Atheism - based on faith?

[pmprcv]

So this is something I have been thinking for quite some time, and I'd like to know what you think about this.

I'll start with saying that the proposition "God exists" can only be either true or false. The two other optionsare obviously excluded: that "God exists" is both true and false and that "God exists" is neither true nor false. So we are left with two positions, that can be translated as 1) God exists and 2) God doesn't exist. They are mutually-exclusive.

Regarding any argumentative position (called X), one can either a) assert X, b) deny X or c) be neutral. Being neutral doesn't mean that one both asserts and denies X; it merely means one does not commit either way or doesn't want to pursue any of the options. So applying this to the initial 2 positions, the only options one has are:

1) Assert that "God exists" is true and "God doesn't exist" is false.
2) Assert that "God exists" is false and "God doesn't exist" is true.
3) Neither assert nor deny either one.

3) is not a position; it is "empty" of arguments, opinions and assertions. 3) is the lack of position regarding the issue. Because one makes no assertions, one needs not justify his "position".

1) Is a position based on faith.

How about 2)? Well, the way I see it, one can justify an intellectual position (one that makes assertions about the objective reality) by 3 ways: logic, evidence (or the "scientific method") or faith. So if position 2) isn't justified with logic or evidence, then it is based on faith.

Logic is out of the question. Logic cannot be used to make assertions about a subject that, by definition, transcends logic - which means that He isn't necessarily bound by the laws of logic. Logic is a human construct, and God is by definition above humanity and above our capacity to understand. This means that logic produces incertain conclusions regarding God. Some conclusions about God that rely on logic may be true, while others may not.

Evidence has never been found to prove the non-existence of God. In fact, most people that assert the position 2) admit that finding evidence for the non-existence of something is impossible - which is mostly true, and is definitely true in the case of God. So as far as I'm concerned, there is no evidence or scientific proof that positively proves the non-existence of God.

Please note that the non-existence of positive evidence for X doesn't necessarily mean that X isn't true. Basically, lack of evidence for X doesn't mean X is false, and lack of evidence against X doesn't mean that X is true.

So, position 2) can only base itself on faith. Since there is no logic that can, with certainty, prove the necessity for the non-existence of God, nor is there any positive scientifical evidence for the non-existence of God, isn't it true that this position is based on faith just as much as position 1)?

It is important to define "faith" in this context as "subjective personal experience".

As in, I believe in God because, in my subjective personal experience, I have learnt to find Him in signs around me, and built a personal and intimate relation with Him, etc. But John doesn't believe in God because his subjective personal experience gives him no signs of God.

Is this wrong? How and why? Do you stand on position 2) and base it on evidence or logic rather than faith? What evidence or what logic is that?

Please not that the point is not to validate the legitimacy of faith in its use to discover the truth, but to show that both positions 1) and 2) are based on faith.

[Jashwell]

Atheism, as it is best defined, is lack of belief in a God.
(A-theism, the negation of theism)

This might not be a claim, but it is a position. (The default position, at that)
Strong Atheism, is the belief that a God does not exist or that no Gods exist.

Strong Atheism is a claim, just like theism, and as such, faces the burden of proof.

Atheism does not possess the burden of proof.
Theism and Strong Atheism do.

If you want to assert that there is no God (usually by saying that such a God is logically contradictory) you need good reason, otherwise it's just on faith (in the sense that it's being used here).

[scourge99]

[Replying to post 1 by pmprcv]
I agree with you that atheism, like theism is faith based. No one can prove, or disprove the existence of god, but people still gravitate towards one side; without evidence. That means neither side is right or wrong.

Can you prove leprechaun, unicorns, and purple people eaters don't exist? If you can't absolutely prove they don't exist does that mean you have faith that they don't exist?

Consider for a moment that we don't need to have absolute proof that something doesn't exist. That disbelief is unicorns, leprechauns, or gods is not faith based but instead based on a lack of compelling reason/evidence to warrant belief.

[smalltownatheist]

That's right. Atheism isn't a positive belief that a god or gods do not exist -- it's a response to the theistic claims that it does.

Like scourge's leprechaun/unicorn example, if someone said, "I believe in leprechauns...they exist because I see four-leaf clovers and rainbows" anyone who said "I don't believe that" would be the "atheist" in that case.

[Hatuey]

[Replying to post 169 by OneHouse]


So when it comes to people believing in unicorns or not believing in them, both are taking a position of faith? How much faith do you apply to not believe in unicorns?

[wiploc]

Is this wrong?

Sure.

Do you stand on position 2) and base it on evidence or logic rather than faith?

Certainly.

What evidence or what logic is that?

The cosmological, teleological, and ontological arguments are just silly. So are all the others, as far as I know. If the theists had any good arguments, they wouldn't be using those bad arguments. It is reasonable to conclude that there are no good theistic arguments. Atheism, then, is a reasonable response to the arguments of, say, William Lane Craig.

What is a god? I don't know, but I know they are weird. If a god didn't have any magical powers, he wouldn't be a god, would he? If he can't leap over tall buildings at a single bound, but rather can only jump over a fire hydrant if he has a running start, then---whatever else he is---he isn't a god.

I've talked to people who think Jehovah can't even super-size fries. If that's true, then he can exist, but he can't be a god.

See, the more unlikely someone is (able to stop the sun in its course, able to turn water into wine, able to pull the sun across the sky in a chariot), the more godlike he is; but, the more godlike someone is, the less likely he is to exist.

If I said I was omnipresent, you wouldn't even entertain the notion that I might be telling the truth. You would assume that I was lying or crazy. And that is a reasonable response, the reaction of a logical mind.

It's the same if you say you are friends with an invisible eccentric immortal who is omnipresent. You would reasonably reject anyone else's claim like that. We reasonably reject yours.

The outlandishness of the claim is evidence that it is false.

When it comes to contradictory gods, like the omnipotent god who can't defeat iron chariots, the perfectly just god who tortures people forever, or the omniscient god who can't find Adam in a garden, we know for a fact that they don't exist. Logic proves it.

So this is something I have been thinking for quite some time, and I'd like to know what you think about this.

It's a worthless argument.

I'll start with saying that the proposition "God exists" can only be either true or false. The two other optionsare obviously excluded: that "God exists" is both true and false and that "God exists" is neither true nor false. So we are left with two positions, that can be translated as 1) God exists and 2) God doesn't exist. They are mutually-exclusive.

So logic works? It's reliable and proves things? But only when you use it? When other people use it, you suddenly two-step and claim that your god transcends logic? You are engaged in equivocation, of special pleading. This argument is, at its core, fraudulent.

And we know, based on long experience (inductive evidence) that people who have good arguments try to avoid bad arguments. So, based on your own performance so far, it is reasonable for us to expect that your other arguments will be bad too.

Regarding any argumentative position (called X), one can either a) assert X, b) deny X or c) be neutral. Being neutral doesn't mean that one both asserts and denies X; it merely means one does not commit either way or doesn't want to pursue any of the options. So applying this to the initial 2 positions, the only options one has are:

1) Assert that "God exists" is true and "God doesn't exist" is false.
2) Assert that "God exists" is false and "God doesn't exist" is true.
3) Neither assert nor deny either one.

3) is not a position; it is "empty" of arguments, opinions and assertions. 3) is the lack of position regarding the issue. Because one makes no assertions, one needs not justify his "position".

Many agnostics take positions. Often they lecture to the effect that agnosticism is the only reasonable position to hold.

1) Is a position based on faith.

No logic or evidence favors Christianity? That's unusually candid of you.

How about 2)? Well, the way I see it, one can justify an intellectual position (one that makes assertions about the objective reality) by 3 ways: logic, evidence (or the "scientific method") or faith. So if position 2) isn't justified with logic or evidence, then it is based on faith.

Logic is out of the question. Logic cannot be used to make assertions about a subject that, by definition, transcends logic - which means that He isn't necessarily bound by the laws of logic. Logic is a human construct, and God is by definition above humanity and above our capacity to understand. This means that logic produces incertain conclusions regarding God. Some conclusions about God that rely on logic may be true, while others may not.

Jehovah has logical contradictions. He's impossible. Therefore, he doesn't exist. That's logical proof. You can't just disown logic whenever you think that's convenient. If you want to do that, just say, "My religion is irrational," and then quit. Don't two-step back and forth between using logic and disowning it. That's blatant cheating.

Evidence has never been found to prove the non-existence of God.

Just making stuff up now?

In fact, most people that assert the position 2) admit that finding evidence for the non-existence of something is impossible - which is mostly true, and is definitely true in the case of God.

Special pleading again?

So as far as I'm concerned, there is no evidence or scientific proof that positively proves the non-existence of God.

Omnipresent but needs pillars of fire to get up and down? Perfectly merciful but perfectly just? Three gods but monotheistic?

Extraordinary claims need extraordinary evidence before they can be taken seriously. Contradictions like the above cannot be supported at all. No evidence would amount to support for an impossibility.

Therefore, we know, based on logic, that some gods do not exist.

Please note that the non-existence of positive evidence for X doesn't necessarily mean that X isn't true. Basically, lack of evidence for X doesn't mean X is false, and lack of evidence against X doesn't mean that X is true.

Depending on the circumstances. It is fair to believe that there are no big active volcanoes in Florida based on nothing more than the lack of evidence. The scientific mind will conclude---based on nothing more than lack of evidence---that there is not a herd of a thousand mile-high elephants running wild in Kansas.

Any time the truth of X would be expected to create evidence, the absence of evidence is evidence of the absence of X.

So, position 2) can only base itself on faith.

Nonsense.

Since there is no logic that can, with certainty,

That's a straw-man argument. We can hold a belief without being certain. There are some gods, like the standard Christian god with his multiple contradictory aspects, that we're certain don't exist, but for other gods we can hold the belief without certain proof.

prove the necessity for the non-existence of God, nor is there any positive scientifical evidence for the non-existence of God, isn't it true that this position is based on faith just as much as position 1)?

Logic and evidence are on our side. You can keep faith.

It is important to define "faith" in this context as "subjective personal experience".

No, it's not. Equivocation is never part of a good argument.

[Mr.Badham]

[Replying to post 21 by Bust Nak]

The only reply I'm going to make is to the assertion that the only properties of
"God" that matter are that he isn't bound by the laws of logic or science.
I've never heard of this god. His non-existence had never crossed my mind. Because I'm sure that you defined him as you wrote your response.

This is exactly what I meant when I originally wrote that I don't have to make any assertions about God, but rather about people who insist one exists. My faith is not in the non-existence of God, it is in the belief that no two theists have the same God in mind. That all gods are made up.

[Johannes]

[Replying to post 1 by pmprcv]

If by "faith" one means "belief in unproven principles," then all human knowledge rests on "faith." The first principles of logic cannot prove themselves, as this would be circular; nor can they be proven by any science outside logic, since all disciplines that use reason and give proofs necessarily use logic to do so. First principles cannot be proven nor do they need to be. Anyone who demands "proof" of the law of noncontradiction simply doesn't know what he is asking. It seems akin to refusing to believe in the existence of space unless and until someone answers your question about where space is.

There is of course nothing unreasonable in believing in SOME things for which there is no discursive proof. Different kinds of claims require evidence appropriate to the claim made. The law of noncontradiction, for example, that nothing can both be and not be at the same time and in the same respect, does not need to be 'evidenced' by any evidence outside itself, since it is already evident in itself. And if it (and a few others like it, the law of identity, say) weren't evident in themselves (or self-evident, to use the traditional term) then we could never make anything evident by means of discursive argument, since nothing could ever, in principle, stop anyone for asking, recursively, that we prove our proof of our proof of our proof ... etc.

Self-evident truths such as the law of non-contradiction cannot not be true.

There also seem to me to be very many things that can be known only inductively, and therefore, only as a matter of more or less likely to be true.

I think many atheists put forward something like the following argument:

A1. It is reasonable not to believe in the existence of something for which insufficient evidence exists.
A2. There is insufficient evidence that God exists.
A3. Therefore, it is reasonable not to believe that God exists.

Now, A1 seems right, but it only states what it is reasonable to believe or not. It is at least logically possible that God exists, whether or not there is any evidence of this at all. So, A1 is true, but it doesn't say anything about what is true of reality, but only what it is reasonable to believe (or not) about reality.

A2 is of course the point at issue. Most theists would contend that not only is there sufficient evidence, there is overwhelming evidence that God exists (pure fideists who say one should believe in something FOR NO REASON AT ALL are pretty rare). And the atheist will disagree that there is sufficient evidence.

In A2 as in A1 we have criteria which are not susceptible to precise measurement and quantification, namely "reasonable" and "insufficient." And in fact, "insufficient evidence" probably means "insufficient evidence to convince a reasonable person", (unless the atheist is setting the bar ridiculously high, as in "insufficient evidence to convince every single person who ever has existed, exists, or will exist, no matter how mad, perverse, stupid, self-interested, or devoted to a different conceptual scheme"), so is dependent on our judgement about what counts as "reasonable."

And here is the difficulty: both reasonable people and unreasonable people firmly believe that they are reasonable people.

The question that doesn't get asked often enough in the "there's no evidence!" vs "there's lots of evidence!" debate is "What kind of evidence is it reasonable to expect or demand?"

A very common red herring in discussions is to demand "scientific evidence" of something that lies entirely outside the domain of the natural sciences. For example, there is not, and cannot be, a scientific proof of the modus ponens, namely, the logical truth that "If A logically entails B, and A is the case, then necessarily B is the case" or the mathematical truth that "All triangles have three sides," or the ethical truth "if you change this habit, your life will be better," or the mental truth "I was thinking about the nature of evidence today," or the political truth of "if we enact this law, our country will be better." Sometimes, scientific knowledge can be relevant -- for example, if the bad habit above was smoking, we have scientific evidence that smoking causes all sorts of health problems ... or again, science might be relevant to passing a law aimed at slowing global warming ... but then, science might have absolutely nothing to say about a habit of cowardly behavior or a law to abolish the penny. I do not see any meaningful way that empirical scientific knowledge could have any bearing whatever on mathematical truths or logical truths or other eidetic truths. These domains are, by their very nature, nonempirical. Politics and ethics have an empirical dimension, since both involve human action, and nature is the setting of our actions, but neither seems to be susceptible to the precise quantificational techniques that science requires (I'm using 'science' to mean 'natural science, as exemplified by physics' -- in fact, I would say that the entire reason that the "social sciences" or "human sciences" have utterly failed to be comparable to the nature sciences is just for this reason: they all deal with the sphere of human action, and this is not subject to precise measurement or quantification.)

It isn't even clear that science can prove that ANYTHING exists, much less God, in the direct sense of the question.

For example, did science prove the existence of the planet Uranus? Well, (some) scientists, reasoning from the observed behavior of the known planets and in light of Newtonian physics, argued that a planet being THERE was the best explanation for the observed phenomena's departure from the theory. And science gave us the technical means, in the form of better observatories and telescopes, to look THERE and find out, yes, there is in fact a planet there. But if anything "proved" the existence of Uranus, it was the empirical checking, not the scientific hypothesis (see, for example, the sad fate of the planet Vulcan). But we already knew that planets existed. So, discovering a new one isn't really "proving the existence of" a kind of thing, so much as "empirically encountering one." But looking through a telescope and seeing a planet (and thereby coming to believe it exists) really isn't a different thing in kind than my looking out my back window and seeing a cat in my back yard and thereby coming to believe that said cat exists. Well, hasn't science proven that such things as electrons exist? It's debatable, and is hotly debated in the philosophy of science (under the terms "ontological status of theoretical entities"). The surest answer would be something like "electrons are unobservable entities which form part of a well-confirmed and well-supported theory in physics, so well-established a theory in fact that, although we cannot observe them directly, it is reasonable to believe that electrons exist, since actually existing electrons is far and away the best explanation of why the theory which postulates the existence of electrons is so successful, but even with that said, we may be forced to revise our provisional, warranted belief in the existence of electrons in the light of future physics." But who has time to say all that?

It's always a bad idea, by the way, to hypostatize "science" or "religion", and make them speak or think. Any statement that starts with "Science says ..." or "Religion believes ... " is going to be a misstatement at best. Science doesn't say anything. It doesn't speak, nor make arguments, nor ask questions. Nor does "religion." Christianity, as a creed, is such that all Christians are necessarily committed to certain beliefs. Science has no credal content as such. Science, however, as a method, is such that all scientists are committed to certain methodological assumptions. A great deal of intellectual mischief occurs when people confuse credal beliefs and methodological assumptions. The twin fallacies that follow are: pathetic attempts on the part of some theists to make the teachings of their faith into a kind of rival scientific theory (e.g. "creation science"), and the pitiful spectacle of otherwise intelligent scientists trying to make perfectly valid methodological assumptions into metaphysical principles, which results in such painfully embarrassing statements as (e.g.) Stephen Hawking's claim that "Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing."

So, in general, both atheists and theists accept as a reasonable belief that "it is reasonable not to believe in something for which there is insufficient evidence." The disagreement is whether there is sufficient evidence, underneath which usually hides a disagreement about what constitutes proper evidence to begin with.

And much the same can be said about what counts as a "conclusive" or even "reasonable" argument.

Reasonableness is not a quantity that can be measured, but a quality that can be discerned by means of good judgment. This is how we know both that it is unreasonable to expect someone to accept a belief without evidence, and also unreasonable for someone to demand infinite evidence (the proof of the proof of the proof ...) before believing something.

So in law we use the standard of "proof to the exclusion of a reasonable doubt." If the prosecutor's entire case is consists in nothing but the assertion of the accused's guilt, then he has failed to make his case. If the defense rests with proving that, despite the mountain of evidence the prosecution has produced of guilt, it is still *logically possible* that his client is innocent, or points out that the prosecutor has not, after all, proven that the crime wasn't committed by superpowered, undetectable aliens who *arranged* everything to frame his client ... then he has also failed.

Here, as in law, one ungrounded assertion or bare logical possibility is as good as any other.

ζητεῖτε,
_Johannes

[rbarton]

[Replying to post 176 by Johannes]

I think you have summed up the entirety of the debate, and placed the bar quite high. Very Nice.

[Goat]

[Replying to post 1 by pmprcv]

If by "faith" one means "belief in unproven principles," then all human knowledge rests on "faith." The first principles of logic cannot prove themselves, as this would be circular; nor can they be proven by any science outside logic, since all disciplines that use reason and give proofs necessarily use logic to do so. First principles cannot be proven nor do they need to be. Anyone who demands "proof" of the law of noncontradiction simply doesn't know what he is asking. It seems akin to refusing to believe in the existence of space unless and until someone answers your question about where space is.

There is of course nothing unreasonable in believing in SOME things for which there is no discursive proof. Different kinds of claims require evidence appropriate to the claim made. The law of noncontradiction, for example, that nothing can both be and not be at the same time and in the same respect, does not need to be 'evidenced' by any evidence outside itself, since it is already evident in itself. And if it (and a few others like it, the law of identity, say) weren't evident in themselves (or self-evident, to use the traditional term) then we could never make anything evident by means of discursive argument, since nothing could ever, in principle, stop anyone for asking, recursively, that we prove our proof of our proof of our proof ... etc.

Self-evident truths such as the law of non-contradiction cannot not be true.

There also seem to me to be very many things that can be known only inductively, and therefore, only as a matter of more or less likely to be true.

I think many atheists put forward something like the following argument:

A1. It is reasonable not to believe in the existence of something for which insufficient evidence exists.
A2. There is insufficient evidence that God exists.
A3. Therefore, it is reasonable not to believe that God exists.

Now, A1 seems right, but it only states what it is reasonable to believe or not. It is at least logically possible that God exists, whether or not there is any evidence of this at all. So, A1 is true, but it doesn't say anything about what is true of reality, but only what it is reasonable to believe (or not) about reality.

A2 is of course the point at issue. Most theists would contend that not only is there sufficient evidence, there is overwhelming evidence that God exists (pure fideists who say one should believe in something FOR NO REASON AT ALL are pretty rare). And the atheist will disagree that there is sufficient evidence.

In A2 as in A1 we have criteria which are not susceptible to precise measurement and quantification, namely "reasonable" and "insufficient." And in fact, "insufficient evidence" probably means "insufficient evidence to convince a reasonable person", (unless the atheist is setting the bar ridiculously high, as in "insufficient evidence to convince every single person who ever has existed, exists, or will exist, no matter how mad, perverse, stupid, self-interested, or devoted to a different conceptual scheme"), so is dependent on our judgement about what counts as "reasonable."

And here is the difficulty: both reasonable people and unreasonable people firmly believe that they are reasonable people.

The question that doesn't get asked often enough in the "there's no evidence!" vs "there's lots of evidence!" debate is "What kind of evidence is it reasonable to expect or demand?"

A very common red herring in discussions is to demand "scientific evidence" of something that lies entirely outside the domain of the natural sciences. For example, there is not, and cannot be, a scientific proof of the modus ponens, namely, the logical truth that "If A logically entails B, and A is the case, then necessarily B is the case" or the mathematical truth that "All triangles have three sides," or the ethical truth "if you change this habit, your life will be better," or the mental truth "I was thinking about the nature of evidence today," or the political truth of "if we enact this law, our country will be better." Sometimes, scientific knowledge can be relevant -- for example, if the bad habit above was smoking, we have scientific evidence that smoking causes all sorts of health problems ... or again, science might be relevant to passing a law aimed at slowing global warming ... but then, science might have absolutely nothing to say about a habit of cowardly behavior or a law to abolish the penny. I do not see any meaningful way that empirical scientific knowledge could have any bearing whatever on mathematical truths or logical truths or other eidetic truths. These domains are, by their very nature, nonempirical. Politics and ethics have an empirical dimension, since both involve human action, and nature is the setting of our actions, but neither seems to be susceptible to the precise quantificational techniques that science requires (I'm using 'science' to mean 'natural science, as exemplified by physics' -- in fact, I would say that the entire reason that the "social sciences" or "human sciences" have utterly failed to be comparable to the nature sciences is just for this reason: they all deal with the sphere of human action, and this is not subject to precise measurement or quantification.)

It isn't even clear that science can prove that ANYTHING exists, much less God, in the direct sense of the question.

For example, did science prove the existence of the planet Uranus? Well, (some) scientists, reasoning from the observed behavior of the known planets and in light of Newtonian physics, argued that a planet being THERE was the best explanation for the observed phenomena's departure from the theory. And science gave us the technical means, in the form of better observatories and telescopes, to look THERE and find out, yes, there is in fact a planet there. But if anything "proved" the existence of Uranus, it was the empirical checking, not the scientific hypothesis (see, for example, the sad fate of the planet Vulcan). But we already knew that planets existed. So, discovering a new one isn't really "proving the existence of" a kind of thing, so much as "empirically encountering one." But looking through a telescope and seeing a planet (and thereby coming to believe it exists) really isn't a different thing in kind than my looking out my back window and seeing a cat in my back yard and thereby coming to believe that said cat exists. Well, hasn't science proven that such things as electrons exist? It's debatable, and is hotly debated in the philosophy of science (under the terms "ontological status of theoretical entities"). The surest answer would be something like "electrons are unobservable entities which form part of a well-confirmed and well-supported theory in physics, so well-established a theory in fact that, although we cannot observe them directly, it is reasonable to believe that electrons exist, since actually existing electrons is far and away the best explanation of why the theory which postulates the existence of electrons is so successful, but even with that said, we may be forced to revise our provisional, warranted belief in the existence of electrons in the light of future physics." But who has time to say all that?

It's always a bad idea, by the way, to hypostatize "science" or "religion", and make them speak or think. Any statement that starts with "Science says ..." or "Religion believes ... " is going to be a misstatement at best. Science doesn't say anything. It doesn't speak, nor make arguments, nor ask questions. Nor does "religion." Christianity, as a creed, is such that all Christians are necessarily committed to certain beliefs. Science has no credal content as such. Science, however, as a method, is such that all scientists are committed to certain methodological assumptions. A great deal of intellectual mischief occurs when people confuse credal beliefs and methodological assumptions. The twin fallacies that follow are: pathetic attempts on the part of some theists to make the teachings of their faith into a kind of rival scientific theory (e.g. "creation science"), and the pitiful spectacle of otherwise intelligent scientists trying to make perfectly valid methodological assumptions into metaphysical principles, which results in such painfully embarrassing statements as (e.g.) Stephen Hawking's claim that "Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing."

So, in general, both atheists and theists accept as a reasonable belief that "it is reasonable not to believe in something for which there is insufficient evidence." The disagreement is whether there is sufficient evidence, underneath which usually hides a disagreement about what constitutes proper evidence to begin with.

And much the same can be said about what counts as a "conclusive" or even "reasonable" argument.

Reasonableness is not a quantity that can be measured, but a quality that can be discerned by means of good judgment. This is how we know both that it is unreasonable to expect someone to accept a belief without evidence, and also unreasonable for someone to demand infinite evidence (the proof of the proof of the proof ...) before believing something.

So in law we use the standard of "proof to the exclusion of a reasonable doubt." If the prosecutor's entire case is consists in nothing but the assertion of the accused's guilt, then he has failed to make his case. If the defense rests with proving that, despite the mountain of evidence the prosecution has produced of guilt, it is still *logically possible* that his client is innocent, or points out that the prosecutor has not, after all, proven that the crime wasn't committed by superpowered, undetectable aliens who *arranged* everything to frame his client ... then he has also failed.

Here, as in law, one ungrounded assertion or bare logical possibility is as good as any other.

ζητεῖτε,
_Johannes

Let's modified the A2 just slightly. "There is insufficient OBJECTIVE evidence to show God exists". I am sure that if you asked most atheists, they will say agree to that modification. That means, that evidence has to be 'public' evidence. When examples are given, it is either the logical fallacy of 'argument from personal belief', entirely subjective, testimonial, or emotional. None of it passes the 'How do you know it's God' question, or 'show me'.

In absence of the ability of the theist to meet the 'show me' challenge, it is reasonable to assume that these claims are based on personal belief rather than fact.

It is hard to take piece of 'logic' or argument seriously in absence of real world data in which to examine and test. That is the standard for acceptable evidence.

It has to pass the 'show me' test..and you have to be able to explain the reason that something IS evidence for God. Yes, it's a high standard, but 'God' is a very extraordinary claim.. with nothing that has passed the 'Show Me' test yet.

[rbarton]

[Replying to post 3 by Artie]

You have a clear idea of what a fairy is supposed to be. To you, there are no fairies. If God exists, He defined us, not the other way around. Can you even conceptualize what you don't believe in?