First Rebuttal

by Shandon Guthrie

If you remember what I had said in my Opening Statement that if Mr. Adams is to convince us of atheism he has to, in addition to providing evidence for his position, attack the evidence I gave. Unfortunately he has not done so in his first rebuttal. Let's look first at the issue of the Burden of Proof.

THE BURDEN OF PROOF

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" and "The geocentric cosmology is not true" and he did not respond to this. He then suggests two cases where the burden of proof always falls on the positive claimant:

"(i) I charge you with rape. Are you guilty until you prove yourself to be innocent. No, you are innocent until I, the positive claimant, can prove beyond reasonable doubt that you are guilty."

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. After all, in the case where I am charged with rape, the judge and jury of the courtroom are judging a moral issue here and not an epistemic one. Ethicists understand that the burden of proof always falls on the one who argues for the deprivation of someone's civil liberties. But we are not discussing ethics here. Instead, we are discussing a simple claim to knowledge.

He then says:

"ii) Mr Guthrie claims that Gos[sic] exists unless I can prove otherwise. This is an irrational claim."

Now, I did not argue this way. I did not imply that I need not demonstrate God's existence in the absence of evidence for atheism (like Mr. Adams has done in disconfirming theism), I tried to show how both sides are liable to produce evidence. He then adds, "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." Frankly, I see no reason why one cannot disprove this claim. But if Adams is suggesting that the burden of proof is on the positive claimant here, then I am in agreement. But the burden of proof does not fall on the one who claims that the gnome exists only because "All positive claimants have the burden of proof," but because the initial claim that there is a pink gnome with infinite power has a very low prior probability. Concerning the notion of prior probability, he has yet to address this.

(1) NO GOOD EVIDENCE TO FAVOR ATHEISM AS TRUE

In his opening statement, Adams failed to provide any positive evidence supporting atheism. He simply states that there is no good evidence for theism and this makes atheism the "default" position. But I had suggested that both sides are equally culpable for evidence since there could be other bases on which to ground one's belief (I even gave an example from the movie Contact). On this he has yet to reply.

Now he gives us an argument for atheism from the Epicurean 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 a 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."

Atheists, for years, have tried to disprove the existence of God on the basis of evil and, in their failure, have long since abandoned it. To see the problem with the argument from evil, 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. For example, if I can imagine that Satan causes all evil then, although this is false, it shows that there is at least the possibility that the two statements are not logically incompatible. In order to discredit logical incompatibility, two claims need only be possibly co-existent. 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. Thus, Adams' argument here is simply a false dilemma.

(2) ONE GOOD REASON TO SUGGEST THAT THEISM IS TRUE

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.

Therefore, we have yet to see any good reason to discount God's existence and we still have the prevailing cosmological argument I gave supporting theism. So, the view that God exists is still the most plausible world view.