Burden of Proof

Just a quick note of the ever-present burden of proof (the person who has the task of providing evidence in order to win the argument has the burden of proof. Generally, his opponent just has to refute the evidence he brings up in order to win).

Neither side in the God debate wants the burden of proof. Believers in God claim that the burden of proof lies with Atheists to prove that God does not exist. Atheists claim that the burden of proof lies with believers to prove that God does exist.

My sympathies lie, of course, with Atheists. Here’s why:

Imagine the implications of a state of affairs in which we accept the default truth to be the case. If something is not disproved then it must be true. Pragmatism dictates that this cannot be the case, because then an infinite number of things must be taken to be the case. Imagine, for instance, that I told you that there was a giant flying spaghetti monster (the satirical idea of one, Bobby Henderson) which could definitely not be disproved, then we would have to accept this as fact. Furthermore, it makes the position of a God or a Flying Spaghetti Monster unfalsifiable, because there is no empirical disproof (God is not only everywhere, but invisible). In other words, we must say that to accept something as true, we must have proof of it, not an absence of disproof.