I really like Bertrand Russell and so should you.  He’s one of the last great intellectuals.  Sure he’s British but he’d hold his own in any circle of American pragmatism.  He’s got brainy gumption and moxy.

Probably he is most famous for his tea pot argument.  Essentially it stakes out the notion that a lack of evidence disproving something cannot be taken as sufficient cause to believe in the un-disproved whatever-it-is.

Finally, this argument appears in a paper Russell wrote on commission from Illustrated magazine (1952).  This paper was never actually published by the magazine, but it is probably available in a collection somewhere.  (This one looks like a good collection but I don’t see the article in question.)

You can find the text here and here (the second link provides a couple of interesting footnotes).

It’s a short article and well worth reading.  I hope you enjoy Russell too.

Go get ’em.