Steelmanning Russell's Teapot
Bertrand Russell was an Englishman active in the fields of philosophy and mathematics in the twentieth-century. He is remembered for pioneering analytical philosophy to counter British idealism and prioritising the logical aspects of mathematics over its numerical aspects.
Steelmanning is the opposite of strawmanning; instead of attacking a weak, non-existent caricature of an ideological opponent's argument, a steelmanner improves the opposing argument into its best version and then refutes it, even though the opponent did not argue the steelmanned version. Russell already had an impressive record of being a smart man, and he also made a well-known religion-targeted argument proving the philosophical burden of proof is on the one making claims. The analogy he used is called Russell's teapot, which I will explain and steelman to refute its application to arguments regarding religion.
Steelmanning Russell's Teapot
Bertrand Russell posited an analogy of him hypothetically claiming there is a teapot of fine china orbiting the Sun. Rather than providing evidence for this claim, Russell in this analogy simply says the teapot is too small to be observed via a telescope, and turns the burden of proof into a burden of disproof his hypothetical critics must do. Russell goes on to explain if he sounds ridiculous in this analogy, then the same should be applied to those proclaiming the existence of God, stating the only difference between a hypothetical believer in an orbital teapot and a theist is that the latter's beliefs are normalised via scriptures, places of worship, and being taught to children.
Russell's teapot is already flawed in that it compares apples to oranges, missing the mark on why many theists believe in God. Whilst a teapot orbiting the Sun has no influence and no reason to be true, the concept of God is made to at least explain how the universe came to be and how everything else happened. I will begin my steelman with fixing this problem by saying the hypothetical teapot is a sentient teapot which created the universe and all that is in it. This makes questioning the teapot's existence actually necessary, and also gives it the same weight as a religious truth claim. I can also challenge God's existence by saying it also does not answer much regarding metaphysics, but only delays such mysteries with a mysterious, impersonal god we do not know the origins of or why it is the specific god that created the universe.
The next flaw in Bertrand Russell's analogy is that even if normal telescopes cannot see the teapot, humans would still have the technology to detect its presence. No one has ever seen a black hole, yet via technology, we know they very likely exist. This is unlike the concept of God, which is a metaphysical concept, not a scientific concept, easily avoiding any need to materially prove it. To fix this flaw, I will take a similar analogy from astronomer Carl Sagan and apply it to the teapot, making it as easy to prove with science and technology as God:
"Now, what's the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all? If there's no way to disprove my contention, no conceivable experiment that would count against it, what does it mean to say that my dragon exists?"
Now that our teapot creator deity is invisible, incorporeal, and invisibly creates, I can build it up further by exploring other reasons people may believe in God. Some theists say they believe in God due to personal experiences with Him, contrasting teapots which no one "feels" or "encounters." I overcome this by simply dismissing such experiences as subjective. If I said I had a personal experience with the teapot god leading to me believing in its existence, I would look silly! If we reject "teapot sightings," it makes sense to do the same with God.
Belief in God is also rooted in history, psychology, and culture. I dismiss such reasons as subjective and possibly false, considering cultures and historical peoples have had other objectively wrong views like demons causing diseases and geocentrism. Hallucinations, confirmation bias, and cultural conditioning all function as easy ways to bypass the aforementioned reasons for theism. Time and tradition do not prove beliefs, but rather, they only familiarise them. I will also say there is a hypothetical culture belonging to a fictional tribe somewhere in Lesotho that worships my teapot.
Philosopher Alvin Platinga criticised Russell's teapot for assuming there is no proof against the teapot by citing how if a teapot got into outer space in the first place, it would have been shot out of the atmosphere by a country with powerful space-shot technology, which would have been a waste of resources and all over the news. I rebutt this by specifying my teapot god as being primordial, which was already implied when I attributed hypothetical divinity to it.
To finish my steelman, I rebutt the many philosophical arguments for God such as the cosmological one and the teological one by pointing out the amount of philosophers who have found such arguments to not be completely convincing or logically solid. Even if such arguments were, I argue they at most support deism and not any religion that elevates God from a prime mover to a being who answers prayers and actively mandates laws onto humanity.
Refuting the Steelman
I will begin my deconstruction of my steelman of Russell's teapot by invoking atheist literary critic James Wood's own criticism of the original argument by saying it reifies God, turning the abstract philosophical argument of a Creator into a hyper-specific teapot and therefore not being applicable to criticising theism in general. The last bit is important, as my steelman cannot be used to disprove theism in general, but rather, only criticising specific religions. Speaking of which, claiming there is no god and that everything came from nothing is just as big of a claim as theistic ones, and it arguably does not even fit Occam's razor, with it not being simpler to believe everything came from nothing than it is to believe everything came from something. So, if an argument begins with an atheistic claim, the burden of proof is upon the atheist, and they cannot invoke Occam's razor or Russell's teapot.
Whilst personal experiences with God can be argued as being fallacious due to anecdotal arguments not being sound and objective, they still have a good basis. We personally experience love, hunger, memories, and moral intuition, and we know such experiences actually exist. Millions (if not billions) of people across different times, places, and social contexts have had experiences with the divine, further strengthening the basis for at the very least a very abstract concept of God. Blanket-dismissing every spiritual encounter as a hallucination is reminiscent of the ad hoc fallacy, especially when applied to perfectly healthy, energetic, and sane individuals, as it conveniently throws out the aforementioned abstract basis for God found throughout every era and social context's common trend of spirituality.
Dismissing all cultural, historical, and psychological reasons for theism as simply being from possibly wrong worldviews is fallacious - more specifically, it falls under the genetic fallacy. Every culture has at least some correct views, like murder being evil and winter bringing snow. Again, since religious beliefs are unlike belief in teapots in that they are consistent throughout history and society, it is very important to consider if there is truth in the origins of such beliefs.
My steelman mentioned earlier that many philosophical arguments for the existence of God only prove an impersonal, deistic god, but that alone gives much more answers than the existence of a teapot is. If I were to counter this by saying my teapot gives as many answers due to my steelman making it a god, I would ask for the proofs for this specific perception of God, just as others do when looking at proofs for, say, Islam or Christianity.
Another part of my steelman to respond to is its incorporation of Carl Sagan saying an invisible, incorporeal dragon is not different than no dragon at all. If a tree falls in the forest without anyone seeing or hearing it, it still fell down. We cannot see love or gravity, but we can prove they exist, even with less scientific methods like in the case of proving the former. It should also be noted the existence of God does not push back mystery like what one of the first parts of my steelman claimed. There are plenty of arguments for where God came from or which religion has the correct perception of Him that can be covered in other articles later on this blog.
Overall Conclusion
Although Russell's teapot does fine in showing big claims require big evidence, it goes about it the wrong way regarding religion. It heavily relies on scientism, which is flawed: for example, one does not have to observe the age of consent under a microscope to know it exists. If one close-mindedly starts off with atheistic naturalism, they will end up with atheistic naturalism, which does not help with metaphysics. Russell's teapot also wrongly misrepresents atheism as being the "default" in metaphysics or being a philosophically dumb and simple tradition. It lazily takes points which may be valid in criticising specific religions' perceptions of God and applies them to the whole of theism, fallaciously reifying the general concept of God. Even when I equalise the importance of God and the importance of a hypothetical orbital teapot by attributing divinity to the latter in my steelman, it still falls into reification, equating a general philosophical concept into a hyper-specific perception of that concept.
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