What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.

Christopher Hitchens popularized this maxim in the context of his polemics against religious apologetics and other unfalsifiable claims, especially during the mid‑2000s “New Atheist” debates. He used it as a shorthand rule of argument: if a speaker offers a claim—often metaphysical or conspiratorial—without adducing reasons, data, or testable support, an interlocutor is not obliged to supply a detailed refutation. The line is frequently referred to as “Hitchens’s razor,” echoing philosophical “razors” that recommend parsimony or burden-of-proof principles in debate.

The sentence states a norm for rational discourse: the burden of proof lies with the person making the assertion. If no evidence is offered, dismissal is epistemically permissible because there is nothing to weigh, test, or explain away. The point is not that evidence-free claims are always false, but that they do not earn assent and do not require elaborate counterargument. As a rhetorical tool, it protects discussion from being derailed by limitless unsupported propositions and reinforces the idea that belief should track publicly assessable reasons rather than mere insistence.

1) “That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.”
2) “What may be asserted without evidence may be dismissed without evidence.”