Someone is telling you that the Story reported about Bin Ladens' death is made up... the real story is....
So hey... if they made up a story, why isn't HE making up a story?
How to tell the difference?
EVIDENCE.
Stories are just stories.
This is exactly the point that is missed by people who buy into so-called conspiracy "theories" (I think "conspiracy fantasies" would be a more applicable term, but it would be rather tendentious). Here again is the OP:
should we trust Obama ("For over two decades, bin Laden has been al Qaeda's leader and symbol/../ The death of bin Laden marks the most significant achievement to date in our nation's effort to defeat al Qaeda") or should we deny it: no body=no proof?!..
In this short statement one can recognize two defects of reasoning that are highly characteristic of people who buy into conspiracy fantasies. (Andreaaa does not endorse this particular fantasy, but he treats it as worthy of serious discussion.) First,
they fail to grasp that there are degrees of rational warrant for claims. They operate instead with an unrealistic and indeed perverse conception of "proof" as a kind of evidence so compelling that it positively
forces even the most intellectually lazy, careless, or obstinate person to accept a conclusion. Of course, by that standard, no "proof" is ever to be found for any claim that is of much interest. In this instance, the OP says, or asks (he adds a question mark), "no body=no proof?" This suggests that the testimony, news reportage, documentation, and so forth, may be dismissed, because they do not constitute "proof" by this unrealistic standard. Instead, the question is reduced to one of "trusting Obama," as if the account of Bin Laden's death in a military action in Abbotabad were just a piece of hearsay supported by nothing but the personal credibility of a politician.
The second characteristic defect in reasoning is that,
wherever there is a lack of "proof" (in this special sense) for a given claim, conspiracy-minded people take that to put some competing claim on an equal footing with it. Thus, in the present instance, the lack of "proof," in the given sense, that Bin Laden was killed in Abbotabad is taken to lend color to the claim that he died of natural causes five years ago, as if the two claims were equally worthy of serious consideration.
I find this use of the word "proof" perverse and corrupting. "Proof" is just a word for evidence that is strong enough to allow no reasonable dispute over some proposition. It does not mean evidence that is so strong as to make it
impossible to doubt or deny the proposition. It is always possible to invent some scenario in which, contrary to all appearances, some proposition that seems patently true is in fact false ("The birth certificate is a fake, the report of Obama's birth in the Honolulu newspaper in 1961 was a plant," etc.). The possibility of such invention proves nothing, except the rather obvious point that our knowledge of the world around us does not rest on apodictic certainties. In particular, it does not show that claims contrary to well-supported ones are on an equal footing with the latter.
Terminology aside, the main point is that there are degrees of rational warrant for propositions, and when there is a heap of evidence in support of a proposition and very little supporting some contrary one, it is not reasonable to adopt the contrary one.