Shifting the Burden of Proof
Ayodhya in India is considered to be the birthplace of Lord Rama, and it is considered to be one of the Avatars of Lord Vishnu. There was a temple at a place in Ayodhya believed to be the birthplace of Rama. However, the Mughals are alleged to have demolished the temple and built a Mosque at the same place, popularly called Babari Masjid. A big political movement in India was started by the Indian Right Wing political party Bharatiya Janata Party, and their supporters demolished the mosque in 1992 during a political rally. While devout Hindus consider Ram a historical figure, others consider Ram a mythological figure as there is no evidence of his birth at Ayodhya.
So, when the advocate in the court asked one of the political leaders, “How does he know that Lord Ram was born at the place in Ayodhya?” Instead of answering the question, he asked back the advocate, “Was he born in Pakistan? Karachi or Lahore?” Then he claims that since millions of Hindus believe that Lord Ram was born at that place in Ayudhya, so it must be true. However, such arguments are not valid since the popular appeal fallacy has already been discussed. Truth is objective and not a matter of faith or belief.
One of the clever ways to prove something is to ask others to disapprove of the theory by shifting the burden of proof on them. The logic goes like this.
- A makes a claim X without any basis, which is questioned by B.
- B asks him to prove that claim X is false.
- When B can’t disapprove claim X, A asserts that his claim X is proven to be right.
Some examples of such fallacies can be illustrated as follows:-
- How do you know God does not exist? Can you prove that God does not exist?
- How do you know that Mr X did not commit the crime? Was he there with you?
- Scientists say that God did not create the world, but it was created by a Big Bang. Let them prove what existed before the Big Bang and why did Big Bang happened.
The logic here is that if you can disapprove of the antithesis, then my thesis is correct. If you can’t prove that God does not exist, it means that God exist by default, and we don’t have to provide any proof for it. Now since science can’t have answers to all questions, it means that anything can be justified because science can’t disapprove their theory.
Bertrand Russell, in an unpublished 1952 article on the existence of God, described an analogy designed to show the burden of proof regarding the existence of God in terms of a teapot orbiting around the sun. This has come to be known as Russell’s teapot or the Celestial teapot analogy. Russell puts the analogy as follows:
“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 around 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 in believing in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attention of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time.” [1]
Shifting the burden of proof is, therefore, fallacious because the one who makes the claim has to provide the proof and not otherwise. Imagine that a murder has taken place in a town, and every citizen has to provide proof of his innocence or else be hanged for murder. Hence, in jurisprudence, every person is treated as innocent till proven guilty. Therefore, every hypothesis is considered to be false unless proven beyond reasonable doubt.
Reference
[1] “Is There a God?”, by Bertrand Russell, commissioned but not published-by Illustrated Magazine in 1952, URL https://www.cfpf.org.uk/articles/religion/br/br_god.html
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