, God creating the world in a week.)  Practices are the component of religion that says things like: love thy neighbor, thou shalt not murder, slay the infidels (often openly conflicting with itself.)  Religion ties the three together using miracles to "prove" that their god "exists" and wants them to follow their religion's practices.  The miracle->god->practice chain is normally non sequitur and is facilitated by a magic book (ie bible, qur'an) and/or a class of priests/prophets who are free to (mis)interpret the religion for the common people.
    Religion is afraid of science because science can disprove the "miracles" with which religion "proves" its god is correct.  However, neither science nor religion can prove/disprove a concept.

>>14
Disregard that, I suck cocks. Just kidding. Seriously, though, I must apologize for my condescending question. I'm tired, and years of debating on the topic of religion, philosphy, and related matters has left me frustrated and jaded. (Politeness? On my 4chan!? It's more likely than you think.)

What I wanted to say is, when people refer to something like beer, they're referring to something specific that is very visible. It's more convenient than saying "the golden carbonated beverage in an aluminum can, etc. etc." every time you want to refer to it. As for it maybe just hiding behind or inside something, well, let's assume we took that into consideration. I was kind of hoping that people would have figured that part out on their own.

>>8
I was simply pointing out that the popular statement, "one can never prove a negative" is false. That means that atheists can bear the burden of proof.

>>9
The word "God" refers to the alleged all-powerful, all-knowing, benevolent creator of the universe, so it doesn't make sense to call something "God" unless it fits that description. Maybe it's Wotan, or something we've never even heard of before.