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It's up to the person who advances a thesis to prove it.

From Wikidebates
This argument is used in the debate : Does God exist?.
This argument is a justification of : No evidence of a god.
This argument is an objection to : In this world... Biological ....
Keywords: God .

Summary 

The notion of God is gratuitous; there are no facts to support the existence of an invisible, conscious, good and all-powerful Being who takes an interest in human beings. The burden of proof lies with believers, who put forward a hypothesis and must provide facts to back it up.

Quotes 

« Many orthodox people talk as if it were the job of skeptics to disprove dogmas rather than those who support them to prove them. This is obviously a mistake. If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars lies a porcelain teapot in elliptical orbit around the Sun, no one would be able to prove the contrary, provided I took the precaution of pointing out that the teapot is too small to be detected by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to assert that, since my proposition cannot be disproved, it is intolerable for human reason to doubt it, I would immediately be considered a lunatic. However, if the existence of this teapot were described in ancient books, taught as a sacred truth every Sunday and inculcated in children at school, then any hesitation to believe in its existence would become a sign of eccentricity and would earn the skeptic the care of a psychiatrist in an enlightened age, or of the Inquisitor in more ancient times. »

Bertrand Russell, « Is There a God? », Illustrated Magazine, 1952

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