What if you’re wrong?

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Similarly, the Invisible Pink Unicorn is another satire on arguments for faith in the supernatural – any sort of faith, not merely religious – without proof. As Wikipedia notes:


The IPU argument is actually more subtle than it appears because it confronts the contradictions inherent in many faith-based or supernatural arguments. As Wikipedia explains,

It is common when discussing the Invisible Pink Unicorn to point out that because she is invisible, no one can prove that she does not exist (or indeed that she is not pink). This is a parody of similar theistic claims about God—that God, as creator of the universe, is not subject to its laws and thus not physically detecting him tells us nothing about his existence or lack thereof. The Invisible Pink Unicorn is an illustration which attempts to demonstrate the absurdity of citing attributes and a lack of evidence as proof of a deity’s existence. Her two defining attributes, invisibility and color (pink), are inconsistent and contradictory; this is part of the satire. The paradox of something being invisible yet having visible characteristics (e.g., color) is reflected in some East Asian cultures, wherein an “invisible red string” is said to connect people who have a shared or linked destiny.

In the West, “psychics” claiming to see colourful auras can be asked the same question: if they are invisible, how do they have colour? Colour is a factor of reflected or emitted light. An invisible aura, by definition, can’t emit light. No, this is not the one-hand-clapping koan.

The Flying Teapot was an argument put forth by Bertrand Russell, in a 1952 magazine article:


Carl Sagan used Russell’s allegory in his superb book, Demon-Haunted World to point out the flaws in supernatural beliefs that depend on unseen or invisible spirits.

A surprising amount of debate has arisen over Russell’s metaphor, mostly dissecting it as a philosophical argument rather than a satire. Here’s one comment from Wikipedia:


Personally, I think the objectors miss the point of satire.

A Flying Teapot may seen trivial because no one really expects crockery to fly through space. But dress it up, add some blinking lights, an engine, a crew quarters and a hangar door and it becomes believable. After all, there are millions of people who believe a more sophisticated image of the same airborne crockery: the UFO. Believing in UFOs, in alien abductions – or chemtrails, Bulgarian pyramids, Loch Ness monsters, the New World Order and so on – is no less absurd than believing in a Flying Teapot; it simply seems less ridiculous to the believers because it has been dressed in a similitude of credibility.

Russell was making a point that any sort of belief that depends on faith rather than empirical proof, is a part of the same intellectual topology as religion. They are all philosophically homeomorphic, like a doughnut and a teacup:


It doesn’t take any great intellectual effort to reshape a belief in the “spirit world” into a conspiracy theory about chemtrails or UFO cover-ups. Or to morph from one religious faith to another.

Although I doubt Russell had the Kalama Sutta in mind when he wrote his comment, it is certainly appropriate. In this famous Buddhist scripture, the Buddha warns listeners not to accept anything simply because it is traditional, is generally accepted, or is taught by someone with a title, but rather to use your own faculties for critical thinking to determine if a belief is worthwhile:

Do not go upon what has been acquired by repeated hearing,
nor upon tradition,
nor upon rumor,
nor upon what is in a scripture,
nor upon surmise,
nor upon an axiom,
nor upon specious reasoning,
nor upon another’s seeming ability,

(In another post I might address the vexing question about whether Buddhism is a religion or an ethical philosophy, and discuss the growing trend in Western Buddhism to slough off the theistic accumulations some schools have gathered over the millennia and get back to the core teachings.)

Dawkins turns the question around and asks the student “What if you’re wrong about the great JuJu under the sea?”

There is no answer. Faith, like politics, is binary: you cannot simultaneously believe in Jehovah and JuJu; Jehovah and Zeus; Ra and Moloch; Liberal and Conservative. It’s either-or. JuJu cannot exist in a universe where Jehovah exists.*

For the faithful, there is only one truth: their own. The faithful cannot accept that another faith has that truth, even a part of it, let alone an alternate, equally valid truth. The student cannot answer without defending her own faith against the other.

And, of course, the question postulates that JuJu and Jehovah have equal reality, equal credibility; that you can compare them as equals, like makes of cars or laptops, and pit them against one another in some theological ring.

Perhaps the better question might be, “What if I’m right?” This asks her to question not just her own faith, but the deistic and theistic notions of all faith. She has to consider Dawkins’ broader atheism in her answer, not just the narrow notion of another belief set or another deity.

Dawkins correctly points out to the student that she is also an unbeliever – in those faiths and cultural implementations outside her own background. “You know what it’s like not to believe in a particular faith because you’re not a Muslim, you’re not a Hindu. Why aren’t you a Hindu? Because you happened to have been brought up in America, not in India…”

Well, of course, people can and do change their religions outside their own cultural milieu, and they do it all the time. All those Caucasian Hare Krishnas weren’t born and raised in Mumbai or Calcutta. They are mostly WASPs who opted to believe in another god. The same sort of thing got into the news recently about suburban white kids from London, Ontario, who became radical Muslims.

We all start with our cultural-imbued preconceptions. In order to change, we have to first deny them. This is one reason the Krishna wear Indian, not Western clothes and eat Indian, not Western food: to help the denial. The whole culture has to be changed, not just the words of a prayer, to make the change in faith effective. Break the ingrained routines and habits, get rid of the familiar to break the will.

It works. Especially if you’re a willing subject.

Like the tea cup and doughnut, these people were all able to reshape their beliefs from one form to another without any cutting or gluing because religious belief of any sort is, topologically speaking, all the same. And although Dawkins assumed her background, the student who raised the question might have been asking him about the Great JuJu rather than Jehovah. Or Allah or Krishna or Moloch. Intellectually and philosophically, is there any real difference between them in this context?

I don’t think so. But you have to be able to step outside faith to see that. His question allowed her to remain inside hers.

In his book, The God Delusion, Dawkins writes, “We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.”

I think that’s a more important point. Everyone disbelieves something another believes in. Dawkins is also quoted as expanding on this notion, saying, “Everybody is an atheist in saying that there is a god – from Ra to Shiva – in which he does not believe. All that the serious and objective atheist does is to take the next step and to say that there is just one more god to disbelieve in.”

You can view the original question and answer here:


* If you argue that myth and a historical religion are different, you are missing the point. From the perspective of faith, everyone else’s religion is mythology. The plausibility of any religious claim, text or story rests on whether the reader starts with a belief in it. It’s that binary nature of faith: my faith is true, therefore no other faith can be. My religion is the historical truth, therefore all other religions are mere mythology.

Luke Muelhauser makes some good points in his post, although I think he’s too apologetic. He concludes:

What I am saying is that both God and Zeus share the property of being a poor explanation for the unexplained. What I’m saying is that just because I say “I don’t know” when faced with the unknown and Christians say “Goddidit” does not mean the Christian answer has any plausibility. Having an answer does not win you any points unless you give me reasons why your answer is plausible. A nutjob may proclaim undetected alien surgery as the cause of his mother’s cancer remission, but this explanation does not gain any credibility simply because the doctors can’t explain the remission.

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