Russell’s Teapot

As part of a larger effort to criticize the leap of faith required to subscribe to most religious doctrines, philosopher Bertrand Russell once argued that if he were to claim, without evidence, that there is a teapot orbiting the Sun between Earth and Mars, and that it’s too small to see with any existing telescope, you could safely disbelieve this statement because he offers it without proof.

That there’s no way to fully disprove his claim doesn’t matter, according to his reckoning, because he is making an unfalsifiable statement about something that cannot be proven or disproven, and the burden of proof is therefore on him, not the person on the other end of the conversation: they bear no responsibility to prove such a teapot exists or doesn’t exist, and can thus ignore his claim as nonsensical (until and unless concrete evidence is presented).