Read a comment that said being "atheist" was claiming there is no god. And therefore the burden of proof is on the atheist....where do you think?
It's a tired old and very absurd trope used by the God Mob. They misquote the burden of proof argument, which is correctly quoted as "The burden of proof rests with the one making the existence claim.".
They also conveniently forget the fact that it is trivial to show that the God of the Bible cannot exist. The same goes for the God of the Torah.
Thank you for your comment
To all of you....thank you....my point to the person involved that my opinion was that I am atheist, simply defined me as a non-believer. Not that I claimed there is no god,
Atheists or none believers have no burden of proof.
No one needs to prove fairies don't exist, unicorns don't exist, Zeus does not exist why under any circumstance would anyone create an exception for the god Yahweh?
Sounds like special pleading doesn't it.
Thank you
Ummm, a good atheist Minds Their Own Business & wishes you would do the same!
Thank you
No one has to prove anything. That “burden of proof” rule has meaning in a court of law, but we are not in a court of law. If you are asserting that I have a burden of proof, then YOU prove THAT assertion. I can easily disprove your assertion by refusing the burden.
One person never proves anything TO another person. The only burden is for each interested person to examine all the evidence with an open mind. A person might then spontaneously lean toward one opinion or another, but as far as absolute truth, there is none. And BTW, whether an assertion is couched in positive or negative terms has absolutely nothing to do with anything.
Some conceited professional skeptics like to sit on their thrones and claim that there are burdens of proof. “There is zero evidence” they proclaim. Actually there.is usually a lot of evidence, but their minds are cast in stone. Whatever evidence is pointed out, they’ll reject. If they had any interest in the question, they wouldn’t be sitting idly, waiting to be persuaded. They’d be thrashing the bushes for evidence, pondering, discussing, seeking.
I am not interested in arguing over the existence or non-existence of God. Belief or non-belief don’t come into it. Anyone with an ounce of honesty and courage knows that the foundation of reality is an abject mystery. You don’t have to be a logician to see that.
Thank you
The fact that there is definations or styles of gods accepted and proven to exist it makes for atheism by most any or all definations to be incorrect or illogical.
It does not require that all god thingies are proven to exist, it only requires one style of god thingie to be accepted and exist to show and prove atheism wrong or illogical.
Thanks
This is an educated logical academic defination explination: Therefore, in philosophy at least, atheism should be construed as the proposition that God does not exist (or, more broadly, the proposition that there are no gods).
And again
An atheist simply doesn't believe in a god. Doesn't claim there isn't one for someone else. The atheist is ruled by a good conscience, morals, ethics, fairmindedness, etc., learned from a variety of sources mirrored by the social norms and laws of society.
A theist does believe in god/s. Gods are mythological characters that are featured in one's beliefs. The god/s might feature prominently in the believer's mind, whether real or not, but become part of the psyche of the theist. For the theist, the god is real, but can only be believed in, not shown proof of.
I do believe we are on the same page
It is usual to split atheists into two groups, the so called soft atheists, who do not believe there is any reason to believe that god exists, and hard atheists who believe that there is certainly no god. The latter being a very rare minority, since it means that you must think that you can prove a negative, which while not strictly true is at least courageous. But hard atheism is widely used as a strawman to misrepresent most atheists by some theists.
Not giving a hand hold, for theistic apologists to delude the innocent with, is perhaps the best reason for using the term agnostic, but for myself I do not care much for labels and am happy to be called anything you like. (Yes even that. )
That very rare minority must be very much clearer on what this God/gods in question really refers to. People say a lot of different things about that but most do a lot hand waving and elude to it being beyond our understanding. For me to give a definitive yes or no I would have to share the certainty that this minority group of nonbelievers and the believers share, but I which I lack.
I think that whatever gave rise to and still supports belief in God/gods must be something structural about our mode of consciousness. For an evolved species on this planet we have some pretty different capacities in terms of the size of our social groups, the degree of our dependence upon cultural inheritance and the complexity of our language use. But I'm convinced that whatever it is that makes some people so sure of what God/gods really are is something entirely natural that we have on board. Not something 'out there' controlling everything from any supernatural place.
O.k.....color me soft...
@MarkWD thanks for your input
God told me he didn't exist and that's good enough for me.
Thamks
Is that like saying "some people say" or "l've heard" or "they say?" trumpisms that don't require any proof that anyone said it or what they supposedly said was based on? Moral of that story is anyone who makes a claim has to prove it. I'm pretty sure they claim there's a god so who has to prove it? I think I'll go with they can't prove it and once they don't I don't have to do anything.
Or something like that
Some theists and even agnostics claim this. It is false. You don't have to prove a negative. And anyway, there are literally thousands of gods in human culture. Ought atheists prove each one does not exist? Stupid. In response I usually say, "Do you believe in dragons? No? Then prove they don't exist. "
Dragon really exist: The Komodo dragon[4] (Varanus komodoensis), also known as the Komodo monitor, is a species of lizard found in the Indonesian islands of Komodo, Rinca, Flores, and Gili Motang.[5] A member of the monitor lizard family Varanidae, it is the largest extant species of lizard, growing to a maximum length of 3 metres (10 ft) in rare cases and weighing up to approximately 70 kilograms (150 lb).[5] wikipedia
@Word ohferpetessake, he means "dragons" in the fairy tale sense, but then, you knew tgat......
Another look
@Word useful information.....somewhere...thanks for your time and energy.
Being atheist means you don't believe there is a god. It doesn't require you prove it to anybody.
As far as proof goes you can't prove any negative. It's a trick question designed to make atheists look stupid.
There is however massive amounts of evidence given by thousands of unrelated people with different tactics over centuries that prove religious theories for our existence to be wrong. DNA, Fossils, Tree rings, geology, genetics, cave paintings, carbon dating, reasonable explanations for why people would believe from fear of death to control dynamics. Historical documents showing how religion spread to various regions and when. Plus very reasonable explanations backed up by evidence as to what really did happen. Its proof enough for me.
The proof is there. They just choose to ignore it or say it's not true.
Thanks for your input.
That horse is dead. I believe there is no proof of god and there never will be.
I agree