Hitchens's razor

Hitchens's razor is an epistemological razor asserting that the burden of proof regarding the truthfulness of a claim lies with whoever made the claim; if this burden is not met, the claim is unfounded and its opponents need not argue further in order to dismiss it. It is named, echoing Occam's razor, for the journalist and writer Christopher Hitchens, who, in a 2003 Slate article, formulated it thus: "What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence."[1][2] The dictum also appears in God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, a book by Hitchens published in 2007.[3]

Hitchens's razor is actually an English translation of the Latin proverb "Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur",[4] (What is freely asserted is freely deserted.) which has been widely used at least since the early 19th century.[5] However Hitchens's English rendering of the phrase has made it more widely known to the English-speaking audience. It is used, for example, to counter presuppositional apologetics.

See also

References

  1. ↑ Hitchens, Christopher (20 October 2003). "Mommie Dearest". Slate. Retrieved 24 April 2016.
  2. ↑ McGrattan, Cillian (2016). The Politics of Trauma and Peace-Building: Lessons from Northern Ireland. Abingdon: Routledge. p. 2. ISBN 978-1138775183.
  3. ↑ Hitchens, Christopher (2007). God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. New York, NY: Twelve Books. p. 150. ISBN 978-1843545743.
  4. ↑ Jon R. Stone, The Routledge Dictionary of Latin Quotations (2005), p. 101.
  5. ↑ e.g. The Classical Journal, Vol. 40 (1829), p. 312.
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