Heh in a roundabout way Russell's teapot came back to haunt him for the same reason as my earlier comment. His goal in attempting to create an internally consistent body of mathematics with Whitehead was proven impossible by Godel--Russel's teapot was mathematics as he could not meet the burden of proof at the axiomatic level, yet we still believe it to be true.

This is not to say that mathematics is wrong, of course, just that since it is not internally consistent -- and since nothing is -- everything becomes an object of belief at some level. Therefore relying on notions like "the burden of proof lies upon the person making an assertion or claim" is turtles all the way down -- NOTHING is provable and EVERYTHING is a belief.