Should theists have the burden of proof?

[zippy2006]

Do you think legal procedures are a good way to get at the truth?

It depends on the system. I think they are meant to create justice and to prevent false-positives rather than to get at the truth.

 

[bhsmte]

It depends on the system. I think they are meant to create justice and to prevent false-positives rather than to get at the truth.

A system where evidence has to be presented to support claims and the evidence can be cross examined.

 

[zippy2006]

A system where evidence has to be presented to support claims and the evidence can be cross examined.

It seems that you are derailing the thread. If you think this relates to the burden of proof in any way, then feel free to present a clear argument.

 

[bhsmte]

According to your source, half of the non-religious are theistic.



Buddhists don't necessarily believe in God, but Hindus do.



So at least 85% of the world population believes in God.

But it is artificial to look at world percentages of religions. The burden of proof "falls onto the challenger of the status quo from the perspective of any given social narrative." A society is local, generally covering only a single country. The whole world is not a society in any real sense of the word.

University of Chicago did a study recently on belief in God throughout the world and asked the question how many people were certain of God's existence and how many believed God did not exist. The results, are not as robust towards belief in God as you would believe and unbelief in a God, continues to grow.

Percent of residents who said they were certain of God's existence:

• Japan: 4.3 percent
• East Germany: 7.8 percent
• Sweden: 10.2
• Czech Republic: 11.1
• Denmark: 13.0
• Norway: 14.8
• France: 15.5
• Great Britain: 16.8
• The Netherlands: 21.2
• Austria: 21.4
• Latvia: 21.7
• Hungary: 23.5
• Slovenia: 23.6
• Australia: 24.9
• Switzerland: 25.0
• New Zealand: 26.4
• West Germany: 26.7
• Russia: 30.5
• Spain: 38.4
• Slovakia: 39.2
• Italy: 41.0
• Ireland: 43.2
• Northern Ireland: 45.6
• Portugal: 50.9
• Cyprus: 59.0
• United States: 60.6
• Poland: 62.0
• Israel: 65.5
• Chile: 79.4
• The Philippines: 83.6

Percent indicating atheism:

• East Germany: 52.1
• Czech Republic: 39.9
• France: 23.3
• The Netherlands: 19.7
• Sweden: 19.3
• Latvia: 18.3
• Great Britain: 18.0
• Denmark: 17.9
• Norway: 17.4
• Australia: 15.9
• Hungary: 15.2
• Slovenia: 13.2
• New Zealand: 12.6
• Slovakia: 11.7
• West Germany: 10.3
• Spain: 9.7
• Switzerland: 9.3
• Austria: 9.2
• Japan: 8.7
• Russia: 6.8
• Northern Ireland: 6.6
• Israel: 6.0
• Italy: 5.9
• Portugal: 5.1
• Ireland: 5.0
• Poland: 3.3
• United States: 3.0
• Chile: 1.9
• Cyprus: 1.9
• The Philippines: 0.7

Atheism & Belief in God: Countries Get Ranked

 

[zippy2006]

University of Chicago did a study recently...

It seems that if you move to East Germany or the Czech Republic you may not have the burden of proof.

 

[bhsmte]

It seems that you are derailing the thread. If you think this relates to the burden of proof in any way, then feel free to present a clear argument.

It is directly related to the burden of proof.

 

[bhsmte]

It seems that if you move to East Germany or the Czech Republic you may not have the burden of proof.

Read a little deeper.

 

[zippy2006]

It is directly related to the burden of proof.

You're full of assertions and mighty short on arguments.

 

[bhsmte]

You're full of assertions and mighty short on arguments.

LOL. Presenting evidence to support a positive claim, is all about examining the arguments, for the positive claim. Prosecutors, make a positive claim against a defendant and they have the burden of proof.

I guess, if you have enough people who agree with you though, there is no burden of proof.

 

[zippy2006]

LOL. Presenting evidence to support a positive claim, is all about examining the arguments, for the positive claim. Prosecutors, make a positive claim against a defendant and they have the burden of proof.

Suppose we just ignore for the moment the fact that the prosecution and the defense are involved in positive claims. What effect do you think your statement has on the burden of proof? Do you think that because U.S. courts stipulate that citizens are innocent until proven guilty, it therefore follows that the universal burden of proof works on the same principle of "innocent until proven guilty"? What is your argument? How to you think law courts relate to the organic burden of proof?

 

[bhsmte]

Suppose we just ignore for the moment the fact that the prosecution and the defense are involved in positive claims. What effect do you think your statement has on the burden of proof? Do you think that because U.S. courts stipulate that citizens are innocent until proven guilty, it therefore follows that the universal burden of proof works on the same principle of "innocent until proven guilty"? What is your argument? How to you think law courts relate to the organic burden of proof?

The prosecution brought the charges and the case to court, by making the positive claim of guilt. In burden of proof, you can't simply assume something is true, simply because a lot of people make this assumption, without evidence to establish the assumption is correct. People assume all sorts of things are true. If they state something is true and they can not support this claim with evidence, what does that tell you about the assumption?

If all you need is a majority position and no need to support a claim with evidence, good luck making progress at getting at the truth.

 

[zippy2006]

The prosecution brought the charges and the case to court, by making the positive claim of guilt.

And the defense brings a case of defense to court, by making the positive claim of innocence.

In burden of proof, you can't simply assume something is true, simply because a lot of people make this assumption, without evidence to establish the assumption is correct. People assume all sorts of things are true. If they state something is true and they can not support this claim with evidence, what does that tell you about the assumption?

I'll just quote the atheist with a doctorate in philosophy:

To some extent, what’s rational to believe depends upon what everyone around you believes. A great many of the things that we think are true, we learn from our environment. Our parents, teachers, friends, and people around us give it to us. And we’d be positively irrational if we were to ignore or reject all those sources. They have served us well for lots of things. They’ve been reliable. And we trust them. If you’re going to go against the tide on something that all of those sources believe, then you had better have some really good, compelling reasons. If you are going to conclude that the earth is flat and contradict what everyone around you has so much justification for, then your justification needs to be so good, then the likelihood that it is right needs to be greater than the likelihood that all of them are wrong.​

 

[bhsmte]

And the defense brings a case of defense to court, by making the positive claim of innocence.



I'll just quote the atheist with a doctorate in philosophy:

To some extent, what’s rational to believe depends upon what everyone around you believes. A great many of the things that we think are true, we learn from our environment. Our parents, teachers, friends, and people around us give it to us. And we’d be positively irrational if we were to ignore or reject all those sources. They have served us well for lots of things. They’ve been reliable. And we trust them. If you’re going to go against the tide on something that all of those sources believe, then you had better have some really good, compelling reasons. If you are going to conclude that the earth is flat and contradict what everyone around you has so much justification for, then your justification needs to be so good, then the likelihood that it is right needs to be greater than the likelihood that all of them are wrong.​

What is rational to believe, based on the people around you and the environment you grew up in, does indeed provide social pressure to believe certain things, no question. IMO, I believe there is a lot of social pressure in the United States, to claim a belief in God, because there is a stigma being labeled a non believer and many studies have been done on this very topic, with non believers being viewed by believers, with the same trust level as rapists and criminals.

So yes, there is some rational thought that goes into fitting into the social norms, to be accepted, as no one wants to be viewed in a negative light.

With all this being said, any positive claim of the existence of anything, whether it be aliens or Gods, that can not be supported with credible evidence, is believed for some other reason than evidence. The reasons those people have, may be strong ones for them personally and may be the right reasons to believe for them, but they would have no bearing on actually supporting the claim, as it relates to reality beyond their own personal desires and perceptions.

 

[zippy2006]

What is rational to believe, based on the people around you and the environment you grew up in, does indeed provide social pressure to believe certain things, no question. IMO, I believe there is a lot of social pressure in the United States, to claim a belief in God, because there is a stigma being labeled a non believer and many studies have been done on this very topic, with non believers being viewed by believers, with the same trust level as rapists and criminals.

So yes, there is some rational thought that goes into fitting into the social norms, to be accepted, as no one wants to be viewed in a negative light.

But it goes far beyond wanting to "fit in." As the atheist rightly observes, we are rationally justified in aligning our opinions with those of the society at large.

With all this being said, any positive claim of the existence of anything, whether it be aliens or Gods, that can not be supported with credible evidence, is believed for some other reason than evidence. The reasons those people have, may be strong ones for them personally and may be the right reasons to believe for them, but they would have no bearing on actually supporting the claim, as it relates to reality beyond their own personal desires and perceptions.

But what do you think this has to do with the burden of proof? The burden of proof is by definition on the person who disputes a claim, and the norm for claims is determined by the society in which one resides. I'll quote him again:

The implication of all of this is that for the modern American atheist, there is an enormous burden of proof. The vast majority of people around you believe that there is a God. They think that God is active and present in every facet of their lives. They think there are lots of very good reasons for thinking that there is a God.

So you can’t just ignore all of that background. You can’t just opt to believe otherwise at will and be epistemically inculpable. Even if everyone around you believes something completely mistaken like “The sun orbits the earth,” their believing it, and so many of them believing it, puts an tremendous burden of proof on you if you are going to break ranks and form a contrary opinion.​

 

[cloudyday2]

But it is artificial to look at world percentages of religions. The burden of proof "falls onto the challenger of the status quo from the perspective of any given social narrative." A society is local, generally covering only a single country. The whole world is not a society in any real sense of the word.

I don't think you should include Hinduism in your consensus, because the Hindu concept of a god is so different from Abrahamic God. Many Hindus believe in a cyclical cosmology with no beginning, and they consider their gods to be creatures like everything else in the universe. Of course Hinduism includes a huge variety of beliefs. It isn't a single religion at all.

On your other point that I quoted, I guess I will need to think to see if I agree with you.

 

[KCfromNC]

That's manifestly false. Taken separately, there are over twice as many Muslims, Christians, and Hindus.

How many Hindus believe in the monotheism you claimed earlier as the "consensus" viewpoint

 

[xianghua]

Just dumb luck and natural selection would be my guess.

ok. what if you will find a robot that can replicate itself? do you think that such a robot is best explain by a natural process or a d esign? remember that its have a living traits.

 

[cloudyday2]

ok. what if you will find a robot that can replicate itself? do you think that such a robot is best explain by a natural process or a d esign? remember that its have a living traits.

First of all, we need a definition of "intelligence" that is actually useful. Here is my attempt. Something is "intelligent" if its behavior adapts to a variety of circumstances, and the behavior tends to create results with a common trait (we infer this trait to be the "goal"). The results exhibiting this common trait might be considered "designed" as opposed to "natural". However, everything is relative. The mechanical robot is not that different from a human except for the material of construction. In a way the mechanical robot is a product of natural processes such as evolution, because it was created by humans that were produced by nature.

Hopefully that explains how I see this question of intelligent design.

 

[cloudyday2]

@zippy2006 and anybody else who cares, it seems to me that we should not use consensus to determine who has the burden of proof. As you mentioned there is the world population and there are subgroups with different consensus views. Also there are informed people and uninformed people and misinformed people.

The question of burden of proof has two applications also. The common application is to make one person do all the work in a debate. The more important application is to determine if the body of human knowledge needs to change as a result of the debate's arguments. Most sophisticated topics are understood by only a few elites, but the fact that hoards of ignorant might disagree with the elites should not be a factor in determining humanity's body of knowledge.

So I think the burden of proof should fall on the person with the more complex theory. Even though we might claim that "not believing in gods" is as complex as "believing in gods", I disagree. If we wrote a computer program to simulate the beliefs of a supremely smart atheist, it would be just a little bit shorter than the computer program we would write to simulate a supremely smart theist. The theist's beliefs are more complicated do to the theology. Therefore the theist has the burden of proof IMO. The simpler set of beliefs is preferable if there is no difference in their ability to predict results - particularly when atheists beliefs are simply a subset of theist beliefs.

 

[Uber Genius]

Science attempts to find objective evidence.

If you think the idea of "evidence" is at the complete mercy of interpretation, then you are more of a skeptic than I.

You were doing so well here and then "BAM" strawman. Philo said "But, even evidence is open to the mediation of perception and interpretation."

Do you somehow have direct access to the data of the external world? Descartes was wrong?

Apparently you haven't been to an academic scientific conference.

The scientist passionately fight over the interpretation of the data.

Doesn't mean knowledge doesn't progress, just that we are epistemic agents not computers.

So to review...No one is saying "Evidence" is at the "Complete Mercy of," the perceiver. Just that it goes through perception and interpretation.