Gum Balls

Often, when discussing atheism, and a declaration is made that the individual simply does not hold the belief that God exists, they are immediately accused of being a Lacktheist, weak, and dodging the question. Some then go on to say, in error, that if you don’t hold the belief that God exists then you must think he does not exist, thus you are a strong atheist, and you should defend your position. See the blog post on atheism and agnosticism here for details of terminology and definitions.

Firstly, this post is not about disproving Theism or showing that atheism is correct. It is simply here to highlight the confusion with this:

A.        “I am not convinced that X is true” and

B.       “I am convinced that X is false”

That confusion is real and widespread. In logical terms, it is this:

Not believing X ≠ believing not-X

At this point, it may be useful to raise the Gum Ball analogy to illustrate the fallacy being committed here.

What is the analogy?

1.     There is a glass jar containing Gum Balls such that you might see on any sweet shop shelf. You have no access to the jar or knowledge of how many Gum Balls there are. The size of the jar is around 2 litres and it is nearly full. You can see them in the jar, but there are too many to count, and the jar is sealed.

2.     Logic tells us that there will be an odd number or an even number of Gum Balls in the jar.

3.     The question is – Do you hold the belief that there is an odd number of Gum Balls in the jar?

 Now the argument being presented is:

To say that I reject a certain claim (x) is exactly the same as saying I believe the claim (x) is false.

So, in the analogy, there are two options and only one of them can be true. This equates to ‘God existing’ and ‘God not existing’ (for the sake of illustration, we will leave aside claims that there is evidence on both sides).

Now, we have no knowledge/evidence that helps us to decide whether there is an odd number of Gum Balls or not. This equates to the atheist who sees no evidence for the existence of God, say. This analogy is not aimed at Theists who believe they have evidence for God (odd balls) or atheists who think they have evidence that God does not exist (evens).

Of course, we can guess the answer or toss a coin etc. but the point is that we cannot come to a rational conclusion as to the number and so we must reject the claim that there is an odd number in the jar.

Now, according to the statement above, we should then go on to accept that the claim is false. However, since the number can only be odd or even, that means we must accept the contrary claim that the number of Gum Balls must be even. However, we have no good reason to assume that the number is even, any more than we should assume that the number is odd.

Like all analogies, it only works within the realm of its definition  and so suggesting that we take the lid off and count them or consider that what happens if the jar is empty, will defeat the purpose of using it.

Conclusion

I hope it is now obvious that accepting the contrary claim would clearly be irrational, since we could have set up the argument above using even instead of odd and arrived at the same conclusion. In other words, if there is no evidence for equal and opposing claims, then both can be rationally rejected and consequently belief either way can be legitimately withheld.

February 2026