This is a fundamental misunderstanding of Russell’s Teapot. If someone claims there is a teapot floating in space, cool, they need to prove its existence and the rest of us can go around as if one doesn’t exist. If someone claims there isn’t a teapot floating in space, now the burden of proof is on them. We can quickly exercise some critical thinking and realize that, while there might be a teapot in space someone brought with them and left, it’s not going to be beyond the asteroid belt.
Now do every belief system with empirical evidence. You can’t, primarily because belief in the logic used to prove that empirical evidence is the best evidence is itself a belief system. Changing any one of the axioms that underpin your methodology completely changes the methodology (eg parallel lines meet at infinity turns geometry into hyperbolic geometry). Furthermore, we can extend Gödel’s incompleteness theorems to any formal system, like you’re attempting to employ, and show that they can’t prove themselves.
In other words, we must take things on faith if we want to use logic and pull out statement related to logic like “burden of proof is on the positive.” You can believe whatever the fuck you want; you just can’t prove it and, in most metaphysical cases, you can’t disprove it either.
If someone claims there is a teapot floating in space, cool, they need to prove its existence and the rest of us can go around as if one doesn’t exist. If someone claims there isn’t a teapot floating in space, now the burden of proof is on them.
Disagreeing with the first claim doesn’t put the burden of proof on you. It merely keeps the ball in the first claimant’s hands.
You can believe whatever the fuck you want; you just can’t prove it and, in most metaphysical cases, you can’t disprove it either.
Again, nobody is expected to disprove metaphysical claims. Claims for the metaphysical should be proven by whoever is making them.
Trying to disprove something that hasn’t been proven to exist could be as easy as saying “It doesn’t exist because it doesn’t exist”, and that would be logically and factually sound.
The person who is holding the belief in god(s), ghosts, UFOs, Bigfoot, Santa Claus, Men in Black, a flat earth, a young earth, and anything else you can dream up is the only person who has to justify those beliefs.
This is why I wish we had more people like James Randi around, who put up real money to anyone who could prove their claims of paranormal, magical, psychic, or other metaphysical claims to be true. In over 50 years, nobody could prove what they claimed. Randi didn’t have to disprove anything.
Again, fundamental misunderstanding of Russell’s Teapot. You’re attempting to talk about proof, using the language of logic, to make sweeping claims that logic cannot make.
If you’re saying we can neither prove nor disprove the metaphysical, we’re on the same page.
If you’re saying the metaphysical doesn’t exist because no one has proved it and they have to prove it first, you don’t understand how logic, as we understand it today, works.
Edit: to highlight your issues a little, “it doesn’t exist because it doesn’t exist” isn’t logically sound. Unlike Russell’s Teapot, circular logic is an actual, provable fallacy rather than a rhetorical tool that is not a result of logic. More importantly, you’re depending on logic as a system of faith, just like religion, unless you’ve found some results that contradict Gödel and company. We’ve made all of it up and, with our understanding today, it is not objective.
If you’re saying we can neither prove nor disprove the metaphysical, we’re on the same page.
Give me an example of a metaphysical claim, and I will tell you whether it can be proven or disproven. Simply talking about broad subjects doesn’t help to clarify the discussion.
In the context of religion, some claims made would be pretty easy to prove if they were true.
For example, many Christians believe that the earth is approx. 6000 years old. This would be very easy to prove, but we’ve already disproven it 1000x over.
Another claim, for example, is proving whether prayer works. When actually tested, we know that it doesn’t (at least, not in the spiritual/“direct connection with god” sense).
If you’re saying the metaphysical doesn’t exist because no one has proved it and they have to prove it first, you don’t understand how logic, as we understand it today, works.
I’m not saying that AT ALL. I’m pretty agnostic about most claims.
If someone makes a claim, be it metaphysical, paranormal, or otherwise, then that claim needs to have been formed on some basis of evidence. If that evidence cannot be presented and/or observed and/or tested and/or repeated, then it doesn’t support the claim.
People who KNOW that heaven exists have never proven that it does. Neuroscientists can give a dozen reasons why someone might have a near-death experience where a person claims to have “visited heaven”, yet someone steeped in religion will never accept those explanations.
Really, that’s part of what makes religion so awful. It causes people to believe things that are so illogical, that you’d have to suspend reality in order for it to make any sense. And even then, it’s 99% crazy.
Edit: to highlight your issues a little, “it doesn’t exist because it doesn’t exist” isn’t logically sound.
I disagree. If I were to hold out my empty hand and say that “the ball in my hand does not exist because it does not exist”, that would be true, would it not?
Unlike Russell’s Teapot, circular logic is an actual, provable fallacy rather than a rhetorical tool that is not a result of logic.
Circular logic is a strategy used in religious debates almost as a means to deadlock the debate (which is to their advantage, since they can’t prove anything otherwise).
That’s why the rebuttal, in the context of a religious claim, “It doesn’t exist because it doesn’t exist” is as lazy and unhelpful as saying “god exists because god exists”.
I’ve spent too many hours watching “debates” where the religious side will simply spiral into a black hole of laziness as to render the entire debate a complete waste of time. They’ll say “you can’t know that god doesn’t exist because you don’t know everything”, yet they’ll turn around and say that they are 100% certain that god exists because they know god exists. I mean, where can you go from there?
