Skip to main content

Burden of Proof Trick

One of the simplest tricks is to attempt to shift the burden of proof to the other camp. The complaint is the atheists ask theists to provide evidence that god exists, but never provide evidence that god does not exist.

[Key Takeaway]

Default position is "I don't know". Any other claim requires evidence.

If an atheist makes the claim that "no gods exist" then they must provide evidence. But to reject the claims of the Christians that "a god exists" needs no evidence at all. Any claim made without evidence can be rejected without evidence.

Proof -> Provide Convincing Evidence​

Before we dive in too deep, lets remember that the colloquial meaning for proof is not the mathematical meaning for proof. Proof is to demonstrate that the conclusion absolutely can not be denied. Things are truly proven only in mathematics. Nothing in the real world is proven.

In casual discussion people use the word proof to mean that there is a convincing amount of evidence -- more evidence for this conclusion than for any other conclusion. I am sure that is what people really mean, and so on this page I will use the term proof to mean merely provide convincing evidence.

Default Position​

In any discussion of whether something exists or not, there default starting positions is always "I don't know".

  • While driving down the road, if one asks the question "What is in that building?" the default position is "I don't know".
  • When entering a room, if one asks the question "Who put that picture there?" the default position is "I don't know".

All claims for existence are epistemological claims: what is it, how did it get here, how was it formed, when did it arrive, etc. In all epistemological situations, you start in the position of not knowing something, and from there examine the evidence that leads to a conclusion.

Let's take the default position on the sun going around the Earth. The default position is "I don’t know". If you want to say something other than I don’t know, if you want to actually claim that the Earth goes around the sun, then you must show some evidence of that.

Challenging Claims​

Starting with I don't know about a situation, someone will make a claim that they do in fact know something. To support that claim, some evidence is needed. The listener can challenge the claimant: "how do you know that?"

  • That building has a banana tree in it. What sorts of evidence would show that there is a tree, and that nothing else could explain that evidence as well.
  • That building has a UFO in it. What sorts of evidence would show that there is a UFO, and that nothing else could explain that evidence as well.

Anyone who makes a claim then has a burden to actually answer the question: how do you know that?

Ordinary Claims​

Some things are quite common and ordinary that we rarely challenge.

  • That building has a bathroom in it.

Almost all large buildings have bathrooms. There are, of course, exceptions but those exceptions are so rare that for normal everyday situations we don't need to question it. It is reasonable to expect that any average building will have a bathroom, so we generally will believe this without question. This will occasionally lead to being misinformed, but again the chance of this is small and the effort to demand evidence is larger than nothing.

This acceptance of claims without evidence is called "common sense". It is supported by "intuition" which is the learning that you already have about the way things normally are.

There are cases where you might want to challenge anyway. Famously, the palace of Versailles was built without any bathrooms in it (nobody had bathrooms back then, and the palace has them now). If you pointed to a part of the palace and claimed that it had a bathroom in it, one might then ask for evidence to support the claim.

Extraordinary Claims​

If the claim involved something extraordinary, you might then reasonably demand evidence:

  • That building has a live fire-breathing dragon in it

I have never in my life seen that. There is nothing typical about that. I have never seen a live fire-breathing dragon at all in real life. If the building had that it would truly be a huge news event. In this case, only a fool would believe the statement without supporting evidence. In fact, this is virtually the definition of a fool: believing nonsense.

Christian Burden Shifting​

The Christian claims that God exists, and further that God has specific qualities. The atheist rightly challenges that. Many Christians illogically push back.

Hello atheists. I was wanting to ask what evidence do you have that god does not exist?

If you can't prove God does not exist, then you shouldn't be a naturalist!

At its core, atheism is based on faith: It is just like other belief systems that require a leap of faith in order to accept their claims as true without evidence or proof to back them up.

Atheists run off of avoiding the burden of proof. They just don’t believe in intelligent design.

Christians repeatedly ask for atheists to prove that god does not exist. Atheist have no need to prove this, but it is the Christian claim that god exists that carries the burden of proof. The Christians not only claim existence, but have very specific properties for that God as part of their claim as well.

Atheists reject the Christian claim and specifically all the specific claims about the properties of god, and how god does things on earth.

To be fair, there are two kinds of atheists: agnostics who say that nobody knows whether any god exists, and gnostics who make the absolute claim that nothing like what the bible describes exists. The former (about half the atheist population) are on firm ground and need no evidence. The latter category (the other half) would be in a position of needing to show evidence but this is still debatable:

  • If I claim that flying horses don't exist, do I need evidence for that? Technically yes, however birds fly only because they are constructed to be very light, and horses are very heavy. If a flying horse existed it would clearly leave some evidence behind. In this case absence of evidence is actually evidence of absence.
  • If neither side produces any evidence, then it is a draw: either claim is equally valid / invalid without evidence. Neither side can reject the other side.

This does not excuse the gnostic atheists. Anyone who claims that the universe is completely devoid of any gods also do carry a burden of proof for that claim.

Hypocritical Demands​

Christians should never ask an atheist to prove that god does not exist, when they have not proven that god exists in the first place. Christians should never ask an atheist to provide evidence that god does not exist, when they have not provided evidence that god exists in the first place.

Demanding that the atheist provide evidence when you have not is a hypocritical demand: you demand of the other person what you do not demand of yourself. Such a Christian is not being fair when making a requirement on someone else, while not obeying that same requirement themselves.

The Christian wanting to affirm the existence of god should be asking the atheist: "Here is my evidence, how can you deny that?" Focus on the evidence you have and why that is sufficient, instead of merely shifting the burden and asking the atheist to provide negative evidence.