| | (I said only one argument per week, but I've nothing else to do. I'm also irritated that my xanga posts are becoming more apologet-icky)
Everytime I see Celestial Teapot's page I'm reminded to make a post about this. I keep pushing it off, but maybe I've the chutzpah to finally talk about this. Bertrand Russell was the guy who first came up with the comparison between God and Teapots. Each generation after him has enjoyed making their own version, like the Pink Unicorn (this is from atheists of the 60's, no doubt), Invisible Hamsters, and most recently (and most creatively) the Flying Spaghetti Monster. They're all used in a general context nowadays though, rarely used in the way Russell used his Teapots. Let's see how he used it.
If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time.
He begins saying nothing controversial. Basically, because a proposition hasn't been disproven doesn't mean it is proven or that it's reasonable to believe in it. That the existence of aliens hasn't been disproven doesn't give their existence any credence. (The opposite is true too: because the existence of aliens hasn't been proven, their non-existence hasn't been proven.) Then he applies this to God. It's a bit hard to unpack his rhetoric here; it's so thick I'm not actually sure if there's anything more to this than that one bit of logic that the absence of a disproof does not constitute a proof. He adds in a reference to the Inquisition for good measure, seems to take a jab at blind faith. But nowhere here does Russell remotely suggest that it is essentially irrational to believe in a celestial teapot. If that's the case, then nowhere does he imply that it's irrational to believe in a God.
Some people try to make this passage out to say that it's just as plainly irrational to believe in God as it is to believe something like an invisible unicorn. But that's not implied by the text, at least from how I'm reading this. And I'm not sure what's by-default irrational about believing in an invisible unicorn. If one inferred indirectly the existence of a particular thing that is horse-like and has exactly one horn, what's irrational about believing in it? Now, I think it's just plainly untrue that God (whether or not one exists) is on the same par as an invisible pink unicorn or invisible teapot. The reason is that God, unlike a unicorn, if he exists, can be inferred from general states or patterns in the universe. If he exists, he "unifies" all other contingent facts. (I might be getting this idea from Bill Valicella). Other people say that because God is invisible, there's no evidence you can possibly use to support his existence. That's just silly. Alot of things are invisible, or close to invisible, and we infer their existence indirectly from what we can see and from logic. The existence of atoms was inferred from abstract reasoning before it was inferred from empirical research. So I'm not sure if there's anything else to this. What's your take? |
| | Posted 7/9/2009 11:53 PM - 86 Views - 18 eProps - 17 comments
- recommend
  - recs5
- share
- email
 - sent0
|
