“That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence”

[Ripox]

I was browsing the Computer forums as always and I saw a user with this in their signature:
" “That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence” – Christopher Hitchens"

So I remembered that in my junior year of high school, I was assigned a short written task to discuss that quote in a "agree or disagree" situation. I pulled up the document (Looking back, it really wasn't that good). It was just a spur-of-the-moment short homework task so I didn't spend more than 40mins on it.

Anyways, here was what I wrote:

Christopher Hitchens once said that conclusions drawn without the use of evidence can, essentially, be dismissed and ignored without using evidence to do so. It is in this light that one must consider the ethical implications of such behavior as well as whether or not it applies to the ways of knowing which include reason, perception, and emotion.


In an ethical sense, some people may find Hitchens’ statement rather disturbing. Consider a hypothetical situation: A man, jokingly, calls the Pentagon and tells them that he knows of a bomb hidden in the Pentagon building that is about to go off. The Pentagon would, in essence, have two options now: To investigate the report or to not investigate the report. If they followed Hitchens’ statement, then they can dismiss the report as the man did not provide evidence. Would it be ethical to do nothing given the knowledge that there is potentially a bomb threat where lives are at stake? If the bomb did indeed go off, how would that rest on their conscience and morals? A sense of duty created from ethics and morals may push many people to investigate assertions regardless of whether or not they use evidence. A similar situation occurred in Abu Dhabi in the November month of 2010. A renowned local newspaper, The National, had quoted a criminal investigator of the Abu Dhabi police: “It is our job to investigate any claim or notification that we receive from any average individual, especially if there is a chance that the suspicions might prove to be correct,” (http://www.thenational.ae/news/uae-n...as-false-alarm)


Another issue to consider is: what defines evidence? The built-in renowned dictionary found in Apple’s Operating System defines evidence as: “The available body of facts or information indicating whether a belief or proposition is true or valid”. The nature of this definition is quite subjective, indicating that what one may consider ‘evidence’ another may not. Such is the case with court cases and trials, where evidence may be dismissed or accepted, based on conformity to laws and subjective acceptance to the judge and jury.


One way of knowing is reason. Christopher Hitchens’ previously mentioned statement is a type of logic called: argumentum ad ignorantiam, also called ‘appeal to ignorance’. This is where an assertion is inferred as false because that inference isn’t proved to be true or it is not known to be true. This is based off of the way of thinking called: absence of evidence. As a result, this may be considered a logical fallacy and arguments based off of appeal to ignorance, such as Hitchens’ statement, may fail because the lack of evidence for an assertion is not proof that the assertion is false.


Relating to reason is mathematics. There are multiple conjectures in mathematics that leave parts of the mathematics community divided, some may agree with it and some may disagree. At the same time, neither side can provide a counterclaim to prove it false and in mathematics, there is no way to ‘prove’ something correct 100% unless a counterclaim does not exist, so there is no accepted ‘evidence’ that it is true. If Hitchens’ statement is followed, these conjectures, and to an extent: all conjectures, should be dismissed because they have been asserted without evidence and in the mathematics community the only evidence is that which disproves something. This is a logical fallacy and also goes against morals and progression as we would not get anywhere by dismissing everything subjectively. A prime example of such a conjecture is that of Goldbach’s conjecture. It states that: every even number greater than 4 can be written as the sum of two odd prime numbers. (http://plus.maths.org/content/mathem...ach-conjecture) It is one of the oldest and best-known mathematical issues that have not been proven true or false. This conjecture holds true up until 4 x 1018 and many generally assume it to be true, yet it remains unproven.


Emotion is interesting when Hitchens’ statement is applied. If I make the assertion that a friend of mine is angry, should my assertion be dismissed? I lack evidence, but what is evidence when explaining emotions? Different emotions mean different things to people. What I consider happy, another may not. As a result, who decides if my evidence is substantial enough to ‘prove’ my assertion? If my friend says he is not angry, but I believe him to be angry because he flipped a table, which evidence is correct? Hitchens’ statement seems to be more applicable to ‘objective’ evidence rather than something intangible like emotions, and as such, it cannot effectively apple to emotion as a way of knowing. That being said, it brings me back to the issue of what objective evidence is or if it even exists? And, if it does, does it exist for everyone or just the people who think it is objective? If it does not apply to everyone and only exists for those who think it to be objective, does that not make it subjective in nature? It cannot be effectively applied to all situations.


Perception is interesting. If I see something, and somebody else with me does not, which evidence is the one that is ‘better’? My eye-witness account or his eye-witness account of not seeing something? If this situation negates the evidence as a whole, what are the criteria for evidence? Hitchens has a lot to explain for his statement to make sense in all areas of knowledge. Additionally, if I said I saw something and there was supposedly no evidence, does that mean my claim should be dismissed? What if I saw a gunman about to mug a family? This ties back to the earlier paragraph about ethics.


Natural sciences can be brought into this discussion, as well. Scientists create hypotheses, lacking evidence, and then test them in hopes that their experiment will support their hypothesis. If Hitchens’ statement was taken to heart by the scientific community, wouldn’t the unproved hypotheses always be dismissed? This would mean there would be no progress in the scientific community, making it harder to progress as a society. Some would consider it immoral to simply dismiss assertions that lack evidence instead of investigating them to prove that they are either true or false, which only adds to our knowledge. Hitchens’ statement may limit creativity and imagination if children are taught at a young age to not draw assertions that lack evidence, because they will be dismissed without evidence. As a result, the world may see a declining rate of innovation and progress, something counterproductive.


Overall, Hitchens’ statement has many faults. It does not account for ethics and morals. It does not work in all areas of knowledge. It can be considered a logical fallacy. There are everyday situations in which using the statement would mean not being able to achieve important tasks. Hitchens’ statement does not help the human condition and may be considered immoral. By investigating assertions, regardless of whether or not they have evidence, more knowledge is gained than simply dismissing that which is based without evidence. Hitchens is wrong.

Thoughts? Do you agree with me?

[Deleted]

Evidence is the pinnacle of proof, until that point it is baseless speculation.

[Deleted]

Thoughts? Do you agree with me?

You've seen a quote from a signature on a forum, not read what it's actually about, taken it a face value, out of context and gibbered for a bit....

The quote is taken from 'God is not great' and this is the whole passage:

"The "evidence" for faith, then, seems to leave faith looking even weaker than it would if it stood, alone and unsupported, all by itself. What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence. This is even more true when the "evidence" eventually offered is so shoddy and self-interested"

[Deleted]

Mooboy is completely right. Context is very important here. So your hypothetical situation has no relevance. Your defention of evidence is misguided. etc etc etc

[Endus]

The issue with the argument is that it does not, on its face, deal with arguments of logic. A lot of ethical issues can be resolved logically, in a fairly objective sense, but there's no real "evidence" to support them beyond that logic, which under some interpretations wouldn't count. And I'm sure that's not what Hitchens meant, in the first place.

Otherwise, he's entirely correct. Your example of a bomb threat to the Pentagon is flawed; the claim that someone has personal knowledge of such a bomb is, itself, evidence.

Also; it is not an appeal to ignorance. He's not saying that the lack of evidence proves that it cannot be true, he's saying it should be dismissed until evidence is provided to suggest that it is true. That's just skepticism, which is fundamentally logical and rational. If you point to a house on a hill, painted white, and ask me what color the sides of the house we cannot see are painted, the skeptic in me says "I don't know". If you were to argue they must be white, Hitchens' statement applies; until you provide evidence, there's no reason for me to agree that you must be correct. His statement isn't an appeal to ignorance, it's a refutation of appeals to ignorance. If you assert something to be true, and provide no evidence, you have made an appeal to ignorance. Therefore, since you've asserted something without evidence and that means it is fallacious, I can dismiss it.

Your critique of it with regards to natural sciences is also totally misplaced, since the scientific method is fundamentally based on the exact same principle; unless you can replicate your results and demonstrate the validity, with evidence, nobody will accept your claims.

[Pitkanen]

Life itself presents a great amount of evidence that we use to put into context the events and the questions of why/how things operate. Sometimes that provides enough evidence to support an idea or a theory, and when you brush aside that evidence to make the Hitchens theory true in a case... well first you have to find evidence that the evidence in question isn't evidence at all (:

[s_bushido]

Life itself presents a great amount of evidence that we use to put into context the events and the questions of why/how things operate. Sometimes that provides enough evidence to support an idea or a theory, and when you brush aside that evidence to make the Hitchens theory true in a case... well first you have to find evidence that the evidence in question isn't evidence at all (:

Just because you call something evidence...it doesn't mean that it actually is. The change in my pocket isn't evidence of currency fairies, no matter how much I might claim otherwise.

[Deleted]

The OP didn't understand the statement.
How many things can truly be claimed without evidence?

As long as we have no true lie detector the only things you might claim that are true without evidence are your thoughts.
What can you claim without proof else?

We dismiss certainty that no bomb exists because we have no proof for it.
Because we actually know bombs exists and somebody has a motive, a claimed intention and the abillity to build a bomb
is easy to obtain.(not a good one thought)


To do a risk evaluation of Gods exitence as Atheists you have to ask the same questions. Does any God exists for sure? Did those deity proof its Ability to judge People after Dead?
As long as the above is not a given i see no need to dismiss my certainty just as security option to prevent a worst case scenario.