Russell's teapot, sometimes called the Celestial Teapot, was an analogy first coined by the philosopher Bertrand Russell (1872–1970), intended to refute the idea that the burden of proof lies upon the sceptic to disprove unfalsifiable claims of religions. Russell's teapot is still occasionally referred to in discussions concerning the existence of God.
In an article entitled "Is There a God?", commissioned, but never published, by Illustrated mag...
more
Russell's teapot, sometimes called the Celestial Teapot, was an analogy first coined by the philosopher Bertrand Russell (1872–1970), intended to refute the idea that the burden of proof lies upon the sceptic to disprove unfalsifiable claims of religions. Russell's teapot is still occasionally referred to in discussions concerning the existence of God.
In an article entitled "Is There a God?", commissioned, but never published, by Illustrated magazine in 1952, Russell wrote:
In his 2003 book A Devil's Chaplain, Richard Dawkins employed the teapot analogy as an argument against what he termed "agnostic conciliation", a policy of intellectual appeasement that allows for philosophical domains that concern exclusively religious matters. One cannot prove a negative, and science has no way of establishing the existence or non-existence of a god. Therefore, according to the agnostic conciliator, because it is a matter of individual taste, belief and disbelief in a supreme being are deserving...
less
