The Burden of Proof

I, as an atheist, am often confronted by the idea of the burden of proof. It’s something that seems so simple, yet gets people so worked up. It is defined as the duty to prove a disputed assertation and the burden of providing that proof falls to the person making the assertation. To my rational brain it seems as though it would be difficult to argue any other way of applying the burden of proof. So, let’s look at some examples.

In criminal law with an assumption of innocent until proven guilty, the burden of proof is on the prosecutorial side of the system. They must prove, usually to beyond reasonable doubt, that the person is guilty. The person charged with the crime is presumed to be innocent, making their burden far less – they simply must maintain that position. Should evidence be produced that sways the presumption from innocent to guilty, the burden of proof shifts in the opposite direction.

In philosophy, the burden of proof arises when two people have a dispute over a claim made by one or the other of the participants in the conversation. The claimant is the one who must prove their case. The person disputing it, if they make no claim of their own, has no burden of proof. Often the person making the claim will try to shit the burden of proof to the person disputing them by claiming that their position is correct because the other person can’t prove it’s not correct. This is known as a logical fallacy, specifically the argument from ignorance.

You can get into all sorts of debates over what constitutes proof, and what the strength of that evidence may be. This will vary depending on what field you're talking about. In subjects like mathematics, a proof is very rigid; in philosophy, it is more subjective.

I have used the example of the baseball in previous posts, but for anyone who hasn’t seen it or heard it before, it goes like this:

The burden of proof lies upon the claimant, in this case, the person with the baseball. In this case, the proof is quite easy to produce, and not everything can be proven, but that’s ok. What you don’t try to shift the burden to the other person because you can’t back up your claim. You'll earn a lot more respect and be given a lot more leeway if you simply state that you don't have proof, that you are operating from a position of faith, or that you cannot explain the proof in a logically sufficient manner.