Russell's Tea Party

Russell's Tea Party

Drawn by Joe HF for the Out there in space challenge. Part of the album Space.

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Somewhere out in the asteroid belt, there's a matching porcelain tea set. You can't prove me wrong, because no-one's managed to map out the smallest fragments of the asteroid belt yet. Therefore everyone should believe it exists.

Obviously, this claim and logic are absurd. Just because we haven't mapped (and may never map) the whole asteroid belt, is no reason to believe in a magical flying tea party. Unfortunately, many people use the exact same logic every day, to justify their beliefs in a range of mythical entities. "You can't prove me wrong, so it exists"

Drawing based on an idea of the great philosopher Bertrand Russell

© 2013 Joe HF. Public domain under CC0.

Space Tea Teapot Cup Bertrand Russell Philosophy Religion Asteroid

Sounds like a fallacy I learned in Philosophy class: Fallacy of Ignorance. There's no proof so it must be true. —  uneekL4evr
I could prove the existence of that tea set somewhere out in the asteroid belt (Assuming a matching porcelain tea set is something that exists within the wider solar system, and if already having checked out any other reasonable place, I could prove the existence of that tea set somewhere out in the asteroid belt - or alternatively assuming an arbitrary value for "prove" or "exist") —  Lunar Eclipse
"I wanted very much to learn to draw, for a reason that I kept to myself: I wanted to convey an emotion I have about the beauty of the world."
Richard Feynman
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