Russell's teapot - Wikipedia Russell's teapot From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to navigation Jump to search Analogy coined by Bertrand Russell Part of a series on Atheism Concepts History Antitheism Nontheism Atheism and religion (Criticism of atheism / of religion) History of atheism State atheism Outline Types Implicit and explicit Negative and positive Christian India Hindu (Adevism) Buddhist Jewish Muslim Feminist New Atheism Arguments for atheism Against God's existence Atheist's Wager Evil God Challenge Fate of the unlearned Free will God of the gaps Hitchens's razor Incompatible properties Inconsistent revelation Nonbelief Omnipotence paradox Poor design Problem of evil Problem of Hell Russell's teapot Theological noncognitivism Ultimate Boeing 747 gambit People Mikhail Bakunin Jean Baudrillard Albert Camus Richard Dawkins Daniel Dennett Ludwig Feuerbach Sam Harris Christopher Hitchens Baron d'Holbach Bertrand Russell Related stances Agnosticism Weak Strong Agnostic theism Agnostic atheism Ignosticism Apatheism Irreligion Anti-clericalism Antireligion Freethought Parody religion Post-theism Secular humanism Naturalism Humanistic Metaphysical Methodological Religious Secularism Category Religion portal WikiProject v t e Part of a series on Bertrand Russell Views on philosophy Views on society Russell's paradox Russell's teapot Theory of descriptions Logical atomism v t e Russell's teapot is an analogy, formulated by the philosopher Bertrand Russell (1872–1970), to illustrate that the philosophic burden of proof lies upon a person making unfalsifiable claims, rather than shifting the burden of disproof to others. Russell specifically applied his analogy in the context of religion.[1] He wrote that if he were to assert, without offering proof, that a teapot, too small to be seen by telescopes, orbits the Sun somewhere in space between the Earth and Mars, he could not expect anyone to believe him solely because his assertion could not be proven wrong. Russell's teapot is still invoked in discussions concerning the existence of God, and has had influence in various fields and media. Contents 1 Description 2 Analysis 3 Similar analogies 4 Influence in religious parodies 5 See also 6 References Description In an article titled "Is There a God?" commissioned, but never published, by Illustrated magazine in 1952, Russell wrote: Many orthodox people speak as though it were the business of sceptics to disprove received dogmas rather than of dogmatists to prove them. This is, of course, a mistake. 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.[2] In 1958, Russell elaborated on the analogy: I ought to call myself an agnostic; but, for all practical purposes, I am an atheist. I do not think the existence of the Christian God any more probable than the existence of the Gods of Olympus or Valhalla. To take another illustration: nobody can prove that there is not between the Earth and Mars a china teapot revolving in an elliptical orbit, but nobody thinks this sufficiently likely to be taken into account in practice. I think the Christian God just as unlikely.[3] Analysis Chemist Peter Atkins said that the point of Russell's teapot is that there is no burden on anyone to disprove assertions. Occam's razor suggests that the simpler theory with fewer assertions (e.g., a universe with no supernatural beings) should be the starting point in the discussion rather than the more complex theory.[4] Responding to the invocation of Russell's "Celestial Teapot" by Richard Dawkins as evidence against religion, an apologia by philosopher Paul Chamberlain contends that such arguments rely on an undue distinction between positive and negative claims. Chamberlain says it is logically erroneous to assert that positive truth claims bear a burden of proof while negative truth claims do not; he says "every truth claim, whether positive or negative, has a burden of proof."[5] In his books A Devil's Chaplain (2003) and The God Delusion (2006), biologist Richard Dawkins used the teapot as an analogy of an argument against what he termed "agnostic conciliation", a policy of intellectual appeasement that allows for philosophical domains that concern exclusively religious matters.[6] Science has no way of establishing the existence or non-existence of a god. Therefore, according to the agnostic conciliator, because it is a matter of individual taste, belief and disbelief in a supreme being are deserving of equal respect and attention. Dawkins presents the teapot as a reductio ad absurdum of this position: if agnosticism demands giving equal respect to the belief and disbelief in a supreme being, then it must also give equal respect to belief in an orbiting teapot, since the existence of an orbiting teapot is just as plausible scientifically as the existence of a supreme being.[7] Philosopher Brian Garvey argues that the teapot analogy fails with regard to religion because, with the teapot, the believer and non-believer are simply disagreeing about one item in the universe and may hold in common all other beliefs about the universe, which is not true of an atheist and a theist.[3] Garvey argues that it is not a matter of the theist propounding existence of a thing and the atheist simply denying it – each is asserting an alternative explanation of why the cosmos exists and is the way it is: "the atheist is not just denying an existence that the theist affirms – the atheist is in addition committed to the view that the universe is not the way it is because of God. It is either the way it is because of something other than God, or there is no reason it is the way it is."[3] Philosopher Peter van Inwagen argues that while Russell's teapot is a fine piece of rhetoric, its logical argument form is less than clear, and attempting to make it clear reveals that the Teapot Argument is very far from cogent.[8] Another philosopher, Alvin Plantinga states that a falsehood lies at the heart of Russell's argument. Russell's argument assumes that there is no evidence against the teapot, but Plantinga disagrees: Clearly we have a great deal of evidence against teapotism. For example, as far as we know, the only way a teapot could have gotten into orbit around the sun would be if some country with sufficiently developed space-shot capabilities had shot this pot into orbit. No country with such capabilities is sufficiently frivolous to waste its resources by trying to send a teapot into orbit. Furthermore, if some country had done so, it would have been all over the news; we would certainly have heard about it. But we haven't. And so on. There is plenty of evidence against teapotism.[9] Philosopher Gary Gutting rejects Russell's teapot for similar reasons, arguing that Russell's argument accords theism far less support than it actually has. Gutting points out that numerous sensible, competent people appeal to personal experience and arguments in support of God's existence. Thus, to simply reject the existence of God, out of hand, seems unjustified, according to Gutting.[10] The literary critic James Wood, without believing in God, says that belief in God "is a good deal more reasonable than belief in a teapot" because God is a "grand and big idea" which "is not analogically disproved by reference to celestial teapots or vacuum cleaners, which lack the necessary bigness and grandeur" and "because God cannot be reified, cannot be turned into a mere thing".[11] One counter-argument, advanced by philosopher Eric Reitan,[12] is that belief in God is different from belief in a teapot because teapots are physical and therefore in principle verifiable, and that given what we know about the physical world we have no good reason to think that belief in Russell's teapot is justified and at least some reason to think it not.[13] Similar analogies Other thinkers have posited non-disprovable analogies, such as J. B. Bury in his 1913 book, History of Freedom of Thought: Some people speak as if we were not justified in rejecting a theological doctrine unless we can prove it false. But the burden of proof does not lie upon the rejecter.... If you were told that in a certain planet revolving around Sirius there is a race of donkeys who speak the English language and spend their time in discussing eugenics, you could not disprove the statement, but would it, on that account, have any claim to be believed? Some minds would be prepared to accept it, if it were reiterated often enough, through the potent force of suggestion.[14] Astronomer Carl Sagan in his 1995 book The Demon-Haunted World offered a similar non-disprovable analogy called the Dragon in the Garage as an example of skeptical thinking. If Sagan claimed there was a dragon in his garage, you would wish to verify it for yourself but if Sagan's dragon was impossible to detect: Now, what's the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all? If there's no way to disprove my contention, no conceivable experiment that would count against it, what does it mean to say that my dragon exists?[15] Influence in religious parodies The concept of Russell's teapot has influenced more explicitly religion-parodying concepts such as the Invisible Pink Unicorn[7] and the Flying Spaghetti Monster.[16] 1960s musician and psychedelic poet Daevid Allen of the band Gong employed the image of a flying teapot in his Planet Gong Universe and the Flying Teapot album trilogy, and refers to Russell's teapot in his book Gong Dreaming 2: The Histories & Mysteries of Gong from 1969-1975.[citation needed] See also Listen to this article (6.3 megabytes) This audio file was created from a revision of this article dated 2 May 2012 (2012-05-02), and does not reflect subsequent edits. (Audio help · More spoken articles) Wikimedia Commons has media related to Depictions of Russell's teapot. Ad hoc hypothesis Argument from ignorance Elon Musk's Tesla Roadster Knightian uncertainty Parody religion Flying Spaghetti Monster References ^ Fritz Allhoff, Scott C. Lowe. The Philosophical Case Against Literal Truth: Russell's Teapot // Christmas - Philosophy for Everyone: Better Than a Lump of Coal. — John Wiley and Sons, 2010. — Т. 5. — P. 65-66. — 256 p. — (Philosophy for Everyone). — ISBN 9781444330908. ^ Russell, Bertrand (1952). "Is There a God? [1952]". In Slater, John G. (ed.). The Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell, Vol. 11: Last Philosophical Testament, 1943–68 (PDF). Routledge. pp. 542–548. ISBN 9780415094092. ^ a b c Garvey, Brian (2010). "Absence of Evidence, Evidence of Absence, and the Atheist's Teapot". Ars Disputandi. 10 (1): 9–22. doi:10.1080/15665399.2010.10820011. S2CID 37528278. ^ Atkins, Peter (2006), "Atheism and science", in Clayton, Philip; Simpson, Zachary R. (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Science, pp. 129–130, ISBN 9780199279272, retrieved 3 March 2016 ^ Chamberlain, Paul (2011). Why People Don't Believe: Confronting Six Challenges to Christian Faith. Baker Books. p. 82. ISBN 978-1-4412-3209-0. ^ Dawkins, Richard (2003). "The Great Convergence". A Devil's Chaplain: Reflections on Hope, Lies, Science, and Love. Houghton Mifflin. pp. 146–151. ISBN 978-0-618-33540-4. ^ a b Dawkins, Richard (2016). "The Poverty of Agnosticism". The God Delusion (10th Anniversary ed.). Random House. pp. 69–77. ISBN 9781784161934. ^ van Inwagen, Peter (2012). "Russell's China Teapot". In Łukasiewicz, Dariusz; Pouivet, Roger (eds.). The Right to Believe: Perspectives in Religious Epistemology. Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag. pp. 11–26. ISBN 9783110320169. ^ Gutting, Gary (9 February 2014). "Is Atheism Irrational?". The New York Times. Retrieved 27 July 2016. ^ Gutting, Gary (11 August 2010). "On Dawkins's Atheism: A Response". The New York Times. Retrieved 27 November 2018. ^ Wood, James (18 December 2006). "The Celestial Teapot". The New Republic (27). ^ Reitan, Eric. "Contributors". Religion Dispatches. ^ Reitan, Eric (2008). Is God a Delusion?. Wiley-Blackwell. pp. 78–80. ISBN 978-1-4051-8361-1. ^ Bury, John Bagnall (1913). "Freedom of Thought and the Forces Against it". History of Freedom of Thought (Illustrated Edition, published 2014 by Lulu Press, Inc. ed.). London: Williams & Norgate. p. 20. ISBN 9781304988607. ^ Sagan, Carl (1995). The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark. New York: Random House. ISBN 9780394535128. Retrieved 23 July 2017. ^ Wolf, Gary (14 November 2006). "The Church of the Non-Believers". Wired News. v t e Irreligion Irreligion Nontheism Antireligion Post-theism Anti-clericalism Criticism of religion Parody religion Secular humanism Freethought Atheism Lists of atheists Demographics Religion History Anti-clericalism State New Criticism Discrimination/Persecution Implicit and explicit Negative and positive Existence of God Antitheism Christian atheism Hindu atheism Jewish atheism Agnosticism List of agnostics Strong Weak Agnostic atheism Agnostic theism Christian Apatheism Ignosticism Secular Buddhism Nontheism Criticism of religion Secular humanism Freethought Flying Spaghetti Monster Inconsistent revelations Invisible Pink Unicorn Nontheistic religions Parody religion Post-theism Russell's teapot Theological noncognitivism Transtheism Naturalism Humanistic Metaphysical Methodological Religious Spiritual People Atheists Agnostics Humanists Pantheists Deists Books Breaking the Spell The End of Faith The God Delusion God Is Not Great Letter to a Christian Nation The System of Nature Why I Am Not a Christian Why I Am Not a Muslim Organizations American Atheists American Humanist Association Atheist Alliance International British Humanist Association Center for Inquiry Freedom From Religion Foundation International Humanist and Ethical Union Rational Response Squad Reason Rally Recovering from Religion World Pantheist Movement Brazilian Association of Atheists and Agnostics Related topics Countries by irreligion Secularism Parody or mock religions v t e Philosophy of religion Concepts in religion Afterlife Euthyphro dilemma Faith Intelligent design Miracle Problem of evil Religious belief Soul Spirit Theodicy Theological veto Conceptions of God Aristotelian view Brahman Demiurge Divine simplicity Egoism Holy Spirit Misotheism Pandeism Personal god Process theology Supreme Being Unmoved mover God in Abrahamic religions Buddhism Christianity Hinduism Islam Jainism Judaism Mormonism Sikhism Baháʼí Faith Wicca Existence of God For Beauty Christological Consciousness Cosmological Kalam Contingency Degree Desire Experience Fine-tuning of the universe Love Miracles Morality Necessary existent Ontological Pascal's wager Proper basis Reason Teleological Natural law Watchmaker analogy Transcendental Against 747 gambit Atheist's Wager Evil Free will Hell Inconsistent revelations Nonbelief Noncognitivism Occam's razor Omnipotence Poor design Russell's teapot Theology Acosmism Agnosticism Animism Antireligion Atheism Creationism Dharmism Deism Demonology Divine command theory Dualism Esotericism Exclusivism Existentialism Christian Agnostic Atheistic Feminist theology Thealogy Womanist theology Fideism Fundamentalism Gnosticism Henotheism Humanism Religious Secular Christian Inclusivism Theories about religions Monism Monotheism Mysticism Naturalism Metaphysical Religious Humanistic New Age Nondualism Nontheism Pandeism Panentheism Pantheism Perennialism Polytheism Possibilianism Process theology Religious skepticism Spiritualism Shamanism Taoic Theism Transcendentalism more... Religious language Eschatological verification Language game Logical positivism Apophatic theology Verificationism Problem of evil Augustinian theodicy Best of all possible worlds Euthyphro dilemma Inconsistent triad Irenaean theodicy Natural evil Theodicy Philosophers of religion (by date active) Ancient and medieval Anselm of Canterbury Augustine of Hippo Avicenna Averroes Boethius Erasmus Gaunilo of Marmoutiers Pico della Mirandola Heraclitus King James VI and I Marcion of Sinope Thomas Aquinas Maimonides Early modern Augustin Calmet René Descartes Blaise Pascal Baruch Spinoza Nicolas Malebranche Gottfried W Leibniz William Wollaston Thomas Chubb David Hume Baron d'Holbach Immanuel Kant Johann G Herder 1800 1850 Friedrich Schleiermacher Karl C F Krause Georg W F Hegel William Whewell Ludwig Feuerbach Søren Kierkegaard Karl Marx Albrecht Ritschl Afrikan Spir 1880 1900 Ernst Haeckel W K Clifford Friedrich Nietzsche Harald Høffding William James Vladimir Solovyov Ernst Troeltsch Rudolf Otto Lev Shestov Sergei Bulgakov Pavel Florensky Ernst Cassirer Joseph Maréchal 1920 postwar George Santayana Bertrand Russell Martin Buber René Guénon Paul Tillich Karl Barth Emil Brunner Rudolf Bultmann Gabriel Marcel Reinhold Niebuhr Charles Hartshorne Mircea Eliade Frithjof Schuon J L Mackie Walter Kaufmann Martin Lings Peter Geach George I Mavrodes William Alston Antony Flew 1970 1990 2010 William L Rowe Dewi Z Phillips Alvin Plantinga Anthony Kenny Nicholas Wolterstorff Richard Swinburne Robert Merrihew Adams Ravi Zacharias Peter van Inwagen Daniel Dennett Loyal Rue Jean-Luc Marion William Lane Craig Ali Akbar Rashad Alexander Pruss Related topics Criticism of religion Desacralization of knowledge Ethics in religion Exegesis History of religion Religion Religious language Religious philosophy Relationship between religion and science Faith and rationality more... Portal Category Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Russell%27s_teapot&oldid=999293184" Categories: Agnosticism Atheism Bertrand Russell Criticism of religion Parodies Philosophical arguments Razors (philosophy) Religious parodies and satires Skepticism Teapots Philosophy of religion Thought experiments in philosophy Hidden categories: Articles with short description Short description matches Wikidata Wikipedia indefinitely semi-protected pages EngvarB from August 2014 Use dmy dates from August 2014 All articles with unsourced statements Articles with unsourced statements from May 2017 Articles with hAudio microformats Spoken articles Commons category link from Wikidata Navigation menu Personal tools Not logged in Talk Contributions Create account Log in Namespaces Article Talk Variants Views Read View source View history More Search Navigation Main page Contents Current events Random article About Wikipedia Contact us Donate Contribute Help Learn to edit Community portal Recent changes Upload file Tools What links here Related changes Upload file Special pages Permanent link Page information Cite this page Wikidata item Print/export Download as PDF Printable version In other projects Wikimedia Commons Languages العربية Azərbaycanca বাংলা Беларуская Български Boarisch Bosanski Brezhoneg Català Čeština Dansk Deutsch Ελληνικά Español Esperanto Euskara فارسی Français Galego 한국어 Հայերեն हिन्दी Hrvatski Bahasa Indonesia Íslenska Italiano עברית Lietuvių Magyar മലയാളം Nederlands 日本語 Oʻzbekcha/ўзбекча ਪੰਜਾਬੀ Polski Português Română Русский Shqip Simple English Српски / srpski Srpskohrvatski / српскохрватски Suomi Svenska தமிழ் Türkçe Українська 文言 中文 Edit links This page was last edited on 9 January 2021, at 12:57 (UTC). Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply. By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization. Privacy policy About Wikipedia Disclaimers Contact Wikipedia Mobile view Developers Statistics Cookie statement