Burden-of-proof

Seriously, when people try to pull that crap, it only makes them look lazy. Not to mention it literally breaks psychological balances and intellectual responsibilities. No. Just no. If I give you reasons for my beliefs, I EXPECT people to give reasons for theirs. If they can't give me any, then I'm not going to bother with it any longer, pet their head and drop the conversation, because that my friends, is NOT how logic works.
Yes, I DO expect you to do your homework. What do I look like, your personal encyclopedia monkey? I'm not going to work my ass off just so you can analyze my beliefs like you have it all figured out.


When you make a claim, you must affirm your assertion. Do not say that it is up to the Christians to prove the atheists wrong. We've already made our arguments, and now it's the atheist's turn. They need to give us reasons to believe that God cannot exist. That is called shifting the burden of proof. It's not a Law of Logic. Logic alone has proved negative claims to be true.
I've heard them pull "Of course you don't have to prove anything, but if you tell others they must believe as you do, then you should be ready to offer up some evidence." Atheists have no exception with this statement.


We had to bear the burden of proof, and we have given our answer. Now it's the atheists turn. We want to hear a conclusion. Do not allow them to shift the burden of proof, that just gives them the opportunity to play the skeptic on any explanations we give and not give an actual answer for their own arguments. This is only a debate technique and is not philosophically adequate. Do not let him shirk his intellectual responsibilties by shifting the burden onto you : he's the one who is making the claim, so he must give his own argument, and let the Christian have a turn to be the skeptic. The atheist must bear his share when it comes to arguments, otherwise, it's inadequete.

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Other Stamps


Awesome literature piece by
'You can't prove a negative'? You can't prove a negative?

This is a claim that has some popularity amongst anti-theists. It sometimes comes up in an atheist vs. theist argument, said by the atheist. The point that they are trying to emphasize is that the burden of proof is on the one making the positive claim, and that the negative claim is not provable (or disprovable) anyway.

It should be noted that they are correct about the positive claim-maker providing evidence or proof, since otherwise I could claim that fairies exist, and if you challenged me to provide evidence or proof, I would not be able to reply with "You can't prove me wrong". But while I am not denying an