The Celestial Teapot

Came across this at Hillbilly, please! blog. I've read a good bit of Russell, but this was new to me.

Bertrand Russell’s parable of the celestial teapot:

“Many orthodox people speak as though it were the business of sceptics to disprove received dogmas rather than the dogmatists to prove them. This is, of course, a mistake. If I were to suggest that between 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 be a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attention of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time.”