Appeal to Ignorance Fallacy

Often when debating arguments about faith and other ideology, we tend to run across the highly fallacious appeal to ignorance.  The purpose of this post is to reveal this fallacy for what it is, and my hope is that by doing this, I will teach how to identify this mistake in everyday argument so that you will also feel my pain.  Why, you ask?  Because the appeal to ignorance has become a virus in politics today, and it has been used far too frequently in religion.  And I won't have it!  I won't!  Atheists and skeptics unite!   Psh.. not really.  But I think I might vomit a little in my mouth if I have to listen to another argument accompanied by that insultingly patronizing tone: "oh you poor thing, we just don't know..  It's a mystery..  and you just have to 'trust' there's a god and have faith.. there's so much we don't know in the world, it had to come from somewhere.... blah blah blah... [insert pseudo-profundity here] ...jesus, jesus, jesus...  blah blah blah... he loves you, and he sacrificed everything for humanity to absolve us of our sin and debt to god..."  Even though he didn't really die, went to a better place, had absolute foreknowledge of his fate, and thus didn't really sacrifice jack shit.  Offended?  Good.  That's the only way to get through sometimes.  It's called provocative therapy.  Get used to it.  ;)

An appeal to ignorance reasons that "we have not proven god does not exist, and this is evidence that we cannot consider any such claim as true.  If we cannot consider this claim to be true, we must consider it as false.  Therefore the logically opposing claim that 'god does exist' must be considered as true."

It is the idea that a position is necessarily true because it has not been proven false (or that we must consider a position necessarily false because it has not been proven true).  The breakdown of such poor reasoning looks as follows:

1.  God either exists or does not exist

2.  It has not been disproven that “god exists,” and therefore it cannot be considered           as false

3.  If we cannot consider “god exists” to be false, we must consider it as true.

4.  Thus the assertion that “god exists,” must be considered as true. 

5.  It has not been proven that “god does not exist,” and therefore we cannot                        consider this claim as true

6.  If we cannot consider “god does not exist” as true,                                                                 we must consider it as false

7.  Thus, the assertion that “god does not exist” must be considered as false

Premise (2) and (5) ignore the consideration that premise (1) may not be formulated to be a falsifiable claim in that one can discover it's truth value.  Also, both of these premises admit ignorance:  that no one has the satisfactory evidence or argument to prove or disprove premise (1), and instead of acknowledging this, people often equivocate “has not been disproved” with “must therefore be considered true”; and they also equivocate “has not been proven” with “must therefore be considered false.”   Just because something is not disproven, does not mean we cannot in the future disprove said claim, and simply because something has not been proven, this does not entail that we cannot eventually prove said claim.  Also, we can technically "consider" or "believe" anything we like in our ignorance.

To break it down for those still having trouble, these types of arguments follow the basic form of:
If a proposition has not been disproved, then it cannot be considered false.
If it cannot be considered false, it must be considered true.

And of course the counterpart to this fallacy, often used against atheists by theists:
If a proposition has not been proven, then it cannot be considered true.
If it cannot be considered true, it must be considered false.

  

Your intuition dear reader is correct.  Just because something has not been proven or disproven beyond all doubt, does not require that we must, or cannot, consider a claim false or true on those merits.  And it certainly does not necessitate that we must consider the opposite claim with the opposite truth value.  In logic, a disjunction (either A or B) can be valid if both A and B are true, both A and B are false, or they can hold opposing truth values.  

Sometimes these arguments take the form of a false dilemma fallacy:

1.  Either god exists now or god never existed

2.  It is not proven that god never existed, and it is not disproven that god exists now (and via previous arguments...)

3.  god must exist now

Premise one ignores a third possible option that both claims are false:  God existed in the past, but exists no longer.  Premise two assumes the burden of proof is on the side opposite of the positive existential claim that “god exists now.”

The burden of proof for any existential claim about something (that has yet to be proven to exist) is always on the positive position that says “X exists."  The burden of proof is NOT on the person who suggests the claim “X does not exist," in the absence of evidence for X.  Suppose in reality Fairies have never existed, and therefore left no evidence of their existence.  If something does not, and has never existed, there will be no evidence to falsify that something.  There is no evidence that I can present that will adequately demonstrate Fairies never existed if said fairies never lived to provide said evidence of their existence.  There is no evidence for me to point to, and therefore it is a non-falsifiable statement.  I could present evidence for a competing theory that "fairies are a fiction created by man," and this can count as legitimate evidence for it's falsification.   

If we do not follow the rule that the burden of proof is always on the positive existential claim, then we can wind up saying things like “Unicorns exist!” Opponent:  “prove to me that they do, so that I may be justified in believing your claim”  You:  “Prove that they do not exist!  See?  You cannot!  Thus unicorns must be considered to have real existence” 

In summary:  Ignorance is NOT evidence of anything but our ignorance.   If ignorance did count as valid evidence, then I could just as easily argue that:

1.  Either god exists or god does not exist

2.  It has not been proven that “god exists”

3.  Thus we cannot consider “god exists” as true

4.  If we cannot consider “god exists” as true, we must consider it as false

5.  It has not been disproved that “god does not exist”

6.  Thus we cannot consider “god does not exist” as false

7.  If we cannot consider “god does not exist” as false, we must consider it                               as true

8.  Thus from premises 4 and 7, we must consider it to be true that god doesn't exist

So although the "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence," we cannot then assert that the lack of evidence counts as evidence for either absence or presence.  There may be evidence, however, of competing
theories that render your theory (of god, fairies, unicorns) as unnecessary or
absurd, and THIS can be used as positive evidence
to prove a negative claim as I have argued previously.