Joe says the burden is on Atheists to prove God doesn't exist!

A friend of mine (who shall remain nameless unless he wants credit) sent me a link to an apologist (who was a lawyer, naturally) on some "errors" he claims atheists make. I tore it apart for him but since I'd spent some time writing it I figured I'd share it with everyone.

Here's the article: http://www.strangenotions.com/4-errors-about-the-burden-of-proof-for-god/

I often hear these arguments originate from lawyers and almost nobody else. Perhaps it’s because lawyers are used to dealing with evidence about things that definitely happen, as opposed to things that may or may not even be possible like scientists and engineers do. Anyway, here we go.

Joe starts by saying that the burden of proof lays upon the person making the positive claim. That is correct. He goes on to say that atheists are making a positive claim that god does not exist. This is either a straw man or a bald faced lie. I have yet to encounter a single atheist who actually makes the claim to know definitively that God does not exist, whereas a great many theists make the opposite claim. This is an atheist that appears to exist only in the minds of apologists. What atheists actually say is there is not enough evidence to support a god existing. Of course, he kind of halfway acknowledges this in the following paragraph but then says the “logical leap” to Christianity is false is not supported by evidence. To demonstrate this, he uses the illustration of the assertion that there is an even number of stars. There is not enough evidence to support that there is an even number of stars, but likewise there is not enough to support an odd number of stars. Therefore, agnosticism is the only tenable answer.

This is correct if *and only if* the prior probabilities of a thing happening are precisely even. If it’s a complete toss up, 100% random between two options then, lacking any knowledge, it’s impossible to make any sort of judgment. So it’s correct that the only proper position to take regarding even/odd stars is agnosticism.

This clearly is not always the case. Suppose that someone is holding a ball just above a curtain, such that you can see that they have the ball but cannot see anything after they release it. Once they release it, you have no information whatsoever about what happens to the ball (maybe the lights go out or whatever, you get the idea). Let us say it, for simplicity, that the options are that it fell up or down. Which is it? By his logic, you have no information. You have no way to verify what happened to the ball. Therefore, you have two options, 50/50 split. You have to be agnostic regarding the fate of the ball.

That is ridiculous. You go into this situation with the background knowledge that balls fall due to gravity. The chances of it falling up, while not zero, are vanishingly small. Therefore, with no further information you conclude with a reasonable degree of confidence that the ball very probably fell down. Strictly speaking, you cannot be certain that happened. However, if the ball’s falling had any bearing on your life, you have to make some kind of decision about it. The rational course of action would be to live your life as if the ball fell towards the ground unless new evidence comes around.

In essence, what’s really happening is that you aren’t making these decisions between possibilities in a vacuum. You are previously armed with evidence about other similar situations in the past. New phenomenon that contradicts all of the evidence that has already gathered must be have evidence enough to overcome this background knowledge. Using the ball example, if someone claimed the ball actually went up when it was released, the correct thing to do would be to dismiss that claim unless evidence can be produced to support it. Why? Because that contradicts all previous experiments! Now, it would technically not be correct to make the claim “The ball did not fall up.” That’s a positive claim that one would need evidence for (Though probably not a ton, because come on). The technically correct thing to say is “The odds that the ball did not fall down are not zero, but they are very small. Given that the evidence I have is not enough to make it likely that the ball did indeed fall up, I will live my life as if it did not.” Of course, that’s a mouthful, so you may shorten it to say “The ball fell down because that’s what balls do.” Or “Extraordinary claims about balls falling up require extraordinary evidence.”

Of course, given enough evidence any prior knowledge can be overcome. It was ridiculous to suppose that atoms existed, or that time dilated if you went too fast, or that matter didn’t naturally want to slow down…until experiments showed that was the case. Confirmation bias is a danger, so it is very important to be forthright about one’s assumptions and background knowledge and to critically examine new claims on their merits. But new claims have to be examined in light of past knowledge.  That’s why, when evaluating new probabilities (here I’m talking about Bayesian math which sounds impressive but is really simple in straightforward applications, but the principles apply to whatever), it’s important to set the probabilities as far against your preferences as you can reasonably imagine. That way, if the new evidence still fails, despite having the deck stacked in its favor, you can be confident in your result. So if you were to show me evidence about being healed by God, my actual estimates of the odds would be damn near zero, but I’d have to make sure to give it a much higher weight if I were actually comparing numbers just to be safe. I don’t want to downplay the fact that confirmation bias is a very real danger, but it does not invalidate the whole system of thought.

Joe whines about religious claims being held to a higher standard, but this is simply not true. We do not hold religious claims to a higher standard of evidence. The problem is that religions often claim supernatural things. Things that contradict all of our knowledge about physics, biology, causality, etc. by definition. We have tons of experience with those sorts of claims. It gets worse, because Joe wants to have his cake and eat it too. He wants his god to be transcendent and utterly metaphysical, yet he also (presumably) wants him to be active in the world. If Joe wants him to just sit in his metaphysical cloud and never touch anything, I’m happy to concede that there is no way whatsoever I can ever touch that claim (though I’d go on to say he’s a fool to think that means he should believe it). BUT Joe wants his god to raise people from the dead, and heal the blind, and intercede in daily lives. Joe wants his god to touch the physical. That means his god has to leave the metaphysical high ground and descend into the physical realm with the rest of us. Perhaps he’s utterly immune to scrutiny while he sits quietly in heaven, but the *instant* god causes a flood, or a lightning strike, or cures a cancer, he has changed the way physical laws work. That is something we should be able to see and test. If you are going to claim that THAT happens, that is the very definition of an extraordinary physical claim. It is not our experience that cancers are cured by deities, or that deities cause floods, or that deities hurl lightning bolts. Therefore, if you want to assert that that happens, there needs to be evidence to back it up.

It’s true that one cannot investigate historical claims in precisely the same way one investigates claims about quarks, but that doesn’t mean it’s a free for all. It is still an evidence based pursuit where conclusions are drawn based on evidence presented. They follow the same general rules of logic and evidence, regardless of the context.

The really sad thing is I guarantee Joe doesn’t actually use the logic he’s presenting. I guarantee he does not look at claims that Zeus throws lightning, or that Vishnu reincarnates people, or that Allah does Allah stuff, and then say there’s no evidence either way, and then assume that he has to be utterly agnostic regarding Allah. I am willing to wager Joe does not regard those claims as credible. Yet, by his logic, he must. He MUST accept that those claims are at least as valid as his own. Either he accepts them all without evidence, or he accepts none of them.

Joe says that atheists make a positive claim. This is a huge mistake, because much of his argument rests on the atheist making a positive claim that has to be supported by evidence. I also don't think Joe seems to not understand what “burden of proof” means here, at least not the way I think it's used in this discussion. I don’t think atheists are saying “we don’t need to work. You guys gather the evidence, we’ll be over here”. What it means is that, when we evaluate the evidence, the burden is on the positive hypothesis to show it is valid. If that hypothesis fail to muster enough evidence, it ought to be rejected.

“But wait! How is it fair that atheism gets to be the “not positive” claim? How come they are the default?” The reason is simple, and it is NOT that religion needs more evidence than everyone else. It is that religion claims supernatural events that by definition defy the laws of nature, which is a thing that countless observations have shown does not happen. Those observations can absolutely be wrong. If you want us to believe those observations are wrong, though, you must give us evidence to overcome them. If you can’t, we assume those observations are valid, supernatural events don’t happen, and therefore (since we’ve got to make some kind of decision to get by) we’ll live our life as if god doesn’t exist.

In summary: Atheists don’t make positive claims, Joe. We lack evidence to believe your positive claim. Since background knowledge tells us that supernatural claims violate the laws of nature and are therefore unlikely to be true, if we have no evidence to show that they are true then we assume that they are false. Since you don’t have the evidence to back up your supernatural claims, and we have to live our lives anyhow, we are forced to assume that your god doesn’t exist unless and until evidence shows otherwise. After all, this is what you do regarding all the other thousands of gods that you don’t believe in. I just do it for the last one too.

If a Nigerian prince sends you an email saying he has a fortune and you just need to send him $100 to get yourself a nice slice of it, how do you approach that problem? Do you approach is Joe’s way, saying that there is a 50-50 shot, that you have to be utterly agnostic regarding this Nigerian prince, and that if you absolutely must make a decision the best you can do is flip a coin?

Or do you approach is like a sane person and tell the “prince” to pound sand unless he can provide evidence?

I’m guessing the latter.