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Philosophy Now Issue 78 http://www.philosophynow.org/issue78/Wheres_The_Evidence

Wheres The Evidence?

Michael Antony argues that the New Atheists miss the mark.

A wise man, wrote Hume, proportions his belief to the evidence. This is a formulation ofevidentialism

the view that a belief is rational or justified if and only if it is supported by ones evidence. A more

generalized version of evidentialism covers beliefs with various degrees of confidence, as well as other

doxastic attitudes such as disbelief, doubt and suspension of judgment (doxa is Greek for belief or opinion).

It states that the rational or justified attitude to adopt with respect to a claim or proposition is the attitude that

fits ones evidence. Although evidentialism is much harder to clarify and defend than it might seem, there is

no denying itsprima facie reasonableness.

Evidentialism plays a key role in attacks against religious belief by the New Atheists, as it did for Hume.

Belief in the existence of God or other divine realities is criticized on the ground that there is no good

evidence for it. Echoing Carl Sagan and Laplace before him, we are told that extraordinary claims require

extraordinary evidence, and we are assured that there is nothing of the sort when it comes to the divine. The

upshot is that religious belief must be judged irrational, epistemically unjustified, or intellectually illegitimate,

and it should be rejected. As Christopher Hitchens is fond of saying, what can be asserted without evidence

can also be dismissed without evidence.

But what of the New Atheists atheism their belief that there is no god or other divine reality? According to

evidentialism, thatbelief (with whatever degree of confidence it is held) also requires evidence in order to berational. However, the New Atheists tend not to worry much about providing evidence. Although they

sometimes offerarguments the problem of evil, Dawkins Ultimate Boeing 747 gambit in The God

Delusion, and a few others overall, those arguments play a minor role in their attacks. Far more central is

their repeated insistence that because religious belief lacks evidence, it is irrational and so should be

abandoned.

The question I wish to ask is this: How can the New Atheists employ evidentialist principles to argue that

religious belief is irrational if they are unwilling to apply those same principles to atheism? If the New

Atheists atheism is not evidence-based, as Hitchens implies in the above quotation, doesnt evidentialism

entail that atheism is itself irrational or epistemically unjustified? The answer is Yes; at least if evidentialism

is interpreted in the standard way. So it appears that the New Atheists need some fix for evidentialism akind of theoretical plug-in which legitimizes their atheism in the absence of evidence. They also seem to

be aware of this, since they offer several reasons why atheism requires no evidential support. I will discuss

five of the most commonly-offered reasons, and argue that none of them succeed. At the end I will gesture

toward what I believe is the right way to view matters.

1. Atheism Isnt A Belief

It is often said by atheists that atheism is not a positive position at all a belief or worldview but merely a

disbelief in theism, a refusal to accept what the theist believes, and as such, there is no belief or position for

es The Evidence? | Philosophy Now http://www.philosophynow.org/issue78/Wheres_The_

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there to be evidencefor. Evidence is not needed for non-positions.

While the word atheism has been used in something like this sense (see for example Antony Flews article

The Presumption of Atheism), it is a highly non-standard use. So understood, atheism would include

agnosticism, since agnostics are also not theists. However, on the common understanding of atheism no

divine reality of any kind exists atheism and agnosticism are mutually exclusive. Some insist that this

non-standard sense of atheism is the only possible sense, because a-theism means without theism. But ifthat

were a good argument, the Space Shuttle would be an automobile, since it moves on its own (mobile=move,

auto=by itself). Ditto for dogs and cats.

Yet none of that really matters, for even the non-standard sense of atheism does nothing to neutralize

evidentialisms demand for evidence. As we saw, evidentialism applies to alldoxastic attitudes toward a

proposition P: believing P, believing not-P, suspending judgment about P, etc. Therefore evidentialism says,

with respect to the proposition God exists, that any attitude toward it will be rational or justified if and only if

it fits ones evidence. Now it is true that if one had no position whatever regarding the proposition God exists

(perhaps because one has never entertained the thought), no evidence would be required for that

non-position.But the New Atheists all believe that (probably) no God or other divine reality exists. And that

beliefmust be evidence-based if it is to be rationally held, according to evidentialism. So insisting that

atheism isnt a belief doesnt help.

In what follows I will use atheism in its standard sense.

2. You Cant Prove A Negative

Another common claim of the New Atheists is that you cant prove a negative where what is typically

meant is a negative existence claim of the form X does not exist. Rhetorically, this claim functions to

legitimize the idea that evidence neednt be provided for Gods nonexistence. After all, if evidence cannotbe

provided for a proposition it would be irrational to expect one to provide some, and so reasonable to believe

that evidence isnt needed. But the claim that you cant prove a negative cannot help the atheist. That is

because, on each of two possible ways of interpreting what it means to prove something, it is generally falsethat you cant prove a negative (and often true that you cant prove a positive).

Consider first, proofs which delivercertainty, as in mathematics or logic. Such proofs are sometimes possible

for negative existence claims, such as the claim that there is no greatest prime number. One can also prove

with certainty that there are no Xs whenever the concept X can be shown to be incoherent (like the concepts

round square, or3pm on the sun). Of course, it is true that many negative existence claims cannot be proved

with absolute certainty, but the same holds for positive existence claims, for example, from science or

common sense, such as that there are electrons or tables and chairs. So theres nothing special here about

negative existence claims.

Turn next to proofs which aim to establish only theprobable truth of their conclusions. These are the sorts of

proofs which result from successful scientific and other empirical investigations. In this sense of proof, it is

easy to prove the non-existence of many things: for example, that there is no pomegranate in my hand, or no

snow-capped mountains in the Sahara Desert. And while it may be difficult or impossible to even in this

weaker sense prove the non-existence of many things goblins, sombreros in the Sombrero Galaxy the

same goes for many positive existence claims that Aristotle sneezed on his 20th birthday; that there is a

transcendent deity; that there is a sombrero somewhere in the Sombrero Galaxy. So, again, there is nothing

unique about negative existence claims. The unfortunate saying that one cant prove a negative should be

dropped.


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3. The Burden of Proof Is On The Believer

Another familiar strategy of atheists is to insist that the burden of proof falls on the believer. If thats right, it

may allow the New Atheists to avoid evidentialisms requirements, and rationally maintain atheism without

evidence. But is it right?

The concept of burden of proof (Latin, onus probandi) originally goes back to classical Roman law, and it

remains important in legal theory. Who has the burden of proof, and what it consists of, is determined by ajudge or by established rules which vary across legal systems. The same is true of formal debates which occur

in a variety of formats. The idea of burden of proof also has application in non-formal settings; for example,

in academic disputes or public controversies. However, without a judge or rules to determine who has the

burden and how it is to be discharged, it becomes unclear how the concept is to be applied, or even whether it

has clear application.

Yet although the concept of burden of proof in informal settings is ill-understood, that does not stop many

from confidently proclaiming how the burden of proof should be assigned. The most egregious mistake is to

think that it is a matter of logic. Rather, the burden of proof is a methodological or procedural concept. It is,

in Nicolas Reschers words, a regulative principle of rationality in the context of argumentation, a ground

rule, as it were, of the process of rational controversy (Dialectics, 1977). Another error is to presume thatthe burden falls on whoever is making the grammatically positive statement. However, positive statements

can often be translated reasonably faithfully into negative statements, and vice versa: the statement

everything happens for a reason can be expressed as there are no coincidences, and there is nothing

supernatural can be restated as reality is wholly natural. A third problem is that to be taken seriously many

negative statements there are no atoms, there are no coincidences require evidence, whereas the

corresponding positive statements do not.

It is sometimes said that one acquires a burden of proof if ones statement runs counter to received opinion,

and it does seem that burden of proof often falls in this way. But this proposal has problems too one being

that a person can legitimately take on a burden of defending a widely-held position to those who are ignorant

of it or its defense (teachers do this, for example). It may be that the best we can hope for is something like

the following: in situations in which participants to a discussion are expected to take seriously the claims

made by other parties, all participants bear a burden to provide support for their claims, if asked (see James

Cargiles paper On the Burden of Proof inPhilosophy 72, 1997).

The concept of burden of proof in informal settings is too complicated to sort out here, but fortunately, we

dont have to, because the question of which side has the burden of proof in an argument is largely

independent of the question of what evidence is required to rationally believe any of the positions. Suppose

for example that someone claims that there are no electrons, and that person bears the burden of proof. Its

not the case that so long as their burden hasnt been discharged people can rationally believe that electrons

exist without evidence. On the contrary, as evidentialism says, evidence is required for the belief to be

justified even if there is no burden to defend the belief. This means that even if the burden of proof never falls

on the atheist in disputes with theists (something we have so far found no reason to believe), it does not

followfrom that factthat atheists can rationally believe without evidence that there is no God or other divine

reality. Consequently, the concept of burden of proof is also of no use to the New Atheists in avoiding the

demands of evidentialism.

4. Ockhams Razor

What about Ockhams Razor, the principle of parsimony associated with the medieval philosopher and monk,

William of Ockham? His principle is often expressed as, Do not multiply entities beyond necessity? Can


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this help? The idea, presumably, is that if a conception of reality without any divine being contains the

resources necessary to explain everything that needs explaining (a proposition Ockham would have

vehemently denied!) then Ockhams Razor licenses us to exclude all references to the divine in our

explanatory accounts. Might this maneuver justify atheism without evidence?

No. The trouble is that Ockhams Razor is of little use in disputes over whether some entity X exists. That is

because it is typically an open question in such disputes whether everything that needs explaining can in fact

be explained without X. Theists believe, or at least suspect, that there are features of reality which are

inexplicable without appeal to a divine being: the existence of a contingent universe, the fine-tuning ofphysical constants, etc. We need not decide here whether a divine being is needed to explain these things:

what is important is just that the Razor itself cannot decide such matters. It comes into play only assuming

that a complete explanation of the relevant phenomena is possible without X; at which point it licenses us to

eliminate X from our ontology. But theists will not accept that a complete explanation of reality is possible

without appeal to a divine being, so long as no compelling case for that claim has been made. So Ockhams

Razor can have no persuasive force in this debate.

5. Absence of Evidence is Evidence of Absence

To retain evidentialism in the absence of positive evidence for atheism, the New Atheists appear to need aprinciple which states that, in the absence of good evidence for theism, atheism is thereby evidentially

supported. This may seem like magic, but a major theme of Norwood Hansons 1967 essay What I Dont

Believe, is, When there is no good reason for thinking a [positive existence] claim to be true, thatin itself is

good reason for thinking the claim to be false. Michael Scriven proposed a similar principle. So following

Thomas Morris, Ill call this theHanson-Scriven Thesis, or HST. HST is a version of the idea that absence

of evidence is evidence of absence.

Hanson defends HST in some of the ways weve already rejected. However, his rhetorically most effective

defense involves pointing to things for which we have no good evidence the Abominable Snowman, the

Loch Ness Monster, Shangri-La, goblins and which we also believe do not exist. His idea is that we believe

these things dont exist because we have no good evidence for them. However, he offers no argument for thislatter claim. Presumably the examples are meant tojust show that we reason in accordance with HST.

More recently the New Atheists have employed Hanson-like examples to defend atheism. We now hear of

Zeus, the Tooth Fairy and the Flying Spaghetti Monster; then there is Bertrand Russells example of a china

teapot orbiting the sun between Earth and Mars, too small to be detected by our telescopes. In spite of our

being unable to disprove the existence of such a teapot, this doesnt mean we must take its existence

seriously. On the contrary, the rational attitude to adopt is that the teapot doesnt exist. Russells point,

according to Dawkins, is that the burden of proof rests with the believers, not the non-believers (The God

Delusion).

To evaluate this example-based defense of HST, I want to distinguish two broad types of evidence. Let us call

evidence for a proposition P which is usually insufficient on its own to persuade a disbeliever that P is true,

weak evidence. Weak evidence, however, can accumulate to make a compelling case, and it can also support

different or even incompatible propositions (think of facts in a criminal case which are cited in arguments for

incompatible conclusions). By contrast,strong evidence comprises sufficient or compelling grounds for

rational belief, or at least, powerful considerations which competing theories cannot account for. Its strong

evidence were after when we ask, What is your evidence for that?

This distinction is important because the good reason in HST must be understood as strong evidence if HST

is to apply to the case of divine reality. That is because there is weak evidence for a divine reality religious

experience, the fine-tuning of physical laws and constants, the apparent contingency of the universe, etc.


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These and other points, although far from decisive, and although explicable in other ways, could conceivably

be mentioned in a compelling argument for the existence of a divine being. Therefore, if HST is about the

absence of weak evidence, one cannot infer from HST that no divine being exists. So for HST to stand a

chance of applying in the atheist case, good reason must be understood as something closer to strong

evidence.

We can now see why HST is false. Consider the claim that earthworms have a primitive form of

consciousness. There is little evidence for this, certainly no strong evidence. Nevertheless, many

consciousness researchers believe it (with varying degrees of confidence). Or take the proposition thatphysical reality is much richer and more mysterious than our current physical theories represent. There is no

strong evidence for this either, but it is believed by many (the astrophysicist Martin Rees, for one). Or

consider string theory. Again, there is nothing that could properly be called strong evidence for it, yet many

physicists believe it. Such examples could be multiplied. Yet if we were to take HST seriously, given that

theres no strong evidence for any of the above propositions, we would rationally have to conclude that the

negations of the propositions are true: that earthworms are notconscious, that physics is notfar from

completion, and that string theory isfalse. But that is absurd! These negative conclusions can be believed

indeed, many people do believe them but there is no reason to suppose that they mustbe believed.

It gets worse. For whenever the negations of propositions like those above can be rephrased as positive

existence statements lacking strong evidence, HST will counsel us to believe contradictions. For example, thestatement earthworms are not conscious can be substituted with the boundary between conscious and

non-conscious creatures is above the level of earthworms. Since there is no strong evidence for that,

according to HST we should believe there is no such boundary which means believing that earthworms are

conscious! So, according to HST, to be rational we should believe that earthworms are both conscious and

not. This is a reductio ad absurdum of HST.

It is now easy to see where Hanson and the New Atheists go wrong with their example-based defense of HST:

they select examples that conform with HST and ignore cases of the sort just offered that conflict with it. Not

only does this generate the false impression that HST is true, it suggests that religious belief, because it lacks

strong evidence, must be judged to be just as ridiculous as the Tooth Fairy or goblins. But given that there are

numerous non-ridiculous beliefs that lack strong evidence, it remains open that belief in a divine reality ismore like those than like the ridiculous beliefs. Certainly neither Hanson nor the New Atheists have said

anything to argue otherwise. Moreover, it is clear that they have no argument that religious belief is

ridiculous: If they did, they would have no need to justify atheism without evidence the argument would

itself be the evidence. Here it may be objected that believers have no argument that religious belief is serious

rather than silly either. That may be true, but it is irrelevant. My point is just that, in presenting ridiculous

examples and ignoring non-ridiculous ones, Hanson and the New Atheists create the misleading impression

that the silliness of religious belief is a result of their reasoning rather than an unsupported presupposition.

Conclusion

We have surveyed five ways in which the New Atheists attempt to exempt themselves from the demands of

evidentialism while criticizing religious belief for failing to satisfy those demands, and we have seen that they

all fail. Therefore, on matters concerning evidence and justification, the New Atheists have no good reason to

treat their atheism differently from how they treat belief in the divine.

How could the New Atheists respond to this conclusion? One option is to accept that evidentialist principles

apply to atheism too. Another is to reject evidentialism. Since we cannot examine these options here in any

detail, let me end with a brief sketch of how I view the situation. I believe that the dispute between believers,

atheists and agnostics can be modeled on disagreements in the sciences, philosophy and other fields in which

there is insufficient evidence to clearly favor any position. In many such disputes, all positions have a kind of


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intellectual legitimacy (which doesnt eliminate the disagreements, of course). Think of the range of legitimate

positions that can be taken on the question of string theory, or on whether earthworms are conscious. Saying

what intellectual legitimacy amounts to, and on what it depends, is a difficult task. It may fall short of

epistemic justification, and instead involve a kind of instrumental or practical rationality. It may also depend

on inquirers recognizing the distinct value of strong and compelling evidence, and accepting that such

evidence must be the final arbiter on theoretical questions. However, the main point to be emphasized here is

this: the various positions that can be taken on the existence of a divine being theism, atheism, agnosticism,

and variants are in principle no less intellectually legitimate than positions in disputes in the sciences and

other fields in which none of the positions enjoy strong evidential support.

Dr Michael V. Antony 2010

Michael Antony is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Haifa, Israel. He

is writing a book on how to approach the question of whether there is a divine reality, and what it might be

like.


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