[ExI] Fw: Re: atheists declare religions as scams.

[Adrian Tymes]

2011/1/31 John Clark <jonkc at bellsouth.net>:
> On Jan 30, 2011, at 1:59 PM, Darren Greer wrote:
> > I don't see why an agnostic by definition should accord respect to a
> > believer or non-believer.
>
> There is not one scrap of evidence that a teapot is in orbit around the
> planet Uranus and there is not one scrap of evidence that there is not such
> a vessel; nevertheless I do not treat both possibilities with equal respect
> so I am not a Uranus teapot agnostic. I am a teapot atheist.

Actually, there are scraps of evidence against.  Voyager 2 made a swing by
Uranus, and failed to see such a vessel.  Further, no telescope-based
observations - not even the ones that can detect extrasolar planets by the
wobble they impart on their suns - has yet detected a similar gravitational
anomaly in Uranus.

A teapot in orbit around Uranus could conceivably have escaped such
observations, but it is unlikely, and there is no evidence in favor of such a
teapot.  Furthermore, anyone seriously proposing such a teapot would
likely make an observably deliberate effort to make the proposal untestable
- and when tests come up to prove or disprove it anyway, the response
(possibly preemptive) would be to revise the proposal to invalidate that
particular test.