Bertrand Russell and his tea pot analology

I am not sure if it counts as a fallacy, but there is a key weakness in his argument.  If a man with a telescope spots a celestial teapot, a blind man cannot argue because he personally cannot ever see the teapot that there isn't a teapot because the teapot is unlikely. 

The logical problem is the assumption that people's sensory abilities as regard objects are equal (they aren't).  If detecting divinities depends upon a sensory ability that only some people have and all those possessing that ability are Theists, we could conclude the existence of divinities proven even if the majority of people lack that ability. 

Even if most people are blind, the blind person still cannot argue that what the sighted person sees does not exist.

The problem with this analogy is that blind people would still have means to know the teapot exists, the same way we have means to know dark matter exists despite being unable to see it, through indirect means like, say, a camera that translates light into sound.

We haven’t found such a method to (dis)prove the existence of deities, so we have no way to distinguish between sensing and misinterpreting another feeling or hallucinating (or if written, lying).

You are taking the analogy literally there.  The point is that those who have less ability to perceive things (for whatever reason) cannot argue that the things that those with greater ability to perceive things don't exist based on solely *their* inability to perceive them.  Your ability to come up with a technological fix for blindness simply ruins the analogy, but it does not change anything about the logical problem.

My point is very much that we don't have a means of telling if the other person is lying if we personally lack the ability to perceive those things themselves.  In order to declare that other people believe in false gods we need to prove that we would actually be able to see said gods if they existed.  If there aren't however any gods, how can we possibly prove to anyone that we would be able to sense them if they existed?

Aliens are a good start.  Maybe we could start with them? If we could prove the existence of intelligent aliens without said aliens having actually introduced themselves in the flesh, maybe that would qualify us to be Atheists?  So long as we have not accomplished this task, I feel we are unqualified to dismiss the existence of gods.

Again, you've stunningly missed the point and even contradicted yourself.

First of all the teleological instinct to seek out and misidentify or associate random phenomena with a God/Creator/Source is a proven combo of cognitive biases (pareidolia, HAAD) based on primitive instincts adapted for other purposes. ( See Heuristics on religion by Dr. Matt McCormick, The Evolution of Misbelief by Dennett and McKay,The Neuroscience of Belief, Dr. Andy Thompson, etc., and a thousand other peer-reviewed scientific papers where this is the consensus of countless neuroscientists.

The God Hypothesis has been falsified countless times or at least shown to be inelegant, clumsy and at best thoroughly unnecessary in practically every discipline or empirical methodology known to man.

The Christian cosmology or teleological theology of a supreme creator controller is a false, irreplecable proposition with zero empirical evidence or scientific support. But still, that is not the point of Russell’s analogy.

Russell’s analogy is devised to attack the constructs, conditions, and circular defenses that make that Christian view as ridiculous or impossible to falsify every bit as much as Russell’s Tea Pot analogy. The function of a great analogy is to amplify the flaws or idiosyncrasies of an original claim or narrative.

The Christian God hypothesis and Russell’s analogy are equally ridiculous and that is the entire point. The Christian view of God with its wildly impossible theology is as equally improbable and ludicrous as Russell’s analogy. It’s not the illogical conclusion of a Godhead that is at issue, but it’s the woo woo construction and built in defenses of it that make it a false epistemology.

to Mchasewalker :

I understood your post.

Were you responding to me?

Yes, you begin by explaining Russell’s analogy correctly, but then you shift and pronounce it as unfair because the search for God and creation is genuine and natural to humanity, whereas the belief of a ceramic teapot orbiting the space between Earth and Mars is silly. Which is not what Russell’s analogy is arguing. So it’s a bit of a red herring. 

He was not claiming that the Christian God is comparable to a ceramic teapot, but merely the strenuous dogma, belief, defenses, and biases protecting their imagined existences is analogous.

Perhaps it is best to clarify what the Christians’ claim about their deity:

Basically he is an invisible inexplicable supernatural spiritual force operating and preexisting before and after the SpaceTime and the material universe while still supremely capable of interacting undetected and beyond the Laws of Physics within the Space Time continuum and personally willing to intervene at will through miracles, prayers and selected representatives. Oh, and yeah, that force and presence can only be perceived by the faithful. How convenient! 

Russell’s analogy makes no such claim about the teleological connection to his teapot, but merely parodies the belief that it is there and the means for falsifying it, or even observing it, just as it is with the Christian God, has been rendered impossible by its own selective dogma. 

I might also add that cosmologists and neuroscientists have come a long way from Russell’s time to falsifying the God Hypothesis and the Christian cosmological, theological, teleological and moral Arguments as proof of existence.

Thanks for the response. It seems you were triggered by the question and went off the rails a bit by even pointing out my spelling errors, which in itself is a type of deflection from the discussion. Note, in the original question I did not take any position on Russell's argument. But to say that Russell's position "is a strong analogy and has been widely affirmed and cited by distinguished philosophers, scientists, and world-class thinkers for decades," although true, is not the whole story (selection bias on your part I am afraid). The teapot analogy has, in fact, been critiqued by many writers and thinkers. As one author writes, it is "a straw man argument extrapolated from an inapt analogy." [source]

One may also read Philosopher Brian Garvey's response to Russell in his article "Absence of Evidence, Evidence of Absence, and the Atheist’s Teapot"  which can be read here.

He writes that the: "analogy fails, for the person who denies such a teapot can agree with the person who affirms it regarding every other feature of the world, which is not the case with the atheist vis-a-vis the theist. The atheist is committed to there being an alternative explanation of why the universe exists and is the way it is. Moreover, the analogy relies on assumptions about the prior plausibility of atheism. Hence, the teapot argument fails."

Why, I ask, does Russell only refer to a "Christian God" in his statement and that based on his critique of Christianity he embraces atheism when they are other religious world views out there that are far different than Christianity? 

Russell's position is a strawman replete with weak analogies and a very narrow understanding of anything outside the Judeo-Christian worldview.  

Hi Shawn,

Russell probably chose the Abrahamic God because it's the most popular one, but no matter what the belief system of all major religions, a "god" is necessary and core to its function.

It's pretty clean-cut really - you either believe in a god, or you don't (or you can't make a decision). Making another subset, you could class that god as either personal or non-personal (deism). 

Indeed, Mchasewalker well put the problem. The discovery of cognitive bias by Leon Festinger way back in my childhood days of the 1950s was a major step forward. Among the the discoveries, he uncovered why one cannot convince a theist he is in error. Great reading. I didn't find a way to rationally talk with a theist until I read both of Peter Gregory Boghossian's books.  

Always dangerous to accuse people of bad spelling, isn't it?
It's McDonald's.

I’m not familiar with analology (sic) or McDonald’s but I’m glad you chimed in with your expertise.

This is not really part of a response to the comments above per se, but I thought I would drop it here for people's consideration. Please do note that I personally do not follow the Christian faith so I am not trying to promote that:

Katharine Tait wrote the following of her father Bertrand Russell in her book "My Father Bertrand Russell": 

“I believe myself that his whole life was a search for God…. Indeed, he had first taken up philosophy in hope of finding proof of the evidence of the existence of God … Somewhere at the back of my father’s mind, at the bottom of his heart, in the depths of his soul [which he did not believe he had] there was an empty space that had once been filled by God, and he never found anything else to put in it”

As I said, it is not really part of my original post, but I thought it was an interesting comment on her part. 

OK, but if this isn't a debate about God, then what's the relevance of that bit?

Isn't this thread about Russell's teapot?