The God Delusion
by Richard Dawkins · 12 Sep 2006 · 478pp · 142,608 words
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
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, there is a need to bother, because a substantial proportion of the people with whom we share the planet do believe strongly in his existence. Russell’s teapot demonstrates that the ubiquity of belief in God, as compared with belief in celestial teapots, does not shift the burden of proof in logic
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of Gould’s assertion, what, actually, is the justification for it? Why shouldn’t we comment on God, as scientists? And why isn’t Russell’s teapot, or the Flying Spaghetti Monster, equally immune from scientific scepticism? As I shall argue in a moment, a universe with a creative superintendent would be
A Devil's Chaplain: Selected Writings
by Richard Dawkins · 1 Jan 2004 · 460pp · 107,712 words
of strongly held beliefs that are unsupported by evidence: fairies, unicorns, werewolves, any of the infinite set of conceivable and unfalsifiable beliefs epitomized by Bertrand Russell’s hypothetical china teapot orbiting the Sun (see ‘The Great Convergence’, pp. 177–78). The reason organized religion merits outright hostility is that, unlike belief in
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Russell’s teapot, religion is powerful, influential, tax-exempt and systematically passed on to children too young to defend themselves.1 Children are not compelled to spend their
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should be evaluated on their merits. Don’t protect them from scrutiny behind a screen of agnostic tolerance. If religious arguments are actually better than Russell’s teapot, let us hear the case. Otherwise, let those who call themselves agnostic with respect to religion add that they are equally agnostic about orbiting
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) River Out of Eden, (i) Robinson, Heath, (i) Ross, Andrew, (i) Rubber Band Analogy, (i) Ruse, Michael, (i) Rushdie, Salman, (i), (ii)f Russell, Bertrand, (i), (ii) His teapot, (i), (ii) Ryder, Richard, (i)f Sagan, Carl, (i), (ii), (iii) Sahelanthropus, (i) Saltation, (i), 103 (see also Mutation: macromutation) Sanderson, F. W
A Manual for Creating Atheists
by Peter Boghossian · 1 Nov 2013 · 257pp · 77,030 words
a cause. Premise: The universe has a beginning. Conclusion: The universe has a cause. This is a version of the British philosopher Bertrand Russell’s (1872–1970) teapot. Russell claims that there’s a small teapot, undetectable by telescopes, in an elliptical orbit between Earth and Mars. If you can’t disprove
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that such a teapot exists, do you believe it does exist? Personally, I’ve not had as much success with Russell’s teapot as I have with the example here. Perhaps it’s because people can’t wrap their mind around an object that we cannot detect floating
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in space, or because it’s easier to elicit a contradiction with an increasing number of substances found within a contained space. If you find Russell
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’s teapot to be more effective than my example, then use what’s most effective. When one does attempt to provide “evidence” for God’s existence