Does a negative claimant have a burden of proof?
I have often heard it said that the burden of proof is on the positive claimant but not on the one making a negative claim. A person claiming, "God exists" has a burden of proof but not a person claiming, "God does not exist." If I assert, "Object A does not exist" then this assertion implies a weaker assertion that is a positive claim. Namely, "There exists at least one universe in which Object A does not exist." Since the latter claim is a positive assertion then the burden of proof follows.
All claims of nonexistence can be reformulated into a claim of existence using the trick, "There exists at least one universe in which...." Thus the burden of proof falls to claims of nonexistence, right?
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Ryan S. answered • 03/26/19
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Cool argument! I believe that you're right that any so called "negative claim" can be translated into a positive one, and so if the burden of proof is on those making positive claims, then the burden of proof is also on those making negative ones because these claims can be translated into positive claims. This is probably the right result because it's not at all clear why those who deny God's existence are any less burdened by the need to offer support or reasons for their belief. The thesis that God exists and the thesis that he doesn't are both question-begging until some argument or justification is offered, so theists and atheists are equally under a burden to show that their belief is justified or is something that others should embrace.
I've seen this claim made before too, but I've never seen anyone explain what they mean when they say that someone "has the burden of proof." This presumably means that someone has to offer proof or support for their belief/position, but in what sense do they have to do this? I presume that they "must" do this in the sense that they must do this in order to show that their belief is correct, or justified, or something that people should embrace. If this is what they mean, however, then we can see why those who make negative claims are just as much under a burden of proof as those who make positive claims--the mere negativity of their claims does not automatically render these claims correct or justified or something that people should embrace. For that we need argumentation/justification/evidence backing those claims.
Edwin M.
These arguments all assume without question the premise that the name "God" (capitalized, not "god" with small "g") is a meaningful word or name. Do you have any proof for this positive assertion? It seems that we would need proof of that in order that the word or name "God" would have more significance than meaningless "Zib" or "Wup".
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09/06/21
Ryan S.
Yes, my answer did assume that the word "God" is meaningful instead of a meaningless word like "Zib" or "Wup." Yet I'm not sure how to answer your demand for proof that it means something other than by supplying a meaning for the word or pointing to meanings that others use. I use the word "God" in the way that I assume most philosophers use it: it means "the perfect being," where being perfect is a matter of having perfect-making features such as omnipotence, omniscience, and complete goodness along with no defects, flaws, or imperfections. St. Anselm famously defined "God" to mean "that than which nothing greater can be conceived," which is perhaps just another way of defining "God" to mean "the perfect being." Other people might mean something else. Perhaps some people mean "the supernatural being that created the universe" or "the real being that corresponds to the character from the Bible" or "the benevolent spirit that created the universe and lives in Heaven" or whatever. Rather than thinking that people need to prove what the word "God" means (which might be an illegitimate demand since there may not be a single, correct meaning to the word that one could prove by, say, looking it up in a dictionary), you should start thinking that you simply need to ask people what they mean by the word since different people are probably operating with different concepts of God. You can be sure, however, that people mean something when they use the word "God"--they aren't operating with a meaningless word like "Zib" or "Wup". And this holds true regardless of whether you're dealing with someone who affirms God's existence or rejects it, since they surely have an idea of something in mind when they affirm, or deny, that it exists.
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09/12/21
Edwin M.
Thank you for that reply, Ryan. I think that we are only able to think of things that people would call 'imperfect beings', and not anything people would call "the perfect being". Now it seems that if we can't think of anything that a row of alphabet letters could refer to, then what we have is something just like "Zib" and "Wup", for those are also rows of alphabet letters that we can't think of anything they could refer to. So it seems to me that we'd have to say that "the perfect being" is just like "Zib" and "Wup" because like "Zib" and "Wup", we can't think of anything that the row of letters "the perfect being" could refer to. It's the same for Anselm's row of letters "that than which nothing greater can be conceived". I really can't think of anything for that to refer to either, can you? I'm just saying that if the row of letters "God" is a row of letters that nobody can think of anything it could refer to, then that puts it in the same category as "Zib", "Wup", "the perfect being", "the supernatural being that created the universe", and Anselm's definition. Can you explain and categorize the different types of rows of letters which no one is able to think of anything they could refer to? It seem that you would need to show "God" to be something more than just a row of letters which nobody can think of anything it could refer to.
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09/15/21
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Sorita D.
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