[Skybird]

Neon,

a theory somebody disagrees with must be proven wrong by this somebody only if it is a qualified theory by scientific standards indeed. If it is no theory but just hear-say or imagination or arbitrary claim put into the world by somebody, then the burden of evidence is not on the one saying that it is drivel, but the one claiming in the first that this drivel is true and a "theory". You put something into the world nobody every has heard of or has seen and witnessed - you show your claim that it is out there is true. Not the other has to prove that you are telling nonsense. The burden of proof is on YOU. When I claim Obama is a Martian, I have to prove it - you must not disprove me. When I claim the Earth'S core is hollow, and in reality the grass is blue and the sky is green and there are intelligent invisible marshmallows flying over the summer meadow, then I have to prove my claims to be true - nobody has to take it upon him to disprove me. And when I say there is a big cosmic superman floating over the water, then I have to prove that claim to be true - I have no right to expect to be taken for real as long as nobody has disproven my claims. All these examples are no hypothesis I set up - they are claims. Speculations. Products of my fantastic, chaotic imagination, basing on nothing. Jules Verne based on more ground than I do here. So, the described brilliant outlets of my sparkling intellect are no hypothesis. And certainly no theories.

Claiming God exists, is no theory. The burden of evidence is on those claiming he does exist.

At best you can make "God exists" a hypothesis to work with. And that is what Dawkins did. He then set a second, alternative hypothesis, "God exists" not, and compared the probabilities for both being true by using several different perspectives and approaches on things.

I would not even go so far to say "God exists" is a hypothesis. Even formulation a hypothesis - the pre-stage of a theory that so far has not even seen the very first stage of evaluation and testing - needs something causal justifying it. Often that is the observing of a natural phenomenon, or an event. You then, without having any further information, think and say "could it be that what I have seen is because of this and that causal link/factor?" And then you start to verify or falsify your first guess. Sometimes, this leads to evidence hardening the hypothesis, and you then formulate a theory. Sometimes you need to alter the hypothesis first. Sometimes you just have to kick it into the garbage bin. There is a condition for formulating hypothesis, obviously. They must be, like theories, of such a kind that you can work on them to prove or disprove them, even if the work is far-reaching and needs insights from mother branches and is a long-termed project. Physics and astronomy come to mind. A hypothesis or theory not allowing that, is speculation, is claim. And claiming you can just everything, infinitely, endlessly, since you must never justify it by reason, logic, causal work, or anything.

As far as I am concerned, "God exists" is not even a hypothesis, and Dawkins used it as that probably only for pragmatic purposes on behalf of the design of his book's structure, he wanted to give it a reason-based approach, and for that some basis of a minimum standard was necessary. 'To me, the claim is less than a hypothesis - it is a speculation. Imaginative, wild, unfounded, and for its chance of actually being true completely depending on random chance. "It'S not a god, its flying pink elephants on Ganymed" already is better than that, because actually you can fly to Ganymed and check the place for pink flying elephants. Already a hypothesis in science must fulfill basic criterions to be seen as a hypothesis. Amongst that is that, like a theory, it can be tested. A hypothesis gets pragmatically formulated to have a theoretic construct one can work with and work on. That'S why in German the talk often is of "Arbeitshypothese" (working hypothesis). Its the more precise full name of "hypothesis".

Dawkins said it himself, one of logic's dilemmas is that the nonexistence of something cannot be proven with logical means. Its like you also cannot do divisions by zero. That'S why he said you cannot say God does not exist, and so he says: God most likely does not exist. The probability is such that I think it just does not justify to take the possibility for real.