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Originally Posted by burn_this_city
I'll have to dig out my copy tonight and re-read that part. Its been a couple years but the way I thought it was framed was both are equally ridiculous ideas.
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I'm pretty sure it was framed in the context of burden of proof, because that's how Bertrand Russell originally wrote it:
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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.
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So it's about burden of proof.