Hitchen’s razor and Alder’s razor

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Hitchen’s razor is attributed to author and journalist Christopher Hitchens. It states that : What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.

Its origin is based on the famous Latin proverb “Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur” meaning “What is freely asserted is freely denied” or “What is asserted without reason/evidence may be denied without reason/evidence”. It establishes that the burden of proof lies with the person making a claim. If a claim lacks evidence, it can be dismissed without further evidence.

It is frequently used to refute claims without empirical support in debates against pseudoscience, conspiracy theories, and, most notably, religious criticism. It saves time by avoiding the need for debaters to thoroughly refute every absurd, unsupported claim. Recent Origin and Revival : Made popular by Christopher Hitchens in his book God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, published in 2007.

Alder’s razor also known as Newton’s flaming laser sword:

It states that if something cannot be settled by experiment or observation, then it is not worthy of debate.

It is a philosophical razor devised by Mike Alder in 2004 . He elaborated it in an essay entitled “Newton’s Flaming Laser Sword, Or: Why Mathematicians and Scientists don’t like Philosophy but do it anyway”.

Usage : Think about whether something can be proven by direct evidence before investing time and effort in a debate. It might not be worthwhile to spend time debating something that is entirely hypothetical and cannot be verified by empirical methods.