burden of proof

excuse for debate club fags and defendents in court, amirite?

I was having an argument with my father today. He is into various spiritual rubbish and believes prayer has power.

I cited a study that indicated prayer had no positive effects on those in hospital with long term illness.

He merely argued thus:
>1. The benefits of prayer are such things as health and well-being which cannot be measured and therefore are outside the realm of any evidential or statistical analysis.
>2. Therefore, any study is flawed and its results can simply be dismissed as rubbish.
>3. Hence, because prayer could not be proved to be powerless by evidence it must be true.

It's awful to see because he is otherwise a sensible and logical guy and yet every step in this fallacy contains so many logical flaws that I can't be bothered listing them.

I would say the burden of proof is on us BOTH (otherwise the argument has no conclusion either way) but he is playing dirty by using illogical arguments that shit all over intelligent thought.

/rant