러셀의 찻주전자
버트런드 러셀이 제안한 유추
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.
많은 정통주의 신자들은, 그것을 증명하는 것이 독단론자들의 일이기보다는, 이미 받아들여진 독단론을 마치 무신론자들이 반증해야 되는 일인양 말합니다. 물론 이것은 잘못입니다. 만일 내가 지구와 화성 사이에 도자기 찻주전자 하나가 타원형 궤도로 태양 주위를 돌고 있다고 주장하고 이 찻주전자는 너무나 작아서 우리의 가장 뛰어난 망원경조차로도 볼 수 없다고 조심스럽게 덧붙인다면, 아무도 내 주장을 반증하지 못할 것입니다. 하지만 내 주장을 반증할 수 없다는 것으로부터 '이를 의심하는 것은 인간의 이성에 대한 참을 수 없는 억측'이라고 내가 계속해서 말한다면, 헛소리를 한다고 생각되어질 것이 당연합니다. 그러나 만약 이러한 찻주전자의 존재가 오래된 책들에서 확인되고, 매 일요일마다 신성한 진리로서 가르쳐지며, 학교에서 아이들의 정신에 주입된다면, 이 존재를 믿기를 주저하는 것이 별남의 표시가 되어서 현대의 정신과 의사나 옛날의 이단 재판관의 관심을 받고 (당신은 찻주전자를) '의심하는 자'라는 칭호를 얻게 될 것입니다.
「Is there a God? (1952)」
여기에서 태양을 공전하는 찻주전자는 보통 반증이 불가능한 대상(특히 신)을 의미한다. 버트런드 러셀은 이 비유를 통해서 신의 실존에 우호적인 종교를 비판하고자 했으며 '신이 없다는 것을 증명하지 못했으므로 신앙은 잘못된 것이 아니다'라는 말이 허황됨을 보여준다. 있다는 것을 증명해야지 없다는 것이 증명되지 않았다고 믿음을 유지하는 것은 웃긴 일이라는 말이다. 반증이 불가능한 대상에 대한 패러디라는 점에서, 날아다니는 스파게티 괴물이나 내 차고 안의 용, 보이지 않는 분홍 유니콘과 사실상 동일한 개념.
또한 여기서 나오는 것은 '증명책임'의 문제이다. 무엇의 존재 혹은 당위를 설명하고 싶다면, 그것의 존재를 증명하는 것은 존재한다고 주장하는 측에서 증거를 내놓아야 한다는 것이다.(onus probandi) 그리고 이는 현대 법학에서 자신에게 유리한 것은 자신이 입증해야 한다라는 입증책임 분배의 원칙으로 나타났다. 이 때문에 '화성궤도의 찻주전자'이건, '신앙의 대상'이건 그 대상이 존재한다는 것은 존재를 주장하는 사람이 입증해야 한다는 것이 러셀의 찻주전자다.
게임 스텔라리스에 러셀의 찻주전자를 패러디한 이벤트가 있다. 항성에서 정체를 알 수 없는 도자기 주전자가 발견되는데, 도대체 왜 여기에 있는 건지 알 수 없어서 연구를 하게 된다. 만약 정신주의 제국이 연구에 성공할 경우 "이 주전자의 존재는 신의 존재를 증명하는 것이다"라는, 러셀 백작이 뒷목 잡고 쓰러질 듯한 결론을 내린다. 문제는 이벤트에 따라 진짜로 신과 같은 외계의 존재가 보낸 선물이기도 하다는 것.
게임 Oxygen Not Included에도 패러디되었다. 로켓 건설 이후 우주 탐사를 하다보면 이따금씩 우주 한가운데서 뜬금없이 떠다니는 찻주전자를 볼 수 있다. 표기되는 이름 역시 러셀의 찻주전자.
Cell to Singularity 우주 시나리오에서 러셀의 찻주전자가 등장한다.
날아다니는 스파게티 괴물
내 차고 안의 용
보이지 않는 분홍 유니콘
무신론
불가지론
악마의 증명
Ad Hoc
Russell's teapot
Russell's teapot is an analogy, formulated by the philosopher Bertrand Russell (1872–1970), to illustrate that the philosophic burden of proof lies upon a person making empirically unfalsifiable claims, as opposed to shifting the burden of disproof to others.
Russell specifically applied his analogy in the context of religion. He wrote that if he were to assert, without offering proof, that a teapot, too small to be seen by telescopes, orbits the Sun somewhere in space between the Earth and Mars, he could not expect anyone to believe him solely because his assertion could not be proven wrong.
The analogy has been criticised by philosophers Brian Garvey, Peter van Inwagen and Alvin Plantinga as to its validity regarding religion. Russell's teapot has given rise to similar analogies as well as being used in parodies of religion.
Description
In an article titled "Is There a God?" commissioned, but never published, by Illustrated magazine in 1952, Russell wrote:
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.
In 1958, Russell elaborated on the analogy:
I ought to call myself an agnostic; but, for all practical purposes, I am an atheist. I do not think the existence of the Christian God any more probable than the existence of the Gods of Olympus or Valhalla. To take another illustration: nobody can prove that there is not between the Earth and Mars a china teapot revolving in an elliptical orbit, but nobody thinks this sufficiently likely to be taken into account in practice. I think the Christian God just as unlikely.
Analysis
Chemist Peter Atkins said that the point of Russell's teapot is that there is no burden on anyone to disprove assertions. Occam's razor has been interpreted to mean that the simpler theory with fewer assertions (i.e., a universe with no supernatural beings) should be the starting point in the discussion rather than the more complex theory. Responding to the invocation of Russell's "Celestial Teapot" by biologist Richard Dawkins as evidence against religion, an apologia by philosopher Paul Chamberlain contends that such arguments rely on an undue distinction between positive and negative claims. Chamberlain says it is logically erroneous to assert that positive truth claims bear a burden of proof while negative truth claims do not; he says "every truth claim, whether positive or negative, has a burden of proof."
In his books A Devil's Chaplain (2003) and The God Delusion (2006), Dawkins used the teapot as an analogy of an argument against what he termed "agnostic conciliation", a policy of intellectual appeasement that allows for philosophical domains that concern exclusively religious matters. Science has no way of establishing the existence or non-existence of a god. Therefore, according to the agnostic conciliator, because it is a matter of individual taste, belief and disbelief in a supreme being are deserving of equal respect and attention. Dawkins presents the teapot as a reductio ad absurdum of this position: if agnosticism demands giving equal respect to the belief and disbelief in a supreme being, then it must also give equal respect to belief in an orbiting teapot, since the existence of an orbiting teapot is just as plausible scientifically as the existence of a supreme being.
Criticism
Philosopher Brian Garvey argues that the teapot analogy fails with regard to religion because, with the teapot, the believer and non-believer are simply disagreeing about one item in the universe and may hold in common all other beliefs about the universe, which is not true of an atheist and a theist. Garvey argues that it is not a matter of the theist propounding existence of a thing and the atheist simply denying it – each is asserting an alternative explanation of why the cosmos exists and is the way it is. In the words of Garvey, "the atheist is not just denying an existence that the theist affirms – the atheist is in addition committed to the view that the universe is not the way it is because of God. It is either the way it is because of something other than God, or there is no reason it is the way it is."
Philosopher Peter van Inwagen argues that while Russell's teapot is a fine piece of rhetoric, its logical argument form is less than clear, and attempting to make it clear reveals that the teapot argument is very far from cogent. Another philosopher, Alvin Plantinga, states that a falsehood lies at the heart of Russell's argument. Russell's argument assumes that there is no evidence against the teapot, but Plantinga disagrees:
Clearly we have a great deal of evidence against teapotism. For example, as far as we know, the only way a teapot could have gotten into orbit around the sun would be if some country with sufficiently developed space-shot capabilities had shot this pot into orbit. No country with such capabilities is sufficiently frivolous to waste its resources by trying to send a teapot into orbit. Furthermore, if some country had done so, it would have been all over the news; we would certainly have heard about it. But we haven't. And so on. There is plenty of evidence against teapotism.
The literary critic James Wood, without himself believing in God, says that belief in God "is a good deal more reasonable than belief in a teapot" because God is a "grand and big idea" which "is not analogically disproved by reference to celestial teapots or vacuum cleaners, which lack the necessary bigness and grandeur" and "because God cannot be reified, cannot be turned into a mere thing".
One counter-argument, advanced by philosopher Eric Reitan, is that belief in God is different from belief in a teapot, because teapots are physical and therefore in principle verifiable, and that given what we know about the physical world, we have no good reason to think that belief in Russell's teapot is justified and at least some reason to think it not.
Similar analogies
Other thinkers have posited non-disprovable analogies, such as J. B. Bury in his 1913 book, History of Freedom of Thought. He wrote:
Some people speak as if we were not justified in rejecting a theological doctrine unless we can prove it false. But the burden of proof does not lie upon the rejecter.... If you were told that in a certain planet revolving around Sirius there is a race of donkeys who speak the English language and spend their time in discussing eugenics, you could not disprove the statement, but would it, on that account, have any claim to be believed? Some minds would be prepared to accept it, if it were reiterated often enough, through the potent force of suggestion.
Astronomer Carl Sagan in his 1995 book The Demon-Haunted World offered a similar non-disprovable analogy called the Dragon in the Garage as an example of sceptical thinking. If Sagan claimed there was a dragon in his garage, one would wish to verify it for yourself but if Sagan's dragon was impossible to detect, he said:
Now, what's the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all? If there's no way to disprove my contention, no conceivable experiment that would count against it, what does it mean to say that my dragon exists?
Influence in parodies of religion
The concept of Russell's teapot has influenced more explicitly religion-parodying concepts, such as the Invisible Pink Unicorn, as well as the Flying Spaghetti Monster. 1960s musician and psychedelic poet Daevid Allen of the band Gong employed the image of a flying teapot in his Planet Gong Universe and the Flying Teapot album trilogy, and refers to Russell's teapot in his book Gong Dreaming 2: The Histories & Mysteries of Gong from 1969–1975.[citation needed]