“Prove There Is No God.”

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No. You prove that there is one. It is not the responsibility of an atheist to disprove god. Allow me to advise atheists in a counter-argument strategy to what could seem like a dead end in these kinds of arguments:

I. The Non-Puzzle

When you dispute the existence of god (we’ll speak generally about the Abrahamic religion’s god(s) here), you will so often be confronted by this conundrum:

“There is no God.”

“Prove it.”

Now, there are many variations on this. The more reasoned fellow may say, “Right, I agree…I have to agree, that you can’t prove god exists. [note here that we immediately fall away from the evangelists and creationists here, and others] But there is no proof that god does not exist. So I guess the whole conversation is moot. And we can move on.”

No. The conversation is not moot. We’re not at a standstill. I’m not a fundamental atheist without a leg to stand on, and my imaginary moderate is not a tolerant liberal who’s walking on eggshells so as not to offend.

The imaginary moderate/agnostic is being unreasonable, idiotically demanding and, in the back of their head, wishful.

II. The Teapot

This is where Bertrand Russell comes in with his celestial teapot argument. Russell, a philosopher, mathematician, linguist, and Nobel laureate (the guy Noam Chomsky couldn’t hold a candle to), invented a logistical equation:

1) A teapot orbits the earth.

2) It is too small to be detected by current technologies.

So…

“There is no teapot.”

“You can’t prove there is no teapot.”

“It’s a teapot! You prove there is a teapot.”

Russell adds this:

3) Two thousand years of documentation on the teapot.

Here, the teapot becomes defensible. Dawkins would add (and I believe he does in his God Delusion), that not only is the existence of the teapot defensible, but it would be taboo to attack it. Good point, Dick.

Let’s get back to basics, Dawkins added in for good measure:

“I can’t produce any information that God exists, but you can’t disprove him.”

“No, I can’t disprove god. But I also can’t disprove bigfoot, the tooth fairy, santa claus, or the possibility of a teapot floating in the sky. It’s not my job to prove that god does not exist. It’s your job to prove that he does.”

III. The Matrix

I love to bring up The Matrix in a situation like this. Here’s how you can, too.

“There is no god.”

“You can’t prove that.”

“No, but suppose I told you that there we are all in giant placental tanks, our bodies plugged and our waste drained. We are like cattle, feeding a giant earth filled with robots making up a collective intelligence. We perceive that we are in a dull, scraped-out world where everything sucks. It’s called the Matrix. And we’re fooled into believing that we”re living our own lives, that we have free will, but in reality we are mere cogs in the machine. Everything we see and touch is fake. There was three movies made about this predicament, a comic book, and a collection of cruddy animes too. It’s all there.

“Could you disprove that? Could you prove me wrong? How? You could pinch me, but that’s all included in the package of being plugged in to the matrix. You could get one of your friends to tell me that I’m insane, but that’s merely opinion. If I believed that I was in the matrix, you couldn’t do a damn thing to prove me wrong.”

“But you would be wrong.”

“Prove it.”

“No. It’s obvious we’re not in the matrix. It’s all made up.”

“So is [insert religion here]. There’s no more or less evidence to support or deny that the matrix exists. The matrix could exist. But would you take my word for it? Would you take anyone’s word for it? We don’t need to take anyone’s word on gravity, on bacteria, on animals. It’s right there in front of us.”

“But I have the feeling that god is there.”

“Well I have the feeling that we’re in the matrix. Yeah, it’s not good enough, is it. You could have the feeling that a guy wants to go out with you and be wrong about that, too. So, no. It’s not my responsibility to prove that such a mammoth claim that there is a supernatural deity. It’s your job to prove it. If you can’t, then why do you believe?”

This is called the matrix incumbent. It’s designed to level the playing field, by showing that there is no difference between either god or the matrix. both are supernatural and unprovable. Both are pretty far-fetched. Both demand evidence. One has a couple of thousand years behind it. The other has a couple of horrible films behind it. But there is no difference in the amount of evidence. It’s a modernization of the teapot argument and an unraveling of Dick Dawkins’ refinements thereof. It’s like the shaggy dog teapot, and it boils down to this:

“Prove there is no god.”

“Okay, but first, I want you to prove that we’re not in the matrix.”

While they search the absurdity of your comment for meaning, then slowly realize that you’ve simply thrown their idiotic challenge back in their face, you should take the time to hope that this might have helped them think to themself: “Hey, maybe I shouldn’t be asking atheists to prove there is no god. Maybe it should be me who proves there is one.”

Please start thinking that believers! The sooner you do, the sooner you’ll begin that journey towards the inevitable: a careful climb down the ladder right next to that leap of faith you took.

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Filed under Atheism, Bertrand Russell, Linguistic Study, Richard Dawkins, The Atheist Movement, The Matrix