richard_dawkins_-_the_god_delusion

52 T H E G O D D E L U S I O N
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-teapotisin.
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
* 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.