Illustrating the burden of proof - pay me!

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

A couple of glaring flaws:

-No one claims that all parties have an equal burden of proof.

-It’s a pretty egregious fallacy to demand that someone prove a negative (which is why ‘Prove to me that gods don’t exist’ is a non-starter).

To answer your question, I think it would make for an interest example of how not to argue.

Boru

When I listened to the Atheist Experience show there were numerous callers arguing that neither theists nor atheists could offer any proof and therefore the positions should be treated as equally valid. I think quite a few people do argue for equal burden of proof.

Simply not having any proof to offer isn’t the same as having the burden of proof.

If a positive claim is made about something, such as ‘God exists’, the onus is on the person making the claim to support it.

Atheists, properly speaking, can at most make the negative claim ‘God does not exist’. Asking that this claim be supported is to engage in the black swan fallacy - one does not ordinarily attempt to prove a negative (except perhaps definitionally).

But the position of the great majority of atheists isn’t ‘God does not exist’, but ‘I do not believe that God exists’, a positive claim that can be demonstrated, but likely not proved.

Boru