Second Rebuttal

by Daniel Adams

Attributing Burden of Proof to the positive claimant

Mr Guthrie in his last post did not appear to accept my statement that the burden of proof lay upon the positive claimant - that is, the person making the claim. He then uses the following example to try and prove his point

"Adams tries to maintain the thesis that only those claims that are subject to the burden of proof are positive claims only. I then demonstrated that this was not the case in statements like 'Death does not exist' "

Mr Guthrie tries to use the example of death as a case where the burden of proof lies upon the negative claimant (The person claiming God does not exist, or in this case, the person claiming that Death does not exist). This is simply not true. Death, like God, must be proven to exist before it can be accepted. If no death is observed, then it is logical to assume that it does not exist. If no God is observed, then it is logical to assume that he does not exist.

We have good evidence that death exists, and can therefore accept the positive claim "death exists". We have no good evidence that God exists and so are thus far unable to accept the claim that "God exists"

I used the example of rape as an example that proves that the burden of proof lies upon the positive claimant. In other words, it is up to the person claiming that they have been raped to prove it, not for the accused to prove he is innocent. Mr Guthrie did not dispute the accuracy of my example but instead replied

"The example here concerns the burden of proof in a court of law. But I submit that this is no parallel to the issues of academia"

It most certainly is a parallel. We must question why Mr Guthrie wishes to apply a different set of rules to the debate over God than he would himself wish to use in a court of law. Logic is logic, whether it is used in a court of law or in a debate. The analogy stands, and Mr Guthrie has yet to disprove that the the burden of proof lies upon the person making the claim. We are, in other words, still waiting for Mr Guthrie to prove to us that God exists..

I then tried to display the problem with the position of "God exists unless you can prove to me that he doesn't by stating

"I hereby posit a belief in a giant pink gnome who, whilst invisible, has infinite power. DO you see the problem? Whilst such a belief is clearly ludicrous, there is no way that you can disprove it."

Mr Guthrie replied

" Frankly, I see no reason why one cannot disprove this claim."

but he didn't actually attempt to do so. If Mr Guthrie can prove to me that there does not exist a giant, pink, invisible, infintely powerful gnome, then I will be more than happy to in turn prove to him that God does not exist, because whatever arguments are used to disprove the existence of the gnome may be equally well used to disprove the existence of God.

Mr Guthrie keeps on trying to pull me into an argument also on "prior probability". This states quite simply that if lots of people believe something, it must be true. Since the widespread opinion is that God exists, he states, it is up to me, the atheist, to prove otherwise. This smacks of mob rule and basically throws logic out of the window. Mr Guthrie essentially says that it doesn't matter whether you actually have any evidence to back up your claim or not, if enough people believe it, it must be true. Despite what Mr Guthrie may wish you to believe, this is not the accepted method of determining the burden of proof. The burden of proof lies always upon the person making the claim, the positive claimant. And we are still waiting for Mr Guthrie to rpovide an argument in favour of the existence of God.

The Problem of Evil

In my last post, I honoured Mr Guthrie's request by providing a compelling argument against the existence of God, even though I felt that the burden of proof lay upon Mr Guthrie and not myself. I chose to argue using "The Problem of Evil"....

"By our very definition of a God, he would be omnipotent (meaning infinitely powerful) and also all-loving. Why, then is there death and pain in the World. We are left with only two options...

(i)God is not capable of stopping the death and pain. If this is true he is not god, since he is not all powerful

(ii) God is capable of stopping the death and pain but doesn't want to. God wants us to suffer? If so, then he is evil and not to be worshipped."

Mr Guthrie replied

"let us take the two statements:

(a) God exists

(b) Evil exists.

Between (a) and (b) there does not seem to be any logical incompatibility. So, as long as God has any imaginable reason for permitting evil, then the two statements

"(a) God exists" and "(b) Evil exists" are not logically incompatible"

Interesting. Mr Guthrie appears to imply that God exists and has "imaginable reason" for allowing pain and death to continue, when he could prevent it. I am intrigued, God has "imaginable reason" to allow 12-year old girls to be raped? God has "imaginable reason" to make five-year old children in Africa step on landmines. I am sure that I am not alone in wishing to hear these reasons, for my own imagination fails me.

Mr Guthrie then wrote

"I had then proceeded to supply one good argument supporting theism on the basis that the universe must have had a beginning and that there must be a first cause and Adams never bothered to respond to it."

To be honest, I had hoped to spare Mr Guthrie the embarrassment of his poor logic on this point. Mr Guthrie argues that the Universe must have had a beginning, and therefore a "first cause" for its creation. He claims in essence that nothing can spring into existence, but that it must be created. His rationale here is clearly to suggest that God is that creator. However, if Mr Guthrie argues that everything must have been created we are led to the apparently inescapable conclusion that God too must have been created. Which begs the question "who created God". Presumably a meta-god Created god. But who created the meta-god? Presumably a meta-meta-God and so on into infinity.

And as Mr Guthrie firmly states

"we have no reason to think that the infinite is anywhere in existence"

which is interesting, since God is supposedly infinite. Is Mr Guthrie stating that God cannot exist. If so, he does appear rather to be shooting himself in the foot. I await his response with intrigue......