The burden of proof is the responsibility to provide evidence for a claim. It rests on the person or persons making the claim.
In keeping with the theme of my blog, I'm talking about the existence of god. The existence of God has been claimed in thousands of different ways and each god claim has had the same amount of evidence. None of them have met the burden of faith.
Burden:
Faith is not useful when it comes to meeting one's burden of proof. As a matter of fact, faith is exactly not meeting the burden of proof and still believing. This is passed off as virtuous as a way of replacing legitimacy.
It is often argued that the burden of proof does not need to be met due to faith, or that the burden is met by way of faith. This is utter nonsense, even just as the indemonstrability negates aforementioned accomplishment.
This leaves the faithful believer's shoulders weighing heavy. Try this burden, try it without a leg to stand on. You would be flattened.
The Shift:
As soon an honest person realizes they can't meet their burden of proof, they abandon their no longer held belief. However, many are not honest and will instead try to trick people by shifting the burden of proof onto the person waiting for proof before acceptance. This is appropriately considered a logical fallacy.
Essentially, what the person committing to fallacy does is say, "I am right by default, and you must prove me wrong." Theists using this illogic must portray all atheists as gnostic, meaning the atheist believes positively that there are no gods, in order to accomplish the appearance of not being accountable. In other words, this fallacy also requires another fallacy, the strawman, in order to be successful. This level of dishonesty disgusts me.
And we know it's dishonest because the theist will prove his/herself rational enough when they dismiss other claims that are defended with the exact same logic. For example, can you prove there isn't an invisible pink unicorn standing right behind you? No, but even the theist will admit that this doesn't justify belief.
More fallacies:
I have often encountered a barrage of fallacies that follow my pointing out the above logical flaws. These fallacies are usually, special pleading, a solipsistic cop-out, and an ad hominem fallacy.
For special pleading, they'll assert that God is exempt from the rule with little explanation. This is ad hoc, meaning that it is logical inconsistent and, therefore, logically impermissable.
The solipsistic cop-out here is asserting that logic, somehow, does not apply to God because he is "above logic" or "he can violate logic because he invented it." This is also ad hoc and can immediately be dismissed.
The ad hominem fallacy is simply an irrelevant attack on a person's character. It is usually used solely to cop-out.
Conclusion:
When an inability to meet one's burden of proof is mixed with dishonesty, all you'll get are further assertions that can't be backed. In other words, the desperate grasping of straws only further justifies the rejection of their claims.
Thank you for reading! Feel free to comment, share, and subscribe!
