"Christopher A. Lee" <calee@optonline.net> wrote in message
news:ncv8hvcers4ejec04u4ehe1tu43dutpgiv@4ax.com...
> On Tue, 15 Jul 2003 16:32:43 GMT, Virgil <vmhjr2@comcast.net> wrote:
>
> >In article <8rUQa.58305$wk6.14223@rwcrnsc52.ops.asp.att.net>,
> > "Bob White" <threeball@hotmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> >> The burden of proof is always on the person asserting something."
> >
> >So that when we say simply that we do not believe that there is any
> >proof of the nonexistence of gods, anyone who claims this is wrong
> >bears the burden of proof.
>
> It doesn't have to be "proof". Just reason. Although septic imagines
> that a falsifiable inductive conclusion is argument ad ignorantium.

Explanation of that rather cryptic remark, please?

If a statement is falsifiable, "There are no ETs" for example, then it is
not argument _ad ignorantiam_, it is merely a scientific (empirical, in that
it is possible to know it if it were false) statement that stands unless
knocked down by evidence of ETs, don't you agree?

Virg is still just trying to get away with arguing _ad ignorantiam_ that
there is no proof the theist 'invisible
X' hypopthesis is false (just as theologs have argued for thousands of
years, and so much so that Copi even cites it as an example of the fallacy
in his textbook), don't you agree?

---
<quote>
Famous in the history of science is the argument _ad ignorantiam_ given in
criticism of Galileo, when he showed leading astronomers of his time the
mountains and valleys on the moon that could be seen through his telescope.
Some scholars of that age, absolutely convinced that the moon was a perfect
sphere, as theology and Aristotelian science had long taught, argued against
Galileo that, although we see what appear to be mountains and valleys, the
moon is in fact a perfect sphere, because all its apparent irregularities
are filled in by an invisible crystalline substance. And this hypothesis,
which saves the perfection of the heavenly bodies, Galileo could not prove
false!
</quote>
(Copi and Cohen, _Introduction to Logic_, p. 117)
---