The Problem of Evil - Common Sense Atheism

Notes 159
burden of proof falls on the state.’’ That is to say, in a criminal court, the
state (or the Crown) bears a burden labeled ‘proof ’ or ‘having to prove
things’, and the defense does not. And this is not because a proposition
of the form ‘‘The accused is guilty as charged’’ is always inherently less
plausible than its denial (that, after all, is often not the case). It is because of
a rule that rests on a moral, not an epistemological, foundation: the court
presumes the accused to be innocent till proved guilty—and, in a trial by
jury, instructs the jurors to presume the same. In our imaginary debate
about the existence of God (in the part of it that figures in these lectures, the
part in which Atheist attempts to turn the agnostics into fellow atheists by
laying the argument from evil before them), the burden labeled ‘proof ’ is
carried by Atheist—and, as is the case with the counsel for the prosecution
in a criminal trial, this is not because the proposition that is the conclusion
of her argument is inherently less plausible than its denial. (Some will say it
is, and some will say it isn’t; whether it is, is irrelevant to where the burden
of proof falls.) Unlike the rules that govern the procedures of a criminal
court, however, the rules that govern our debate are not founded on moral
considerations. The burden of proof, the burden of having to prove things
(or at any rate of having to provide arguments for them), falls on Atheist,
and does not fall on Theist (at this point in the debate), because it is she
and not he whose job it is to change someone’s beliefs.
3. But does ‘agnostic’ not mean ‘someone who does not know whether God
exists’? If we so understand ‘agnostic’, we must understand ‘someone who
does not know whether God exists’ to mean ‘someone who does not profess
to know whether God exists’. (In the most literal sense of the words ‘‘knows
whether’’, someone who knows whether God exists is someone who, if
God exists, knows that God exists, and who, if God does not exist, knows
that God does not exist. In the most literal sense of the words, therefore,
if God exists, no atheist knows whether God exists, and if God does not
exist, no theist knows whether God exists.) A person who does not profess
to know whether God exists is a person who is willing to say (with perfect
sincerity), ‘‘I do not know whether God exists.’’ And anyone who is willing
to say, with perfect sincerity, ‘‘I do not know whether God exists’’ will,
unless that person is involved in some sort of pragmatic contradiction,
neither believe that God exists nor believe that God does not exist. And
anyone who neither believes that God exists nor believes that God does
not exist, should be willing to say—prudential considerations aside—‘‘I
do not know whether God exists.’’ I could present arguments for these
assertions, but I will not, for it will make no difference to my larger
argument whether they are true. Instead of defending them, I will simply
define an ‘agnostic’ as someone who does not believe that—lacks the belief
that—God exists and does not believe that—lacks the belief that—God
does not exist. What I said about pragmatic contradictions and related