Many orthodox people speak as though it were the business of sceptics to disprove received dogmas rather than of dogmatists to prove them. This is, of course, a mistake. If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time.
" Is There a God? http://www.cfpf.org.uk/articles/religion/br/br_god.html" (1952), encomendado pela revista ilustrada, mas não publicado até a sua aparição em "The Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell", Volume 11: Last Philosophical Testament, 1943-68, ed. John G. Slater e Peter Köllner (London: Routledge, 1997), pp. 543-48
