Free The GOD Delusion by Unknown

agnostic about
fairies at the bottom of the garden.
    The
spectrum of probabilities works well for TAP (temporary agnosticism in
practice). It is superficially tempting to place PAP (permanent
agnosticism in principle) in the middle of the spectrum, with a 50 per
cent probability of God's existence, but this is not correct. PAP
agnostics aver that we cannot say anything, one way or the other, on
the question of whether or not God exists. The question, for PAP
agnostics, is in principle unanswerable, and they should strictly
refuse to place themselves anywhere on the spectrum of probabilities.
The fact that I cannot know whether your red is the same as my green
doesn't make the probability 50 per cent. The proposition on offer is
too meaningless to be dignified with a probability. Nevertheless, it is
a common error, which we shall meet again, to leap from the premise
that the question of God's existence is in principle unanswerable to
the conclusion that his existence and his non-existence are
equiprobable.
    Another
way to express that error is in terms of the burden of proof, and in
this form it is pleasingly demonstrated by Bertrand Russell's parable
of the celestial teapot. 31
    Many
orthodox people speak as though it were the business of sceptics to
disprove received dogmas rather than of dogmatists to prove them. This
is, of course, a mistake. If I were to suggest that between the Earth
and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an
elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion
provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be
revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on
to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is intolerable
presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly
be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a
teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every
Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation
to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and
entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an
enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time.
    We
would not waste time saying so because nobody, so far as I know,
worships teapots; * but, if pressed, we would not hesitate to declare
our strong belief that there is positively no orbiting teapot. Yet
strictly we should all be teapot agnostics: we
cannot prove, for sure, that there is no celestial teapot. In practice,
we move away from teapot agnosticism towards a-teapotism.
    *
Perhaps I spoke too soon. The Independent on Sunday of
5 June 2005 carried the following item: 'Malaysian officials say
religious sect which built sacred teapot the size of a house has
flouted planning regulations.' See also BBC News at http://news.bbc.co.Uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4692039.stm .
    A
friend, who was brought up a Jew and still observes the sabbath and
other Jewish customs out of loyalty to his heritage, describes himself
as a 'tooth fairy agnostic'. He regards God as no more probable than
the tooth fairy. You can't disprove either hypothesis, and both are
equally improbable. He is an a-theist to exactly the same large extent
that he is an a-fairyist. And agnostic about both, to the same small
extent.
    Russell's
teapot, of course, stands for an infinite number of things whose
existence is conceivable and cannot be disproved. That great American
lawyer Clarence Darrow said, 'I don't believe in
God as I don't believe in Mother Goose.' The journalist Andrew Mueller
is of the opinion that pledging yourself to any particular religion 'is
no more or less weird than choosing to believe that the world is
rhombus-shaped, and borne through the cosmos in the pincers of two
enormous green lobsters called Esmerelda and Keith'. 32 A philosophical favourite is the invisible, intangible, inaudible
unicorn, disproof of which is attempted yearly by the children at Camp
Quest.* A