The burden of proof tennis is quite tricky here because it’s not about whether you claim something exists, it’s whether you claim something that goes against what’s generally accepted. If I claim quantum mechanics don’t exist, it’s not on you to prove they do.
And that’s before we get into the fact that there isn’t a general consensus on whether God (or any gods) exist.
Your premise is incorrect. The burden of proof for quantum mechanics is on the people claiming they exist. They provided those proofs, which is why people believe in them. I haven’t studied quantum mechanics, but if you asked somebody who does, they could offer proof or evidence. And if they couldn’t, then your claim it doesn’t exist (until proof was proffered) would be correct.
It was on them until society generally accepted it. Now if I claim it doesn’t exist, the burden is on me.
Or how about this: if I claim dinosaurs never existed and thus the fossils didn’t come from them, it’s not on you to prove they did.
You’re missing the point. It’s not a one time thing. Evidence existed, that evidence was found, and that’s what made it change to being accepted.
That evidence still exists, so if you claim dinosaurs don’t exist, we can just point to the evidence that still exists. That evidence didn’t get spirited away like golden plates to heaven. We’re still finding dinosaur bones.
If you claim dinosaurs don’t exist, I would point to the wealth of evidence that they do. If you were raised in some religious cult that never taught anything about dinosaurs and taught that the Earth was 6000 years old, and therefore didn’t think giant creatures existed hundreds of millions of years ago, it would absolutely be on the person claiming they exist to show you dinosaur bones. Which is evidence.
So if everyone believed in the invisible dragon under your bed, would that shift the burden of proof to you? I don’t see what the general consensus has to do with anything.
The people who say quantum mechanics exists don’t just claim it, they can demonstrate it through peer reviewed evidence. Quantum mechanics is also a theory based on observable facts intended to propose testable mechanisms by which those facts can be explained. My claim of a dragon under your bed has no such backing.
As smarter people than me have said, that which is asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
Yeah, if everyone believes there’s an invisible dragon under my bed, then that means the burden of proof is on me to claim there isn’t. And I’d probably address that with a stick.
As for assertion without evidence, how do you feel about eyewitness accounts of miracles? Or sociological reasoning on the odds of the disciples keeping a conspiracy for their whole lives? Or how about the origin of the universe - we had all the matter in the universe condensed into a single point, complete with laws that would lead to such interesting things as nuclear fusion, complex planetary orbits, and even pockets of life. Do you take it as a given that it’s far more likely for that to have come out of nowhere than for a higher power to exist and have arranged it as such?
You’re free to discount the evidence (though I’d be happy to debate it with you,) and dismiss the claims because it doesn’t align with your experiences. But note that the idea that all this happened without God is as absurd to me as the existence of God is to you, and equally unsubstantiated.
so, you can get around the burden of proof by getting enough people to perpetrate the lie?
No no a stick won’t work, the invisible dragon is very small and agile and would easily dodge your stick. It only makes itself known when it wants to.
I feel the same about eyewitness accounts of miracles. Eyewitness testimony is not evidence. It could be a good place to start to investigate miraculous claims but that’s all.
I’m not dismissing claims because it doesn’t align with my experiences, but because there is no reliable evidence. In fact depending on the type of diety you propose I think many claims can be shown to be false because they a contradictory with reality.
I’d be interested to hear the evidence you have for sure. I’m open to changing my views. I’m not scholar but my understanding is that the best we have is a collection of anonymously written books which isn’t enough for me to accept such a huge claim.
I don’t know about the origin of the universe but I don’t think anyone claims things came from nothing, we simply don’t know what was before the big bang. Not knowing the answer to me isn’t a good enough reason to assume a divine entity is responsible.
Not really though? Non-existence of anything is the default. Existence of something puts the burden of proof on whoever claims this something exists. “Quantum mechanics” is a bad example, it’s a set of theories, not a single theory (like “a god exists”). Depending on what is being claimed, you can easily show people papers, such as this one which shows experimental observable proof of principles of quantum theory.
At one point, quantum mechanics didn’t exist and wasn’t generally accepted. Physicists like Heisenberg took upon them the burden of proof and provided it.
General acceptance is how it is treated since then, by non-physicists, but it is simply possible to follow the proof of it if you really wanted to. There are experiments that have been performed and that can be performed again that create observable evidence of the principles of quantum mechanics.
The burden of proof still lies on proponents of quantum mechanics. What you’re talking about is more of a societal shortcut, accepting that the burden of proof has been verified by other people, not by yourself, as it’s impossible to go deep enough into every subject to actually verify every proof you come across. That’s why specialization exists.
The difference is that 99% of physicists confirm the proof of quantum mechanics. Specialists on religion are all very much divided on which god(s) or whether at all one exists, and no proof exists for any religious theories.
