The Logical Atheist

Who has the burden of proof? Those who proffer of an affirmative proposition, of course. It seems so straightforward. But is it? Maybe not. In fact, the burden is abundant, so there's plenty to go around. We need not be stingy with it. When atheists insists that theists justify their belief in God, they are implicitly asserting the affirmative propositions that theists (like everyone else) ought to hold only justified beliefs and that since belief in God is unjustified, theists ought to abandon their belief. Those are affirmative assertions. Why should one hold only justified beliefs, and why is belief in God unjustified? I can't see why atheists have no burden of proof here. If theists state their evidence (reason) for believing, the atheists may well say that the purported evidence is unconvincing. But why don't atheists bear a burden of proof here? They've put forth an affirmative position. One tricky thing about the burden of proof is that many negative statements,...

Some years ago, the late philosopher and atheist Antony Flew wrote a paper titled  "The Presumption of Atheism," which argued for the proposition clearly stated in the title. His point, of course, is that in considering the God question, the burden of proof ought to be on the theist, that is, the one who maintains the proof of the proposition, just as in a criminal case the burden of proof is on the state prosecutor. This certainly makes sense. For one thing, all children start life as negative atheists: they lack a belief in God. They can't be said to believe in God until they are able to be convinced (in some way and to some extent) that God exists. At that point they may be regarded as believing that God exists on the same evidentiary basis that they believe, say, that Santa Claus exists: their parents, the most trusted source they know, told them so. For a child, whose knowledge is necessarily meager, this is not irrational. Knowledge is contextual; you can be justif...

I've mentioned before that the burden of proof is not the only burden when it comes to discourse. Before the burden of proof come the burden of coherence and the burden of plausibility. These are critical: if a proposition can't sustain the first two, the third is never even reached! You don't demand evidence for the pseudo-proposition Treblig gainges . Today let's focus on the burden of plausibility. We'll ignore the fact that the notion supernatural  and hence God  are logically absurd because they require that something exists outside existence. The Abrahamic God story (all the way through Islam and Mormonism) simply defies belief. A very good discussion of why is to be found in Christopher Hitchens's book God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything . Hitchens points out that if the human race is 100,000 years old (as conservatively estimated), why did the omniscient, omnipotent, all-loving God wait about 96,000 years before showing itself? (Abram,...

As a general matter, I accept the idea that he who proposes -- X is true (and thus ought to believed) -- has the burden of proof. But I am not troubled by the idea that propositions of the form X is not true (and ought not to be believed )   -- also require support. Drawing a hard line against this is a mistake. You may not be able to demonstrate a negative proposition  directly --  say, I did not commit a particular murder -- but you can demonstrate it indirectly by showing that a contradictory positive proposition is true -- I was somewhere else at the time . Proof that the earth is round is proof that the earth is not flat. Why can't I demonstrate that the supernatural God does not exist by showing that it is impossible? It seems to me that any negative proposition can be restated in a positive way. The negative claim God does not exist  corresponds to the positive Spinoza-ish claim that the natural world is eternal, self-sufficient, the source of all ex...

It's a mainstay of the New Atheists to pose as open-minded scientists simply awaiting evidence for a theist hypothesis that in principle could be proved. Ron Reagan speaks for the lot when he says, “You show me evidence, I’ll reconsider, but in the absence of evidence I do not believe.” But is that what's really going on behind the scenes? I don't think so. It's hard to believe that any of those atheist talk-show hosts actually expect someone to phone up with a never-before-heard proof of the God of Abraham, Jesus, and Mohammad. I know I don't expect it -- but then I'm a logical, not an evidentialist or skeptical, atheist. That means I know no evidence is forthcoming -- ever -- for the existence of a logically impossible "being." So I'm not waiting for it. (I just learned that the late  Sherwin Wine , a key figure in secular humanistic Judaism,  called this position ignosticism . Who knew?) By the same token, the New Atheists aren't expe...