Philosophy

Friday, March 30, 2012

Skeptic

 http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Christopher_Hitchens

What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.

This sentence was attributed by several sources to Christopher Hitchins:

  • Forgotten were the elementary rules of logic, that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and that what can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.
    • "Mommie Dearest", Slate, 20 October 2003, ISSN 1091-2339, quoted in Michael Shermer, "The Skeptic's Skeptic," Scientific American, November 2010, p. 86. This quotation, often taken as original, is actually a translation of the Latin phrase "Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur." 
    • "What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence." appears by itself in God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything (2007).


 
 Forgotten were the elementary rules of logic, that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and that what can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.

-- Christopher Hitchins

But:
This quotation, often taken as original, is actually a translation of the Latin phrase:

"Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur." 

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