What does the phrase “you can’t prove a negative” actually mean?
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The general idea is that you can’t provide evidence for something not existing unless you limit the properties of the existence.
For example, I can’t prove that there isn’t a random brown cow on the planet that gives chocolate milk, since even if I milk all the cows you can always just say I missed the cow that does it. On the other hand, if you point to a specific brown cow and say “that brown cow always gives chocolate milk instead of milk” then I can just prove it doesn’t by milking it.
Similarly, you can’t prove a species is extinct or god doesn’t exist or ghost don’t exist and so on.
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