Talk:Russell's teapot

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Contents 1 Russell's language 2 What about this merits an article? 3 Additional philosophical characteristics of the Teapot 4 Criticism of the teapot

[edit] Russell's language

“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” is a really awkward sentence that feels like a run-on sentence even though, when re-read two or three times, it proves to be grammatically correct and logical.

However, because there are four phrases in the sentence, it still feels like a run-on, with the last comma being a mistake. In other words, it feels like Russell said “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” in which case it should have been “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” or “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.”

(I know that in those versions, the two parts are contradictory; if it was intolerable presumption, why should he be rightly thought to be talking nonsense? My point, however, is that the original sentence is awkward to read.)

My solution, had I been Russell’s editor, would have been to change it to, “But I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense 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” or even “But I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense 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.” There, the commas (or dashes) serve as a nested sub-phrase, or as parentheses, containing a phrase which could be taken out without making the sentence not make sense (“But I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense 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”--not as complete, but still logical).

Unfortunately, changing that in the Wikipedia article would make the article historically inaccurate, since that’s not what Russell said, and so the original bad sentence must stand. Felicity4711 08:54, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks Felicity. I guess the moral is that if you're Bertrand Russell, you can more or less say anything you like and get away with it. Also I'm afraid I reverted your last edit. Straight quotes are the only reasonable option for people using the wiki editor. Thanks again.—Laurence Boyce 13:17, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

I’ve read the MOS and directed quotes are allowed. I find them entirely reasonable to use, and preferable to unprofessional-looking straight quotes. If it’s any consolation, I won’t re-direct the quotes on this article (Russell’s teapot) for a long time. Another user (not you) has been flaming me on my talk page, then stalking my contributions and systematically un-directing all the quotes in them, and I want to repair all the vandalism from that before I consider what to do with articles like this one. In the meantime, thank you for at least being polite about your disagreement on straight or directed quotes. Felicity4711 00:04, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] What about this merits an article?

Note that I am not passing judgements on this particular metaphor for unfalsifiable theories, only questioning whether it merits an individual article. If it was an intricate metaphor that required a great deal of space to explain, that would be an argument for giving it its own article ... but it isn't. If it was a metaphor that had featured strongly in philosophical debates and been subject to multiple interpretations and perspectives, that would be an argument for giving it its own article ... but that's not the case, either. Dawkins is not adding anything to Russell's concept except more variations on the theme of "believers persecute non-believers". Contrast this with the article on watchmaker analogy which shows how numerous thinkers (including Dawkins) have all approached the same or a similar analogy but from multiple perspectives. I think this subject would probably be better merged somewhere appropriate. -- Antaeus Feldspar 20:38, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

I think the concept does merit an article, something which I feel is borne out by a number of links to the article, though not a vast number admittedly. Also I think the Dawkins quote does add something. It reinforces the (absurd) notion of teapot-worship as a religion, and it also has some amusement value. Laurence Boyce 13:18, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Well, that's just the point. There are a number of links to the article, but almost without exception they are in "See also" or "Trivia" sections. It suggests to me that that's actually the only way anyone's ever going to find the article, and then when they find it they're not going to say "I now understand the concept in a way I didn't before" but "It's just like the Invisible Pink Unicorn, except substitute a teapot in space for a unicorn that is both invisible and pink." -- Antaeus Feldspar 16:09, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Well the teapot preceded both the IPU and FSM, so you could argue that it's the original true faith. Also Russell confers a certain historical importance. But please start a VfD if you wish. Laurence Boyce 16:36, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

I'd rather see a merge somewhere appropriate than outright deletion. It's not that I don't think it's worthy of coverage, it's that I think having too many articles covering different iterations of the same basic idea starts to weaken NPOV. -- Antaeus Feldspar 21:18, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Additional philosophical characteristics of the Teapot

It seems to me relevant that Additional characteristics of a belief in this Teapot include:

1. No-one seriously believes in the existence of this Teapot.
2. No-one has put forward serious arguments for the existence of this Teapot.
3. The hypothetical teapot is an object in the universe and it would in principle be possible to initiate a scientific program to verify its existence, by sending suitably equipped satellites.
4. A person with a firmly sustained belief in the existence of this teapot would have a delusion in the scientific meaning of the term, which would remain true even if the second "culture" sentence from the definition of delusion.

It has been suggested that this is "soapbox" which I think is meant to mean "if you think about these you might realise that this is a very poor parallel with belief in God". Since the entire tone of the article as written is stongly atheistic POV I'm not sure that this is a valid criticism. Can anyone suggest any improvements? NBeale 18:15, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Ah, Mr Beale – this God Delusion business has really got you rattled hasn't it? So now you're going to lecture us about POV – I like that. (By the way, if anyone wants to see an example of some absurd POV, check this out.) Now where was I? Oh yes – suppose we cut a deal? You get off this article, and in return I'll leave your priceless 747 article alone together with all its sophisticated mathematics which I couldn't possibly understand? Laurence Boyce 18:45, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Hi Laurence. How many of your contributions to the debate have been to try to hide information and arguments and make personal attacks? How many positive contributions? I haven't tried to hide anything. So who is rattled I wonder? Let us leave the information on the table, work together constuctively to improve the articles and let the reader decide. What are you afraid of? NBeale 19:35, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Oh I've made well over a thousand positive contributions to Wikipedia – not as many as some, but it will be a fair while before you reach that figure, by which time I daresay you will have pissed off about a thousand people. I mean what do you expect me to say about your latest effort? It clearly violates WP:NPOV and WP:NOR. Laurence Boyce 19:58, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Calm down, calm down... The teapot article is good and useful - and worth keeping because it's notable and historical and has stood the test of time. But it does not need the addition of a list of other mythical concepts. Or maybe we should add a list of unicorns, tooth fairies etc to god! And what's that nonsense about the Boeing 747? Unlike Russell's teapot, this is neither notable nor historical - a candidate for speedy deletion if ever I saw one, even if it passed the NPOV test - which it doesn't! Sorry, NBeale - I have to agree with Laurence here. I'm now going to mark the Boeing 747 article for deletion. Snalwibma 20:18, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Someone else got there first! Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ultimate Boeing 747 gambit Snalwibma 20:31, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Criticism of the teapot

NBeale has twice tried to add the following text to the Teapot page.

Criticism of the validity of this analogy

Critics of the validity of this analogy suggest inter alia that[1][2]:

1. No scientist has seriously advocated the existence of this "teapot"
2. There is ample ground for disbelief in the claim.
3. The cumulative case for God has, rightly or wrongly. persuaded at least a considerable minority of scientific minds.
4. This teapot is a rhetorical and non-scientific device to associate a serious case with a ridiculous one.

When I first reverted it, I put an edit comment that I didn't even have the energy to explain... NBeale's insistince has given me a little more energy. First of all, in checking both of these "references" I found the teapot example mentioned, but I never did find the numbered points, or even a paraphrase thereof on the page. Second of all (or perhaps this should be first) the source is not likely to be considered a reliable source Wikipedia:Verifiability. As is stated there: "Anyone can create a website or pay to have a book published, then claim to be an expert in a certain field. For that reason, self-published books, personal websites, and blogs are largely not acceptable as sources." These two concerns alone should preclude inclusion of this text, on wikipedia grounds alone. This is to say nothing of the quality of the aforementioned "argument", which as Laurence Boyce has correctly pointed out on the Dawkins page, is not appropriate on wikipedia talk pages. Edhubbard 22:21, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Ed. Thanks for the explanation. I added the numbered points for convenience but if you prefer I'll remove them. I don't think the 1st ref is a "self-published books, personal website, or blog" The 2nd is indeed a blog but one published by The Guardian which in common with other leading UK newspapers provides blogs for their commentators. I think we can both agree that these criticisms of the teapot analogy are widely shared (at least by theists) it's just that most of them haven't bothered to write about something so transparently absurd. Do you, or does anyone else, dispute the accuracy of these assertions btw, as opposed to their provenance? NBeale 22:52, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

The suggestion that they are "widely shared (at least by theists)" (which may or may not be true) doesn't in any way change the point of the matter. The first reference that you refer to is certainly not in any way a reliable sourse. Just because someone writes this on their page, what official status do they have? The fact that it is a webpage associated with a group, rather than a single individual doesn't change the basic point of the matter. I could get me and five friends together, and we could post stuff, and it would be just as useless from the wikipedia point of view as if I were to do it on my own. Edhubbard 22:59, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

As far as the accuracy goes, although I agree that this isn't the place, I'll indulge you a little. Let's deal with point by point:

1. "No scientist has seriously advocated the existence of this "teapot". Well, as far as I can tell, it hasn't been scientists that are advocating belief in God either, it's ministers. So, point 1 is misleading, at best.

2. "There is ample ground for disbelief in the claim." Yes, there is ample ground for disbelief in the claim that there is an orbiting teapot, and also in God, the tooth fairy or any other of these things... However, whether there is ample ground for disbelief or not doesn't change the fact that as scientists, we can never *prove* that something doesn't exist. It's a simple point about the limits of science, be it teapots or God. Somehow, religious people attempt to draw a strong conclusion from the fact that scientists will readily admit that they cannot disprove something. The teapot example is the counterargument to that "aha! you can't prove it doesn't exist, therefore it exists" type of thinking. That we can't disprove the existence of God isn't very informative, since from a logical point of view, we can't *even* prove the non-existence of orbiting teapots, which nobody believes in.

3. "The cumulative case for God has, rightly or wrongly. persuaded at least a considerable minority of scientific minds." And many scientific minds were at one time or another convinced that the earth was flat, or that the brain was primarily a radiator for cooling the blood. Scientists do not claim to be infallible... indeed, it is the very admission of fallibility that makes science progress. Of course it should be noted that scientists, who are trained to look at evidence and evaluate it, are by and large the group of people least likely to believe in God.

4. "This teapot is a rhetorical and non-scientific device to associate a serious case with a ridiculous one." No, this teapot is a rhetorical device to associate a ridiculous case with an even more transparently obviously ridiculous one. From the fact that scientists cannot prove the non-existence of X, we can infer nothing about the existence of X. This is the most important point of the argument, and it applies equally well whether X is dreamt up on the spot or has 2000+ years of tradition behind it. Edhubbard 23:11, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Ed. Thanks. To respond quickly: (1) Polkinghorne, Dyson, Conway Morris etc.. are world class scientists. (2) Think about eg Aether, Phlogiston, Local Hidden Variables and whether satellites could in principle falsify teapot/god. (3) Flat Earth trope a complete myth! (see eg Rocks of Ages) - rest misses the point. (4) When "cannot" means "cannot in principle by any conceivable experiment" (true of God, not Teapot etc..) you can infer that this question is beyond the domain of science. NBeale 07:14, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

The last time I heard Conway Morris speak, he put up a slide of the Turin Shroud and said he thought it was genuine. If that's world class then I must be Einstein. Laurence Boyce 21:02, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

I'll explain why the Criticism section as is has been removed. Again. First section:

Any paragraph that starts "Not surprisingly" reeks of POV. Secondly, I don't see how an unattributed statement in an article from The Trinity Network is a reliable source. It is a blog for a group of three churches. Not reliable, not notable.

The next section:

and that the refutation that Alister McGrath offers of the idea that belief in God is like belief in the tooth fairy ^[1] applies a fortiori to the comparison with a teapot.[4]

The statement "applies a fortiori to the comparison with a teapot" is drawing a conclusion that McGrath doesn't draw or state. He speaks only of the tooth fairy, not the teapot. On top of that, while The Guardian is usually a reliable source, note that http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk is, by their own definition, a blog.[5] Again, not a notable or reliable source.

If you can address these concerns with better sources, do so. The section needs to be removed as is (and removed again if restored as is). *Spark* 03:03, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Hi Spark. thanks for these explanations. I didn't put in "Not surprisingly" I think that was an atheist's contribution but I don't like deleting other Editors' work. www.trinity.ie is a website not a blog and the paper (which is by Fergus Ryan) is well referenced and pretty scholarly. It's Bunglawala who suggests that McGrath's refutation applies to the Teapot (McGrath of course demolishes the "Teapot" in The Dawkins Delusion but that's not yet published). The main reason few academics have bothered with it is that it's an unpublished analogy that Russell didn't think much of. But Russell's cast-offs are good enough for Dawk. TrulyThe Twilight of Atheism. I expect there are some other sources, I'll see if I can find them. NBeale 21:16, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

I can't resist the irony of asking you to prove that nobody bothered with it. Can you prove that there are no discussions of it? A quick google search for "Bertrand Russell" teapot turns up 19500 hits. I'm sure there are some good things in there. [6] Edhubbard 21:40, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Ed - indeed but this is pretty well all bloggery and recycling Russell and Dawk. I said "few 'academics' have bothered with it" Try the same search on Google Scholar [7] and you get 72 hits but none (as far as I can see) is about this teapot. QED NBeale 22:39, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Nbeale, there is nothing QED about it. This is just my point. Although you are clearly very smart, you just don't get scientific thinking. Perhaps too much training in the world of math, where truths can be had with 100% black and white certainty. We have no such luxury in scientific research. So, to continue with the point, using my ironic example here. You have attempted to prove that the teapot has not met with much academic discussion, using Google Scholar. However, I submit to you that your sample was badly biased in at least two ways. First, it is well-established that the web is biased towards modern sources, so things that are pre-web often do not make it onto the web, and therefore you may have missed a great deal of academic discussion from pre-web days. Second, we also know that (as a cultural group) philosophers tend to be less web-savy then, say, for example, computer scientists. Therefore, assuming that by academic you mean philosophers, again, a web search would be systematically biased towards not turning up academic discussions of the teapot. Based on the biased samples that you have used, you could fail to find evidence for critical treatment of the teapot, but you cannot prove that it doesn't exist. This is the point of the teapot, the flying spagetti monster and so on... It's a matter of scientific, empricial thinking. All that a scientist can do is provide reasonable grounds to believe that something does not exist (e.g., phlogiston, aether, etc, as you mentioned before) but a scientist can never "prove" that something doesn't exist. There is always the possibility of an alternative interpretation of a "null result", be it in trying to prove the non-existence of God, or critical reaction to the teapot. Edhubbard 21:45, 17 November 2006 (UTC)