Review: Brian Garvey`s "absence Of Evidence, Evidence Of Absence, And The Atheist`s Teapot"

Brian Garvey`s "Absence of Evidence, Evidence of Absence, and the Atheist`s Teapot" critiques the teapot argument advanced by Bertrand Russell and Richard Dawkins.[1] This argument aims to show that agnostics should really be atheists because the claim that God exists is analogous to the claim that a china teapot is orbiting the earth, and just as it is irrational to suspend judgement about the teapot when evidence for its existence is lacking or unobtainable it is equally unreasonable for the agnostic to do likewise for God`s existence. Absence of evidence for the existence of God should therefore be taken as evidence of absence. Garvey aims to show the analogy in the argument fails by demonstrating two related dissimilarities between the teapot and God, the first concerning the different notions of evidence needed to establish the truth in both cases, the second concerning the different sorts of claims the God and teapot cases represent.

In his article, Garvey rejects the standard theistic rebuttal to the teapot analogy, that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, and he accepts the strong medicine principle, given in Russell`s and Dawkins` argument, of avoiding the performative contradiction of accepting or suspending judgement on grounds that would require you to do so for lots of other things that no reasonable person would accept or suspend judgement on.[2] He also accepts that God`s existence is a matter of empirical evidence.[3] Granting these assumptions, Garvey describes his first main disanalogy. He contrasts the two cases as involving different kinds of objects requiring different sorts of evidence, the teapot being an object that might be directly detectable unlike God`s existence which must be inferred from indirect and more uncertain evidence of His actions.[4] This dissimilarity, however, does not weaken the teapot analogy since the argument targets the thought that an agnostic is unreasonable to suspend judgement given her belief that evidence for God is lacking or unobtainable, whether indirect or direct. Garvey acknowledges this when noting that the atheist can simply restore the analogy by arguing there is no evidence, direct or indirect, either for the teapot or for God.[5]

Garvey makes more headway when he focuses on the issue of prior implausibility.[6] He shows through his post box example that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence in all cases, but is persuasively so for claims that are manifestly far-fetched, as in the teapot case.[7] The teapot argument thus relies on the premise that God`s existence is similarly unlikely, a reading supported by Dawkins` and Russell`s explanations of the argument.[8] The argument can therefore be made in the following way:

1) The teapot case shows that absence of evidence can be taken as evidence of absence for claims that are manifestly improbable.

2) The claim that God exists is manifestly improbable.

3) Therefore it is unreasonable to suspend judgement about God`s existence in the absence of evidence.

Garvey thinks that presuming the improbability of God`s existence produces a meta-stalemate,[9] however the issue of prior implausibility weakens the teapot argument more than he allows. Firstly, if the improbability of God`s existence is presumed then the argument becomes circular, tantamount to saying belief in God`s probable existence is irrational given the premise that God`s existence is manifestly improbable. Secondly, if God`s existence is evidently improbable then the teapot argument should be superfluous. For example, we do not need an analogy to dissuade us from agnosticism about other manifestly improbable claims, such as the claim that tooth fairies exist. We know without carrying out exhaustive research that belief in tooth fairies is irrational because the real source of money left for children who have lost teeth is their parents.

For Garvey, the teapot argument largely fails due to a second disanalogy involving the difference between a simple claim and a hypothesis. When the "a-tea-ist" denies the teapot`s existence she is rejecting a claim about an object that is thought to exist. When the atheist denies God`s existence she is not merely rejecting a claim, she is rejecting a hypothesis, a proposed explanation for the set of phenomena that make up the universe. Unlike with a claim, rejecting a hypothesis implies a commitment to an alternative explanation, which in the case of the God hypothesis is a non-God involving answer for the things God is meant to explain.[10] However, Garvey argues that any hypothesis that proposes an ultimate explanation for the universe and its most fundamental laws, including the brute fact hypothesis, would be impossible to prove as its verification lies "beyond the terminus of scientific inquiry". [11] He is probably right, and Garvey thinks this shows the reasonableness of agnosticism, but perhaps the dissimilarity between simple claim and hypothesis does not fatally weaken the teapot analogy. If the subject in premise 2) were changed from the "claim that God exists" to the "claim that God s existence explains the universe", then the teapot argument would run as follows:

1) The teapot case shows that absence of evidence can be taken as evidence of absence for claims that are manifestly improbable.

2) The claim that God`s existence explains the universe is manifestly improbable.

3) Therefore it is unreasonable to suspend judgement about God`s existence explaining the universe in the absence of evidence.

The key issue then is the predicate in premise 2). Garvey could have examined whether the God hypothesis and teapot claims are improbable in the same way. Augmenting Garvey`s distinction between direct and indirect evidence with notions of strong and weak evidence seems useful here. The orbiting teapot is manifestly improbable because we already have very strong indirect evidence that it is, as with the tooth fairy example above. Common sense tells us that Earth astronauts would not take china teapots with them to space: they are highly breakable so not suitable for unstable environments, drink poured from them would be hazardous to the craft, procedures and space restrictions would prevent an astronaut from smuggling one aboard and so forth. The analogous indirect evidence against God`s existence explaining the universe may be given in arguments like Dawkins` ultimate 747 gambit, the evidential problem of evil and others, however these are contestable enough not to be reasonably thought of as having the same strength of evidence as in the teapot case. Moreover, arguments on the other side make use of data such as the contingency of things and the apparent fine tuning of the universe that should be taken as indirect evidence for the plausibility of the God hypothesis. The atheist will claim the evidence is weak but this does not make the hypothesis irrational. If it were to, then all new scientific hypotheses that are based on weak evidence must be considered to be false a priori, pre-empting any investigation of their truth. This would make science extremely difficult, the very kind of strong medicine that Russell and Dawkins warn against and which appears to protect agnosticism from the atheist`s teapot.

[1] Brian Garvey `Absence of Evidence, Evidence of Absence, and the Atheist s Teapot`, Ars Disputandi, 10 (2010), 9-22

[2] Brian Garvey, `Absence of Evidence, Evidence of Absence, and the Atheist s Teapot`, pp.11-12

[3] Brian Garvey, `Absence of Evidence, Evidence of Absence, and the Atheist s Teapot`, pp.13-14

[4] Brian Garvey, `Absence of Evidence, Evidence of Absence, and the Atheist s Teapot`, pp.14-16

[5] Brian Garvey, `Absence of Evidence, Evidence of Absence, and the Atheist s Teapot`, p.16

[6] Brian Garvey, `Absence of Evidence, Evidence of Absence, and the Atheist s Teapot`, pp.16-17

[7] Brian Garvey, `Absence of Evidence, Evidence of Absence, and the Atheist s Teapot`, p.16

[8] Brian Garvey, `Absence of Evidence, Evidence of Absence, and the Atheist s Teapot`, pp.9-10

[9] Brian Garvey, `Absence of Evidence, Evidence of Absence, and the Atheist s Teapot`, p.17

[10] Brian Garvey, `Absence of Evidence, Evidence of Absence, and the Atheist s Teapot`, p.18

[11] Brian Garvey, `Absence of Evidence, Evidence of Absence, and the Atheist s Teapot`, pp.19-21