The Universal Negative and The Burden of Proof

By: Omar Rushlive L. Arellano

When atheists begin with the propositions, “God does not exist” and “Christianity is false,” I ask them why they believe what they believe. And I notice that instead of giving a direct answer, they commit the fallacy of shifting the burden of proof: by demanding that I provide evidence that God exists. I respond by returning the burden back to where it belongs (to them), only to receive the rebuttal that “a universal negative” could not be proven, or that the burden of proof is always on theists because “atheism is the default position.” It seems to me that they think the game is rigged in their favor, and I wonder why they have this unreasonable expectation.

Two common answers are given when pressed about this assumption. Some of them define atheism merely as a lack of belief, thinking that it exempts them from having to prove anything. Still, others affirm that God does not exist unless proven otherwise. They insist that their brand of atheism is the default position: that if we cannot show any evidence that God exists, it automatically proves that God does not exist. In one discussion with an aggressive commenter, he argued that I could not disprove the existence of the flying red Santa Claus. I accepted the challenge to disprove it by saying that reindeers and sleighs cannot fly by nature. Then he provided an imaginary support by saying that the reindeers are “special” since they were genetically modified to make them fly, and that the sleigh was made of “Clausite,” a made-up substance that makes the sleigh suitable for flight. He pointed to the difficulty in disproving the existence of Santa since he can just invent any explanation out of thin air. And he thinks the same principle applies to disproving the existence of God.

This conception is consistent with serious atheist thinkers such as Bertrand Russell, who penned these words in Is There a God?:

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.¹

In context, Russell alleges the inconsistency in judging human beings to be evil when they murder, but in deeming God to be loving and kind even when he takes away human life. Subsequently, he talks about what he labels as a “modernist reinterpretation,” that God is not all-powerful but is doing His best despite great trials. He remarks that this view is something that could not be disproven. With this, he goes on to say that “orthodox people” are mistaken in thinking that it is in the business of skeptics to disprove God. The quote provided above is his support for this. After which, he makes a rhetorical coup de grace:

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.²

Here, Russell makes it seem that believers question-beggingly use the Bible to prove the Bible in the absence of any substantial evidence at their disposal.

Another example is from Antony Flew when he was still not believing in God. In this example, he cited a parable from John Wisdom. He narrates that there were two explorers that were clearing a jungle, and one of them says that “Some gardener must tend this plot.” The other disagrees and says that “There is no gardener.” So they set up mechanisms that will make them know if there’s really a gardener. At first, they put up tents and watched, but no gardener ever came. So the first gardener says, “But perhaps he is an invisible gardener.” So they set up a barbed-wire fence that they electrified, and they included bloodhounds to make sure that the trace of this invisible gardener would be detected. But there were no signs that there was ever an intruder. No shrieks that would indicate an electrocution ever happened. The bloodhounds never made any commotion at all. So the explorer said, “But there is a gardener, invisible, intangible, insensible to electric shocks, a gardener who has no scent and makes no sound, a gardener who comes secretly to look after the garden which he loves.” In response, the skeptical explorer exclaimed, “But what remains of your original assertion? Just how does what you call an invisible, intangible, eternally elusive gardener differ from an imaginary gardener or even from no gardener at all?”³ Flew observes that the believing explorer was moving the goalposts over and over and that the hypothesis died “by a thousand qualifications.”⁴

Is there any reason to take these arguments seriously? Should our religious beliefs be treated this way? To answer these, it must be determined if a universal negative could be proven and if believers are the only ones with the burden of proof. A synthesis of these insights should demonstrate whether Russell and Flew are correct in their assertions.

Universal Negative

A negative affirms that A is not the case. So a positive claim is to say that A is the case. A universal negative is a general statement denying universals. For example, “There are no dogs” is a universal statement that does not refer to the nonexistence of a particular dog, but to all dogs universally.

Kevin Saunders in The Mythic Difficulty in Proving a Negative demonstrates with several examples that the inherent difficulty in proving a negative is a “folklore”:⁵

“(1) January 9, 1947 fell on a Tuesday.

and

(2) January 9, 1947 did not fall on a Tuesday.”⁶

In this first example, Saunders comments that neither proposition is more difficult to prove because the methods for proving either are the same: by consulting a 1947 calendar or by counting it from a known date.

Here is another example:

“(3) The plaintiff is sane.

and

(4) The plaintiff is not sane.”⁷

He again comments that neither proposition is more difficult to prove, and says that the existence of a negative per se does not make the proposition more difficult to prove than the other.

This next example shows that there are instances where negatives are harder to prove:

“(5) There was a Hattiesburg policeman in the Kress store when Ms. Adickes entered the store on August 14, 1984.

And

(6) There was not a Hattiesburg policeman in the Kress store when Ms. Adickes entered the store on August 14, 1984.”⁸

Saunders considers this to be difficult since the positive only requires us to produce the policeman in question, but the negative would require knowing the whereabouts of all policemen from the Hattiesburg force. But this does not prove anything about negatives being inherently difficult to prove, since even positive propositions such as the following could be difficult to prove as well:

“(7) Every available job is beyond the capability of the plaintiff.

and

(8) Not every available job is beyond the capability of the plaintiff.”⁹

He comments that (8) just requires that we find a job that the plaintiff cannot do, but (7) would require that we check every available job out there.

Based on these, Saunders concludes that there is nothing inherent in negative propositions that makes them difficult to prove. But he admits that a universally quantified statement is more difficult to prove.¹⁰ Nevertheless, this concession that universal negatives are more difficult to prove is not a concession that it could never be done. In Epistemic Paradoxes, Roy Sorensen argues that the inability to prove a universal negative is deemed a “logical myth”:¹¹

The logical myth that “You cannot prove a universal negative” is itself a universal negative. So it implies its own unprovability. This implication of unprovability is correct but only because the principle is false. For instance, exhaustive inspection proves the universal negative ‘No adverbs appear in this sentence’. A reductio ad absurdum proves the universal negative ‘There is no largest prime number’.¹²

Furthermore, William Lane Craig argues that a universal negative such as God’s nonexistence can be proven by showing that the concept of God per se is self-contradictory.¹³ An example I could think of is if someone sufficiently shows that God’s grace and justice are mutually exclusive, then he can disprove that a God who is both gracious and just could exist. Well-thought attempts by atheists have yet to be seen. But they resort to saying that no one could prove a universal negative when asked for evidence. Indeed, Craig rightly identifies their unwitting admission that proving atheism is an impossibility.

The Burden of Proof

Since a universal negative can be proven, the fact remains that atheists cannot escape their burden of proof. The phrase “burden of proof” or onus probandi, is described by James Thayer in different ways for the purpose of removing ambiguities that the term creates. In legal proceedings, Thayer mentions that the phrase is used in two ways:

(1) To indicate the duty of bringing forward argument or evidence in support of a proposition, whether at the beginning or later. (2) To mark that of establishing a proposition as against all counter-argument and evidence.¹⁴.

Thayer cites Bishop Whately’s Elements of Rhetoric to show that the burden of proof lies on the person who would dispute in favor of their own proposition as a practice in ordinary speech.¹⁵ He comments that in the practice of law, the question of who has the burden of proof depends on who loses the trial if the evidence is no longer given. Furthermore, he explains that in every lawsuit, it is the plaintiff who must present his case, and if he does nothing to present his case, then he fails. So in this scenario, the plaintiff has the burden of proof for his disputed proposition. But if he successfully presents a prima facie case¹⁶, then the defendant who does not do anything about it will be declared guilty. Thus, the burden now shifts to the defendant. This demonstrates that the burden also shifts and does not stay only on one side of the debate.

Another example Thayer provides is the case of adultery. He comments that it is the burden of the state to prove that the defendant is guilty beyond reasonable doubt, but if the defendant appeals to “insanity” or “alibi,” then he has the burden to establish the alibi.¹⁷ He further shows that the burden also shifts if a person makes a new proposition in the proceedings.¹⁸

Although the examples here may be different and there is a general assumption in the legal system that the plaintiff, the actor has the duty of proving their accusation, and that the defendant, the reus, has “the negative function of baffling the plaintiff,”¹⁹ what I find consistent is that the burden of proof could shift, and there is a general notion that those who dispute or put forward a proposition have the burden of proof.

Analysis of Russell and Flew

Applying the understanding of the universal negative and the burden of proof on the analogies presented, it is reasonable to expect that the burden of proof is on the one who claims that there is an “invisible gardener” or a “china teapot.” Those who doubt their proposition would only have the burden on them if the gardenerist or the teapotist establishes a prima facie case. This assumes, however, that their adversaries do not believe the proposition presented and have not advanced a negative proposition that they support.

Furthermore, if a negative version of the proposition is presented, such as “there are no china teapots revolving between the Earth and Mars,” then it is reasonable to expect that the claim be proven. For example, Alvin Plantinga takes Russell’s idea that absence of evidence is sufficient evidence of absence, which is that it is enough to support a-teapotism. He says that Russell appears to imply that there is no need for positive evidence against teapotism to be justified in a-teapotism, which is taken as parallel with arguments against theism.

Plantinga rebuts this by showing 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. So if, à la Russell, theism is like teapotism, the atheist, to be justified, would (like the a-teapotist) have to have powerful evidence against theism.²⁰

As with Flew’s example about the invisible gardener, it is already disproven by the explorer that proposed the use of electric fences and bloodhounds. The other explorer who continues to move the goalpost does nothing to disprove the prima facie case made against him, so the burden stays on him. The evidence answers the original claim made. And when he moves the goal post he puts forward a new proposition which he needs to prove.

In the same way, when the atheist interlocutor tells me that there are special reindeers that were genetically modified to make them able to fly, and that the sleigh was made of “Clausite,” a made-up substance that makes the sleigh suitable for flight, that is a claim different from the original which I had disproven. Since a new proposition is put forward, then the burden is on the atheist to prove that there are indeed such reindeers and such sleighs.

The difference between these analogies and God’s existence is that Christians are consistent in their claims about God being the highest conceivable being. We don’t move the goalpost about God’s nature. Though it may be different depending on the type of Christian theist you speak to (such as classical theists or theistic personalists), the attributes of God are generally the same and His effects are the same. So there’s a consistency, and we can see that the existence of God and His attributes are proven through various arguments for the existence of God. At present, there is a prima facie case made where theism is shown to be the best explanation among alternatives. For example, it is generally shown that: (i) the universe being self-caused²¹, (ii) abstract objects caused the universe²², (iii) the universe being eternal²³, are not good alternative explanations, but God’s existence as a personal, eternal first cause— who is also spaceless, immaterial, and unimaginably powerful — fits the criteria for being a cause that transcends the existence of time, space, and matter.²⁴

So if the atheist does not bear their burden in disproving our case or showing that the proposition they put forward is correct, then theists will win in this debate.

Conclusion

Both a negative and a universal negative can be proven, and that the burden of proof falls on anyone who puts forward a proposition. The implication of this is that if the atheist is not a lacktheist but someone who believes that “God does not exist,” then they have a burden of proof that they need to establish.

References:

1. This was commissioned, but not published by Illustrated, a London Magazine. Russell, Bertrand. “Is There a God? (1952).” In Slater, John G. (ed.). The Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell, Vol. 11: Last Philosophical Testament, 1943–68 (PDF). Routledge. pp. 547–548. ISBN 9780415094092. Archived (PDF) from the original on 20 January 2016. Retrieved 1 December 2013. https://web.archive.org/web/20160120125330/http://russell.mcmaster.ca/cpbr11p69.pdf
2. Russell, Is There a God?, 548.
3. Hick, John, Classical and Contemporary Readings in the Philosophy of Religion (London: Prentice Hall, 1965), 440.
4. Hick, Classical and Contemporary Readings, 441.
5. Saunders, Kevin, The Mythic Difficulty in Proving a Negative, 15 Seton Hall L. Rev. 276 (1984–1985). 277. https://scholarship.shu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2599&context=shlr.
6. Saunders, The Mythic Difficulty, 277–278.
7. Ibid., 278.
8. Ibid., 278–279.
9. Ibid., 279.
10. Ibid., 288.
11. Roy Sorensen, “Epistemic Paradoxes,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, entry posted March 21, 2022, https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2022/entries/epistemic-paradoxes/, (accessed July 10, 2024).
12. Ibid.
13. Craig, William Lane, On Guard (CO: David Cook, 2010), 149.
14. James Thayer, “The Burden of Proof,” Harvard Law Review, Vol. 4, №2 (1890), 45–70.
15. Thayer, The Burden of Proof, 49.
16. Deborah England, “What Is a Prima Facie Case?” Criminal Defense Lawyer, entry posted January 5, 2021, https://www.criminaldefenselawyer.com/resources/criminal-defense/criminal-defense-case/what-does-a-prima-facie-case-mean, (accessed July 10, 2024). “A party with the burden of proof presents a prima facie case when the party presents enough evidence to support a verdict in the party’s favor, assuming the opposing party does not rebut or disprove it. This means that the party with the burden of proof has shown that he or she can meet that burden as to each element of his or her case. Where a party with the burden of proof cannot present a prima facie case, the opposing party may move for a verdict in the opposing party’s favor because the other party cannot possibly win.”
17. Thayer, The Burden of Proof, 55.
18. Ibid., 61.
19. Ibid., 45.
20. Gary Gutting, “Is Atheism Irrational?,” The New York Times, entry posted February 9, 2014, https://archive.nytimes.com/opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/02/09/is-atheism-irrational/, (accessed July 10, 2024).
21. Craig, William Lane, On Guard (CO: David Cook, 2010), 99.
22. Craig, On Guard, 59.
23. Ibid., 78–98.
24. Ibid., 99.