http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hNpCEANgCA&feature=watch_response
Hypothetical situation: You’re on a hike. All is going well and everyone is having a great time, then suddenly, someone points off to the side of the trail and says, “Look! A dinosaur walked by here recently!”
You look where he’s pointing and you don’t see any tracks, disruptions in the flora, excrement deposits, or anything else that would suggest this to you, so you look at him and say, “How do you know?”
He replies, “Well how do you know it didn’t.”
You don’t know it didn’t and you’re not claiming that it didn’t. You’re not making any claims here at all. He is. Therefore it’s up to him to back that claim up with something.
This logical fallacy is called shifting the burden. The burden in question is the burden of proof. It rests on the party making the claim, not the one questioning it or rejecting it. This is the very reason why, in the democratic world, when someone is brought to trial, he or she is assumed innocent until proven guilty, not the other way around.
Events that don’t occur don’t produce evidence that they didn’t occur, and by the same token, beings that don’t exist, don’t produce evidence that they don’t exist. None of us spends all our time walking around producing evidence that we are not currently in the process of committing crimes. Maybe the hypothetical dinosaur never actually walked there, or maybe it did and the tracks have been washed away by the combination of time and entropy. There’s no way to tell. But assuming the latter on these grounds is a form of arguing from the gaps. Instead of trying to conclude something on the basis of evidence, you are trying to conclude it on the basis of lack of evidence.
Maybe the dinosaur walked there and its tracks have faded beyond recognition. Maybe anywhere from a few dozen to a few hundred dinosaurs walked there. On the other hand, maybe a twenty-foot wide water wheel rolled through that spot with three guys riding it and fighting each other with swords. That’s just as likely and you can’t prove it didn’t happen.
When Galileo Galilei first began looking at the moon through a telescope, it was the widely held notion that the moon was perfectly round. Galileo, instead, found valleys, but when he tried to present this evidence to other astronomers of the time, they simply responded that those valleys were filled in with transparent crystal, making the Moon perfectly round after all. There was, after all, no evidence that this crystal wasn’t there.
Galileo responded with the claim that there were other valleys existing between mountain ranges on top of that transparent crystal which were also composed of transparent crystal. There was, after all, no evidence that these mountains of crystal were not there.
Of course, one could respond with the counterclaim that the valleys between these mountains were also filled in with transparent crystal, and one could respond to this by claiming that other mountains rest atop this crystal and farewell to progress toward any meaningful accomplishments.
In the comment section on one of these videos, I don’t remember exactly what the comment was, but it was something to the effect of, “Barack Obama is an evil, fascist bastard! Prove me wrong!”
I’ll tell you what. John McCain, Dick Cheney and George Bush are all lizard-aliens in disguise. Prove me wrong.
As an atheist, the form of this I usually encounter is something to the effect of, “Well if I have to prove that God exists, then you have to prove that He doesn’t.”
I’ll tell you what. I will prove that the god you are referring to does not exist as soon as you prove that the Magic Turnip does not exist. Have at it.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. The party making the claim has the burden of proof; not the party challenging that claim. This was the problem about seven and-a-half years ago when the Republicans began challenging anyone to show proof that Iraq
Would it include photos of the various locations where centrifuges are not being built? What would there be to prevent the Republicans from responding to that by saying that the centrifuges are just somewhere else? Nothing.
Maybe it would include photographs of all the scientists not involved. But then, of course, the Republicans would just respond to that by saying that other scientists are involved.
I’ll tell you what. How about showing all of us proof that Bush and Cheney do not stand to profit from the invasion.
Okay. I believe this point is made.
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