DAY 86
CHALLENGE
“The burden of proof is on those who believe in God. Atheists don’t have to prove God doesn’t exist; believers have to prove he does.”
DEFENSE
This misunderstands the burden of proof.
The concept is borrowed from civil law, where it refers to the obligation a party has to provide sufficient evidence for a claim or lose his case. U.S. law establishes a presumption of innocence, according to which a prosecutor must prove the accused is guilty of an offense or the accused will be acquitted and be legally treated as innocent. The presumption of innocence is a choice our society has made to favor the accused, lest prosecutors use the power of the state to falsely convict large numbers of innocent people and bring about a reign of terror.
However, the burden of proof works differently in other settings, such as philosophical or religious discussions.
From a logical point of view, it does not matter whether one is arguing for a proposition (P) or for its denial (not-P). In the absence of evidence, neither is more probable than the other. Consequently, as long as things remain in the abstract, nobody has a burden of proof.
The burden is created when one person begins asserting either P or not-P. If he wants to convince a person of a proposition or its denial, then he needs to offer that person reasons why. The philosophical burden of proof thus does not intrinsically fall on either party. It is something that you assume when you try to convince someone else of a position.
All of this applies to situations where one is making a claim about whether something exists. Until you consider the evidence, neither the proposition “X exists” nor the proposition “X does not exist” can be deemed more probable than the other, and it doesn’t matter what X is. As long as you have no evidence favoring the existence or non- existence of X, both propositions are equally probable.
Thus if a theist wants to convince a non-theist that God exists, he needs to provide arguments for his position, and if an atheist wishes to convince a non-atheist that God does not exist, he similarly needs to offer arguments for his position. The burden of proof is assumed by whoever is trying to convince the other.