An Apologist misunderstands the Celestial Teapot Analogy

In this article....

https://www.theatlantic.com/personal/archive/2009/01/the-teapot-analogy/55930/

...Ross Douthat illustrates a misunderstanding of Russell's Celestial Teapot analogy - a misunderstanding that is commonly made by Religions Apologists who are unfamiliar with Russell's works. 

	Ross says…	Jim says…
1	Bertrand Russell's famous teapot analogy supposedly settles once and for all the question of whether nonbelievers should give any credence to the possibility that God exists:	This is a straw man – Russell makes no suggestion about the existence of God, but rather the failure of believers to justify their claim.   Russell invented the celestial teapot analogy to illustrate that the burden of proof lies upon a person making unfalsifiable claims, rather than shifting the burden of disproof to others. Russell’s view on the credence to the possibility that God exists can be found in his other work including the (unpublished) article he    wrote which included the Cestial Teapot (see #2).
2	“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. “	Ross provides part of Russell's analogy, omitting the introduction, thereby losing the context... “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 someone doubts Russell’s teapot claim, Russell has the burden of proof. It would be a mistake for Russell to expect others to disprove the existence of the celestial teapot.
3	This analogy - like its modern descendant, the Flying Spaghetti Monster -	False equivocation.  The Flying Spaghetti Monster is a satire of religion, especially creationism and intelligent design.
4	…makes a great deal of sense if you believe that the idea of God is an absurdity dreamed up by crafty clerics in darkest antiquity and subsequently imposed on the human mind by force and fear, and that it only survives for want of brave souls willing to note how inherently absurd the whole thing is.	Straw man. The Celestial Teapot makes sense in the context of burden of proof. It is but one paragraph in a six page paper which explores various arguments for and against God. The Celestial Teapot illustrates the fallacy of people who argue for God by shifting the burden of proof.  Russell’s views on God can be found elsewhere, for example his essay “What I Believe” from 1925… “I do not pretend to be able to prove that there is no God. I equally cannot prove Satan is a fiction. The Christian God may exist, so might the Gods of Olympus, Ancient Egypt or Babylon; but no one of these hypotheses is more probable than any other. They lie outside the region of provable knowledge and there is no reason to consider any of them.” More on Russell's views about God here
5	As you might expect, I see the genesis of religion rather differently:	That is indeed what we would expect, because Ross is a Christian Apologist. .
6	An intuitive belief in some sort of presiding Agent seems to be an extremely common, albeit hardly universal, feature of human nature; this intuition has intersected, historically, with an enormous amount of subjective religious experience; and this intersection (along with, yes, the force of custom and tradition) has produced and sustained the religious traditions.	Two fallacies here: a)     The appeal to common belief  and b) The appeal to intuition
7	that seem to Richard Dawkins and company like so much teapot-worship	Straw man (see line 4). There are plenty of explanations for the existence of religion in terms of evolutionary biology and psychology, but that's a different topic and nothing to do with Celestial teapots.
8	The story of our civilization, in particular, is a story in which an extremely large circle of non-insane human beings have perceived themselves to be experiencing an interaction with a being who seems recognizable as the Judeo-Christian God (here I do feel comfortable using the term)	This is the appeal to common belief again (see line 6).
9	rather than merely being taught about Him in Sunday School.	There are some interesting point here which Ross has overlooked:   a)     Why are children taught about God in Sunday School (or by their parents)? b)     What would happen to belief in God if children were not taught that He exists? c)     Why the emphasis on “Judeo-Christian” God? What about the other interpretations?
10	I am unaware of anything similar holding true for orbiting pots or flying noodle beasts.	Obviously. See lines 1 and 3.
11	And without the persistence of this perceived interaction (and beneath it, the intuitive belief in some kind of God), it's difficult to imagine religious belief playing anything like the role it does in human affairs, no matter how many ancient scriptures there were propping the whole thing up.	Ross repeats the fallacious appeal to intuition.  Our intuition tells us the earth is flat. Our intuition tells us that if we have tossed 10 heads in a row we are very likely to roll a tail next. And so on. The intuitive belief in supernatural entities (such as God) persists because it is unfalsifiable.
12	This is not to say that humanity's religious experiences and intuitions are anything like a dispositive argument for the existence of God.	Correct. The only dispositive argument for the existence of anything would have to be based on compelling evidence. Not intuition or experience.
13	Certainly, there are all sorts of interesting efforts to explain them without recourse to the hypothesis that they correspond to anything real, and all kinds of reasons to choose atheism over faith.	Correct and nice to see the distinction between atheism and faith.
14	But it is one thing to disbelieve in God; it is quite another to never feel a twinge of doubt about one's own disbelief.  And just as the Christian who has never entertained doubts about his faith probably hasn't thought hard enough about the matter…	Correct. To repeat the quote from Russell “I do not pretend to be able to prove that there is no God. I equally cannot prove Satan is a fiction. The Christian God may exist, so might the Gods of Olympus, Ancient Egypt or Babylon; but no one of these hypotheses is more probable than any other. They lie outside the region of provable knowledge and there is no reason to consider any of them.”
15	…the atheist who perceives the Christian God and the flying spaghetti monster as equally ridiculous hypotheses.	Repeats the fallacy from line 3.
16	really needs to get out more often	A very lazy parting shot. And fallacious too, a form of ad hominem.  More specifically this is a fallacy made famous in The Emperor’s New Clothes, and known as the Courtier’s reply   For example,  it would be easy, but fallacious, for me to say “If Ross believes intuition is evidence for God he needs to get our more often” or I could aim at his Catholic beliefs and say "If Ross believes he is drinking the blood of Christ at communion he needs to get our more often".