Teapot Agnosticism (General)

by Mark, UK, Friday, February 01, 2008, 23:55 (5929 days ago) @ whitecraw

Russell's Teapot is more than an appeal to shift the burden of proof. Essentially it is asking us 'how reasonable is it to be agnostic about celestial crockery?' -- and, by extension any beliefs for which the truth-claims are out of proportion with the evidence provided for them. The analogy is an example of Bayesian inference. Although the non-existence of the teapot cannot be known beyond all doubt, we can justifiably infer that it doesn't exist based on our understanding and experience.