Vote "Beard"!

I'm going to join with P.Z. Myers and Big Dave in putting my beard on the line.

If you're interested in donating at least £2 (roughly $3), you can have a voice. If you want P.Z. and Dave to lose their beards or if you think beard-toting is the way to go, let them know. I figure that there's no harm going along for the ride, even if it may make me less trustworthy. It is for charity, after all.

I have no notion that I will have nearly the impact that Myers does, but I'm sure that my wife and some of my friends might decide that they have a vested interest in the outcome. If, by democratic vote, I have to lose the beard, then so be it. I suppose that my profile picture will have to change, as well.

Tip o' the follicle to Pharyngula.

Fun, Fun, Fun in the Sun, Sun, Sun!

Remember when I discussed tanning?

Over at Science-Based Medicine, Scott Gavura has an excellent and in-depth discussion of skin cancer and sunscreen. I highly recommend giving it a read.

Comment Policy

I have a new comment policy! You can read about it here!

Balanced Copyright for Canada, Industry Sockpuppet

Apparently sockpuppetry isn't just for creationists, anymore.

According to the Internet's caped crusader, Cory Doctorow, a group of American record companies is likely behind the recent astroturf effort that goes by the name Balanced Copyright for Canada. From BoingBoing:

It's really telling that the opposition to the Canadian DMCA has come from real grassroots: artist groups, citizen groups, technologists, educators, disabled-rights groups, archivists -- people who don't hide their funding or their affiliations behind false flags. Meanwhile, the only support for this law has come from slick, fraudulent PR campaigns that shroud their origins in secrecy in order to disguise the fact that this is just the same four record labels running around in circles, wearing several hats, pretending to be a crowd.

You can find more information from Canadian law professor Michael Geist.

Hat tip to Mr. Doctorow and BoingBoing.

The Revenge of Genetic Engineering

I was going to call this post Revenge of the Jedi, but apparently Jedi don't take revenge, so I'll talk about genetically engineered crops, instead.

I've been involved in a discussion with Rob, a fellow member of the Winnipeg Skeptics and blogger over at The Plan.

It started with a post here on Startled Disbelief briefly commenting on a recent report from the U.S. National Research Council, which found that "many U.S. farmers who grow genetically engineered (GE) crops are realizing substantial economic and environmental benefits".

Rob commented that he had changed his mind about GE crops after watching a YouTube video, to which he posted a link. My response was somewhat terse, due to the many noted problems with YouTube as a medium for the communication of ideas, especially when those ideas are contentious.

Rob replied via email, informing me that he had responded to my second post on his blog. I'll be excerpting heavily from that post in my response, but interested readers ought to read his original post.

In retrospect, I should not have just posted a video link without actually giving my perspective on the matter and saying which specific arguments in the video convinced me. ... I should have re-viewed the video before posting it because I hadn't seen it in a few months and didn't recall the exact content.

Hear hear! The video was rather long, and I had not found the transcript that Rob links to in his post, which also made it difficult and time-consuming to quote. I find few things more frustrating than receiving an email which amounts to nothing more than a link to a video, and if the video exceeds five minutes I'm unlikely to watch it at all. (If you want to know why, read the previous GE post, in which I address the specific video in question, or read the posts that I linked to above from the Conspiracy Science and Atheist Experience blogs.)

I should have also specified that my problems with GE organisms were largely outside the scope of the scientific issues you tackled in your original post.

I'm glad to hear it! It's easy to forget that although many of us have a tendency to be rather combative on "teh intertoobs", we're real people, and (most) real people have a visceral dislike for conflict. Believe it or not, I would really like it if we could all just get along—but I will not allow that ideal to compromise the free expression of ideas.

It would be fantastic if everyone could completely separate their egos from their ideas. Alas, it seems that our puny ape brains will not easily free us from that bizarre defensiveness that arises from the idea that someone disagrees with one of our precious opinions. And so I'm glad to hear that our points of contention are narrowing!

And the scientific issues are really what concerns me. I certainly do think that the industry requires oversight and regulation, and many of their practices do seem to be cause for concern. So let's get started.

Allow me to summarize your first post: "all natural" and "organic" are scientifically meaningless[;] genetic engineering is more efficient than artificial selection; genetic engineering results in lower production costs, fewer pest problems, reduced use of pesticides, and better yields; we need to be vigilant about the over-use of certain pesticides; overall, GE crops are good for people and the planet. I agree with every single point you make except for the conclusion that you reach (good for people and planet).

Sure. I think that, for the most part, you've fairly summarized my position. But allow me to make a few clarifications:

1. "All natural" is scientifically meaningless. "Organic" is scientifically meaningful ("of or pertaining to carbon-based compounds"), but is most often used in a scientifically meaningless way. But close enough.
2. I did claim that genetic engineering is more efficient than artificial selection in many (not necessarily all) ways. When I say "efficient", I mean than genetic engineering can allow scientists to achieve their goals with minimum wasted time and effort. Providing that the genetic structure of the organism is sufficiently understood (a fairly large caveat, I know), the use of recombinant DNA technology and/or direct genetic manipulation could accomplish in one generation what would take several with the use of forced breeding alone.
3. I did not assert in my original post that genetic modification results in "lower production costs, fewer pest problems, reduced use of pesticides, and better yields". That assertion comes (word for word) from the NRC report that I was discussing. It also bears mentioning that when I quoted this contention, I included the qualifier "many U.S. farmers" from the original article. By removing this qualifier it may be (erroneously) argued that this statement applies in all cases.
4. Where Rob really loses me is when he claims that "the conclusion that [I] reach" is that "overall, GE crops are good for people and the planet". Perhaps I missed it during my reread, but I don't believe that I said anything of the sort. The first article concluded with "Science isn't the enemy", and the second with the slightly more verbose:
   
   

   I want to be clear (something that apparently I'm not very good at): I am not saying that all GE foods are safe. I am not saying that organic foods are bad for you. I am not saying that testing new products is unnecessary. And I am not simply siding with biotechnological companies.
   
   What I am saying is that the label "organic" is not scientifically meaningful: it's marketing, like putting vitamins in your shampoo. What I am saying is that GE crops have been shown to provide specific benefits over traditional crops.
   

   
   I think that genetic engineering has great potential for good, and reflexive dismissal or absolute denial of its benefits serves no purpose. (I am not saying that this is what Rob is doing. I am simply clarifying my position.)

As some readers may note, some of my points of contention with Rob's summary of my position relate to the removal of a simple qualifying word or statement (e.g., "many"). This may seem like a small point, but I believe it to be a very important one. Many colleagues have encouraged me to take firmer stances and to make grand, sweeping declarations about the way things are, as it would add authority to my position. But I am not, as I have told CEOs and executives on many occasions, a businessperson—and I'm going to make every attempt to stay within the bounds of the evidence, even when that may weaken the perception that others have of the positions that I take or the work that I do.

We're not talking about evolution versus creationism or the heliocentric and geocentric views of our solar system—this is a fairly young science, and it isn't as cut-and-dried as all that. And so I'm going to approach the subject with at least a modicum of intellectual humility. It also leads to fewer "gotcha" moments later on, as more evidence comes in.

And for those of you who would accuse me of picking nits: well, you're probably right. Let's move on.

How is it possible that we agree on all these facts and yet reach different conclusions? The answer is that you left out some very important questions about implementation in your analysis.

As aforementioned, I have some objections to Rob's analysis of my position. I am also vaguely annoyed with the (uncharacteristically) patronising tone that he takes, here. If a person feels the need to describe him- or herself as either "pro-GE" or "anti-GE" (or even "pro-organic" or "anti-organic"), that person is likely not sufficiently considering the complexity of the issue, which is excusable: we have a tendency to crave the simplicity of black/white dichotomies. But it is also wrong-headed. The fact that I have pointed out that many of the arguments made by pro-organic, anti-GE ideologues are fallacious does not mean that I am pro-GE and anti-organic. There is reason to be cautious about genetic engineering, and I would not want the practice to be completely unregulated.

Rob claims that I "left out some very important questions about implementation in [my] analysis". My analysis of what? Of the study conducted by the NRC? Isn't that what we were talking about? That study had nothing to do with "implementation"—it had to do with impact. (I'm assuming based on context that by "implementation" he means the process by which a genetically engineered organism moves from the realm of theory to the realm of your dinner table.)

Unsurprisingly, the same types of greedy corporations that build showers that electrocute soldiers in Iraq and drill for oil without adequate safety measures or contingency plans also do shady things with GE crops that don't show up in scientific studies about crop production and profitability.

This is an interesting paragraph. It seems that Rob is attempting to link KBR and BP (two companies with fairly ugly histories) with Monsanto (another company with a fairly ugly history) and its ilk. Aside from (convincing) allegations of corruption and corporate misconduct, I was not able to find any meaningful connection between these companies. This paragraph seems to be a fairly straightforward example at poisoning the well supported by a red herring.

This strikes me as fairly odd, considering that Monsanto (for example) is already by most accounts a pretty awful company, and are correspondingly easy to smear. I actually work across the street from Monsanto's Canadian head office (which qualifies me to speak about Monsanto with roughly the same authority than an Alaskan governor can bring to bear in a discussion of Russian foreign policy), and they seem like genuinely nice folks. That doesn't mean that they aren't misguided or mistaken on some fronts, however, and it doesn't speak to the beneficence of the company for which they work. Take it away, Ben:

If you really want to dig deeper, Monsanto is also very simply an unpleasant company (it made Agent Orange during the Vietnam War, for example).

—Ben Goldacre,
Bad Science

If I have in any way misunderstood Rob's argument, here, I apologise. But I have been unable to find any relevant connection between companies that electrocute soldiers or recklessly drill for oil besides his assertion that they all fall under the category of "greedy corporations" (which I grant, by the way). But perhaps I'm doing his argument an injustice. This is what it seems to amount to:

1. Greedy companies have done bad things in the past.
2. Monsanto and similar biotech companies are greedy.
3. Therefore, Monsanto and similar biotech companies will do bad things in the future.

While that may pass muster as a rule of thumb, it is certainly not a logically valid argument. But let's look at what these companies are actually doing.

For starters, some GE companies sell "terminator seeds". These seeds only produce one generation of plants because the seeds produced by the first generation are sterile. This is very harmful for impoverished farmers in the third world because they rely on saving seeds from the previous year's crop. Terminator seeds force them to return to agriculture companies year after year in order to buy new seeds. The companies' goal is not to feed the world more efficiently; they are only motivated by profit.

Yes.

For those of you who haven't read it, I highly recommend Bad Science, by Ben Goldacre.

I remain extremely wary of GM for reasons that have nothing to do with science, simply because it has created a dangerous power shift in agriculture, and 'terminator seeds', which die at the end of the season, are a way to increase farmers' dependency, both nationally and in the developing world, while placing the global food supply in the hands of multinational corporations.

—Ben Goldacre,
Bad Science

I agree—with some caveats, that is. I don't think that it's fair to say that the companies are only motivated by profit. Primarily motivated by profit? Absolutely!

But there are other concerns, too. Rob goes on to state:

When one company's GE crop dominates a region then there is a drastic loss of genetic diversity. Genetic diversity is an important safe-guard against catastrophic crop failure due to disease, fungus or pests. Crop failure on a large enough scale could result in millions of deaths due to starvation.

I definitely agree that genetic diversity is important, and I'm all in favour of preventing millions of deaths. But, according to seed manufacturers, it is precisely that diversity that genetic use restriction technologies (terminator crops) are meant to protect:

The induced sterility in seed using GURTs cannot spread. By its very nature, sterile seed cannot reproduce and thereby produce pollen necessary for propagation. Biodiversity is not threatened.

Now, don't get me wrong: I recognise that these companies are worried about their bottom line, protecting their intellectual property, etc. Credit should go where credit is due, but I think that most intellectual property laws are straight-up bonkers. All the same, I feel that it is incumbent upon me to present the other side of the argument. Yes, terminator seeds do force local farmers "to return to agriculture companies year after year in order to buy new seeds." But they are also intended to address the biodiversity argument that Rob raised.

Are terminator seeds a good idea? I certainly don't think so! But let's be fair.

GE crops are patented and many can only be sprayed with patented pesticides that are produced by the same companies that make the seeds.^{[citation needed]}

I'm not saying that's not true. I am saying that I couldn't find any references to it.

Another problem with the patenting of life that occurs with GE crops is that it results in multinational corporations enforcing their patents by suing farmers.

Agreed. I don't like the idea of patenting life any more than Rob does, and large, multinational corporations do seem to have a tendency to behave poorly.

One big problem with GE crops is that they are less nutritious than their pre-GE counterparts. In fact, selective breeding is also guilty of causing our food to be less nutritious than it once was. For the entire history of agriculture, plants have been bred for their resistance to environmental factors, quick growth, pleasing appearances and ease of transportation. The most important thing that genetic engineers should be worried about is making sure that the food we eat is more nutritious, not less.

I agree that nutrition should be a focus for future genetic engineering, although I think that in developing countries food quantity may outrank food quality as a priority for the moment.

I've heard the organic-is-more-nutritious argument before, although I've never heard it explained plausibly until now. Thanks to Rob for the link! Nutrition is important (I have to say that: my wife is a dietitian, after all!), but I don't think that the issue is as clear as all that. While the mechanism proposed by Davis in the Steattle Post-Intelligencer article linked to by Rob seems superficially plausible, we need to assess whether the effect that it explains actually occurs.

It may. Davis' findings seem to suggest that nutritional degradation is a reality. But a recent literature review comparing the nutrition-related health outcomes of consumption of organic and conventional agriculture concluded:

From a systematic review of the currently available published literature, evidence is lacking for nutrition-related health effects that result from the consumption of organically produced foodstuffs.

There are other plausible mechanisms for deficient nutrition that don't involve genetically engineered foodstuffs. Soil depletion due to over-farming, for example.

As I said, nutrition is important. If GE crops are currently insufficiently nutritious, this is simply a matter of focus: we could concentrate our engineering efforts on nutrition in addition to size and pest control.

Despite the fact that his rhetoric is a little over the top and many of his facts related to the science of GE crops are questionable at best, Mr. Smith's recommendations to only grow GE crops indoors and to end the practice of patenting life seem quite reasonable to me. He encourages us to be vigilant of both the scientific and economic dangers involved with GE crops.

I'm not certain that I'd go so far as to mandate indoor cultivation for GE crops, primarily because of the additional cost that it would involve for the farmers who depend on them. But if Monsanto is willing to foot the bill? Why not?

I emphatically agree with you when you say, in summarizing the original post, that "science isn't the enemy." You've outlined several arguments that demonstrate that there are clear advantages to using GE foods and that the labels 'all natural' and 'organic' rely on consumer ignorance of the naturalistic fallacy. However, while science isn't the enemy, it also isn't the panacea that some make it out to be. Science needs to be reigned in by sound legislation and rigorous regulation in order to protect the environment and future generations of humanity. ... What better ways could there be to assure cautious progress?

Agreed.

And props to Rob for making me blow coffee into my sinuses with his link to Spider-Goat.

As Thomas Dolby so concisely put it: "SCIENCE!"

Further Reading:
The Skeptic's Dictionary: Organic
Science-Based Medicine: Is Organic Food More Healthful?

---

Minor Edit: The missus has insisted that I change the spelling of dietician to "dietitian" above. Apparently that's the industry standard.

Chiropractic Correspondence

I received this email a little while ago.

Hi Gem,

After a heated discussion with my Mom, I cannot convince her that chiropractic doctors are not real doctors and that most of it is a pseudoscience. Do you have any general information or resources you could send me so I can show her? Only if you have time, of course!

Thanks,
[REDACTED]

Since I've been putting much of what would normally be blogging time into fielding email questions, I might as well make my responses serve double-duty. Here was my response:

Hi, [REDACTED].

If it helps, I understand your situation. As you know, I've been in a similar situation with many close friends and relatives.

I actually used to have chiropractic treatments regularly, and several members of my family still swear by them. My chiropractor was a very nice gentleman, and although I am now convinced that the treatments that I received were bogus (and there is evidence to suggest that he actually put me at greater risk of suffering a stroke), I have no reason to believe that he was consciously committing fraud.

Simon Singh, a British journalist for The Guardian, was sued last year by the British Chiropractic Association for libel, after he called their treatments "bogus". You can find his article, with citations added, here. It's a short read, but quite good. As Professor Frank Frizelle quipped, "Let's hear your evidence not your legal muscle."

Skeptoid is also a very good resource. Brian Dunning is lively, and he cites his articles/podcasts well. In fact, this transcript might make an excellent starting point, as it gives a good overview of the subject.

Finally, Quackwatch is always a good resource when looking into medical claims. A quick search of "chiropractic" turns up nearly 200 articles.

The unfortunate truth is that it is unlikely that any amount of evidence will convince a person who isn't interested in the evidence, and it's likely that most people won't be. As Jonathan Swift is reputed to have said, "You cannot reason a person out of a position he did not reason himself into in the first place." If your main goal is convincing someone, it's often best not to get into a direct confrontation, as this will frequently just put them on the defensive and force them to rationalise away any evidence that you care to present. If you want to avoid conflict, it's often best to just present the evidence a little bit at a time, and not push the other person too hard. If they're honestly interested in figuring out what is true (and this won't be everyone), then they'll eventually start to pay attention, and even ask questions.

To be fair, I don't always follow my own advice, here. I can be a rather reckless conversationalist at times. There are things that I'm good at, but being careful or politically expedient isn't always one of those things. But depending on what you want, framing the issue can be very important.

...

Honestly and openly admitting the edges of your own expertise can go a long way, as well. There's never any harm in looking things up! (But it is important to be sure that you're not just looking for confirmatory evidence, as well; make sure that you're looking somewhere reputable!)

My wife is calling for me to come to bed, so I'll have to leave it there. Best of luck!

Gem

PS: Chiropractic doctors are "real doctors", if by "real" you mean that they are allowed to put "Dr." in front of their name. But so are dentists. They are most emphatically not medical doctors or physicians. They do not attend medical school. It's sometimes important to clarify what you mean, here.

Using Internet "Shorthand"

And now for something completely different.

This has been around for a long time, but I just encountered it recently. I'm reading through Wiseman's Quirkology, and was discussing real versus fake smiles with my colleagues (they had a hit-rate of 60% on the photos in the book, by the way—slightly better than chance). One mentioned Dave Barry's Emoticons: Using Internet "Shorthand", which broke the awesomeness-threshold required for me to post it.

An excerpt:

:-D	Person laughing
:-D*	Person laughing so hard that he or she does not notice that a 5-legged spider is hanging from his or her lip
	...
;-)	Person winking
.-)	Person who can still smile despite losing an eyeball

Tip of the ASCII code to Glen Douglas.

The Dutch may also have a problem.

Speaking of copyright infringement, a Dutch court has apparently just ruled that discussing piracy is piracy.

According to Cory Doctorow:

The Dutch court has ruled that hosting a discussion that includes conversational descriptions of infringing files is the same as publishing links to those files is the same as hosting the files yourself.

You can find a more detailed redux at TorrentFreak.

Tip of the you-can-download-copyrighted-material-from-any-torrent-site-don't-tell-the-Dutch-I-told-you to Brendan Curran-Johnson.

We may have a problem.

The Canadian Parliament has just tabled Bill C-32 (full text), which aims to amend copyright laws. This bill does several things, many of them good. But here's a snippet from page 43:

Technological Protection Measures and Rights Management Information

41. The following definitions apply in this section and in sections 41.1 to 41.21.

"circumvent" means,

(a) in respect of a technological protection measure within the meaning of paragraph (a) of the definition "technological protection measure", to descramble a scrambled work or decrypt an encrypted work or to otherwise avoid, bypass, remove, deactivate or impair the technological protection measure, unless it is done with the authority of the copyright owner; and

(b) in respect of a technological protection measure within the meaning of paragraph (b) of the definition "technological protection measure", to avoid, bypass, remove, deactivate or impair the technological protection measure.

"technological protection measure" means any effective technology, device or component that, in the ordinary course of its operation,

(a) controls access to a work, to a performer's performance fixed in a sound recording or to a sound recording and whose use is authorized by the copyright owner; or

(b) restricts the doing — with respect to a work, to a performer's performance fixed in a sound recording or to a sound recording — of any act referred to in section 3, 15 or 18 and any act for which remuneration is payable under section 19.

41.1 (1) No person shall

(a) circumvent a technological protection measure within the meaning of paragraph (a) of the definition "technological protection measure" in section 41;

I'm sorry for that. I'm no lawyer, and although I'm a polyglot, legalese is not my language of choice, but I'll try to break this down for you:

1. It is a violation of copyright law to circumvent a "technological protection measure".
2. A "technological protection measure" is any device or component that restricts access to recordings of "a performer's performance".

Think about that for a moment, because the implications may not be obvious.

Let's say, just for the sake of the hypothetical, that I'm the proud owner of an iPhone. If I attempt to use my iPhone in a non-iTunes-compliant manner—enabling SSH access, for example—and I have even one "performer's performance fixed in a sound recording" on that device, I have become a criminal. At least, that's how it reads to me.

I think that the man who hacked the Xbox phrased it beautifully:

I own the things that I buy. If someone can tell me what I can and can’t run on my hardware, then I don’t own it.

—Andrew "bunnie" Huang,
in the afterword to Little Brother, by Cory Doctorow

I jailbroke my iPhone in large part because of the ideas expressed in Cory Doctorow's Little Brother. If this bill becomes law, I will in all likelihood become a criminal—and I'm okay with that. I think that's better than allowing the government to dictate how I may and may not use my own device.

For the record, I understand why Apple is so strict in the way it allows users and developers to interact with its technology (at least, I think I do): Apple wants its users to have a specific type of experience. Apple wants everything to work fairly smoothly, to interact in a well-regimented way, and to not confuse or overwhelm the user. Fair enough. I love Linux, but I certainly don't think that the average computer user would agree with me: there's a reason that OS X is so popular. And Apple has every right to do business the way that they see fit.

But I own this device. The fact that I can do this

$ ssh root@192.168.0.103
$ ls /User/Media/iTunes_Control/Music

should not make me a criminal—though I'll admit that some of the pleasure that I take from accessing that directory is due to the fact that it is named iTunes_Control.

It may be time to contact my member of parliament.

If you haven't read Cory Doctorow's Little Brother, I highly recommend it. It is gripping, real, entertaining, suspenseful, and simply an excellent tale, even if you're not a geek. You can find the full text (free of charge!) at Cory Doctorow's website, craphound.com. There you can also find the full text of Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, which is far and away my favourite futurist novel of all time.

Little Brother is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike license.

Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivative Works license.

Tip of the digital lock-pick to Gary Barbon.

---

Edit: I forgot to mention this, but CIPPIC seems to be a fairly good source of information on this matter—although, at the moment, the contents of their Bill C-32 FAQ are blank.

No Kidding

This just in:

A Canadian study has found that staff in health food stores routinely give advice aimed at selling expensive supplements instead of supporting the health of the consumer.
...
In 88 per cent of cases the health food stores provided advice that was either unscientific or poorly supported by science.

I never would have thought.

The Burden of Proof

I recently received the following email from a fellow skeptic. He is an eminently reasonable and likeable fellow, perhaps his only flaw being that he's quite enamoured of our friend C.S. Lewis (Wikipedia and Iron Chariots). I've agreed to read The Great Divorce, so perhaps I'll have a few posts related to it when I can find the time.

But back on track. This is the email that I received:

Hi Gem,

If you have time, could I get your opinion on this?

Let's assume that God exists and created the human race. Also assume that there is a person who would like to decide whether they believe he exists. With the character of the Judeo-Christian God in mind, do you believe the burden of proof would lie on God or on the person?

Thanks,
[REDACTED]

I put some measure of effort into my reply (much to the annoyance of my lovely wife, who eventually got fed up waiting for me and went to bed) and figured that it may be of some interest to others.

So here it is.

Hi, [REDACTED].

That's an interesting question.

The term "burden of proof" is generally used in cases when two people are discussing an assertion (such as "entity x exists", "I have been to place y", or "substance z is the cure for all disease"), and in this case the burden of proof always lies with the claimant. What this means is that the person making the claim cannot reasonably expect to be taken seriously unless they back up their claim in some way (usually with evidence proportional to the claim); as Carl Sagan would remind us, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." So the claim "I have a pet dog" will generally require less evidence than the claim "I have a pet leprechaun", as we know that dogs exist and that some people keep them as pets.

This isn't arbitrary, of course: it's necessary. The reason the burden of proof lies upon the claimant to prove his or her claim, and not the respondent to prove the claim false, is that the latter rule would force us to believe every concept presented that is beyond our understanding or the current scope of our investigation. What is less obvious, perhaps, is that it would also require us to hold contradictory beliefs! If I were to say to you (as Bertrand Russell might have), "There is a small china teapot orbiting the planet Venus," you [edit: the] second maxim would require you to believe me unless you were able to perform an exhaustive search of the second planet's skies. If I were to then tell you, "There are no china teapots in outer space," you would have to believe that, too! (Unless you were up for a somewhat protracted scavenger hunt in space.)

And so it seems clear that the burden of proof must lie with the claimant. Consequently, if someone were to make the claim "some god exists", the burden of proof would require that person to provide evidence for that assertion. Likewise, if someone were to make the claim "no gods exist", the burden of proof would require that person to do the same. (It's worth noting that I don't know anyone who would make the latter claim; although certain god concepts are logically inconsistent or contradict certain observable facts of the universe, there are plenty of god concepts that are completely unverifiable.) I have simply found no convincing reasons to believe that any gods exist (barring any "god is love" utterances and equivocations of the sort).

So what about the scenario that you mentioned?

The question you might ask is this: Does God want you to believe that he exists? If he were trying to convince you that he did exist, the burden of proof would lie with him. If the person is trying to decide whether or not God exists, he or she is simply evaluating evidence. Think of it like a trial: the prosecution is presenting evidence in an attempt to meet their burden of proof, while the judge is simply evaluating that evidence; the judge has no burden of proof. (It is worth noting in this case that the defence does not have to provide positive evidence, but simply has to refute the evidence of the prosecution.)

So the burden of proof doesn't lie with the person evaluating the evidence. If God wants that person to know that he exists, he has the burden of proof (and, assuming an omniscient god, presumably knows exactly what it would take to convince the person).

There's a lot more to discuss here (some of the common arguments, for example), but I'll leave that for another time. I do want to take a moment to discuss faith, however, just briefly.

Faith is something that I've never particularly understood, and it's never really been explained to me in a way that seemed coherent and reasonable—but perhaps "reasonable" isn't what it's supposed to be. In any event, it's been put to me in the past that if God were to provide sufficient evidence that he existed: we have to choose to believe, or he would be in violation of our free will*, and we would have no choice but to worship him. Perhaps you've encountered this one as well.

This particular argument fails spectacularly in several places. First, if we're speaking of the God of the Bible, there is a perfect counterexample readily at hand: Satan. I'm fairly sure that this character is meant to have known God pretty well, and still passed on the whole worship thing—instead fomenting rebellion and whatnot—so it seems clear that knowing that God exists doesn't prevent us from exercising our freedom of choice. This argument also flies directly in the face of empiricism: this one belief, among all beliefs in the universe, is not allowed to be made on the basis of evidence. This is called special pleading, and it is generally frowned upon. The argument may also assume that belief is governed by the will (a fault it shares with Pascal's Wager). Unfortunately, I don't feel particularly at liberty to believe whatever I want: my beliefs are dictated by evidence and by persuasive arguments.

When it comes right down to it, I don't think that anyone really believes based on faith—I could very well be mistaken, but I think that most people, if not all people, who believe do so because they think that they have a good reason, or they avoid thinking about it because it's uncomfortable. And hey, I certainly know that feeling—I really didn't want to give up steak.

Well, that's enough rambling for one night. I think that buried somewhere deep in the above you may find the answer to your question. If I missed it somehow, my apologies! Just let me know.

All the best.
Gem

* I should mention in passing that I don't actually believe in free will, the way most people mean it. But that's a discussion for another time. ;)

I went to bed, but realised that there was one more thing that I wanted to add. So back to the computer I went.

One addendum:

I should also mention another place in which the "proof denies our free will" argument fails, just to put a more personal spin on things. I can tell you that if God does exist, and the Christian Bible (both New and Old Testaments) accurately describes his actions and character, I don't find him particularly worthy of worship. Not to belabour the point, but this god does strike me as a bit ruthless, pretty, and barbaric, and although the New Testament is often praised for its "turn the other cheek" mentality, it also introduces the concept of infinite punishment for finite crimes: in the Old Testament, once you were dead, that was that—no more suffering, whether inflicted upon you by God or by men—but with the New Testament we get the idea of Hell. The thought that any crime could warrant torment without end is simply morally repugnant to me, and many of the crimes listed in the Bible barely seem worthy of the name.

You may be interested to know that by denying the holy spirit I have committed what is called in Matthew and Mark the only unforgivable sin. If true, there's nothing for it: it's an eternity of torture for me! But doesn't it seem odd that a serial child rapist could repent upon his deathbed and spend eternity in paradise while those pursuing reason and free inquiry would be damned?

If I ever do meet this Yaweh fellow, I hope that he has time for a nice long chat before he throws the lever and trap door opens below my feet, because if nothing else he would certainly be capable of sating my curiosity on a great many subjects.

I apologise for the typos in the above: it was written well after midnight.

Any thoughts? Did I get it right?

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