A serious answer to your second two questions would be "yes" and "not entirely".
I asked: Do you have evidence that God does not exist? Is that why you reject belief in God?
So are you saying yes, you have evidence that God does not exist?
So are you saying that you do not reject belief in God entirely?
I have what I regard as evidence that God does not exist, but that doesn't mean that you would see the evidence in the same light that I do. We have different beliefs about the nature of reality, after all. I don't believe that reality includes a spiritual plane of existence, and I don't believe that minds or "souls" can exist independently of physical brain activity. I reject belief in God to the same extent that I reject belief in the existence of entities such as leprechauns and ghosts. That is, I don't believe in magic, miracles, or disembodied spirits. Gods would fall into that category.
Lack of evidence for the existence of God is sufficient to reject belief in such a being--the same reason for rejecting belief in leprechauns.
What evidence would you expect to see if God existed? In the past I have started many threads on evidence for God.
Right, and it would take us far afield for me to even try to list all of the things I take as evidence and have you try to rebut all of that. Basically, our difference lies in fundamentally different perspectives on the nature of reality--how the universe works.
I don't think it is fair or logical to compare the existence of God with the existence of leprechauns. Most adults do not believe in leprechauns but most adults (93% or the human population) believes in God. I am not saying tat God exists because many or most people believe in God because that would be the fallacy of ad populum. I am only saying that there must be some evidence for God if that many people believe in God. Could it be that there is evidence for God and atheists just do not recognize it as evidence?
First of all, you seem to recognize that appeals to popularity are fallacies, but at the same time you think they should be taken seriously. I don't, and bear in mind that I don't pretend to be "most adults". We can always dispute what counts as evidence, but ad populum arguments don't work for me. To be fair, human cognition is not really rational, and ad populum arguments tend to be very attractive justifications for maintaining beliefs. I don't just dismiss them out of hand. To do so is to embrace opprobrium. Nobody wants to be a social outcast. Nevertheless, I can't force myself to accept religious faith just because most people I know accept it, especially when I feel I have good reasons to be skeptical.
The burden of proof should be on believers.
Why would the burden of proof be on believers? Unless those believers are making a claim that God exists I don't think they have any burden of proof. Just saying "I believe" is not a claim. I think the burden of proof is on the person who is seeking to believe because they need to prove to themselves that God exists in order to believe it. Why should they believe other people?
Generally speaking, it is impossible to prove beyond all doubt that existential claims are false, and it is fairly easy to prove that they are true. To prove them true, you only have to provide reasonable evidence in support of existence. To prove them false, you literally have to examine every possible circumstance (e.g. location) under which they could be true. So that is why the burden of proof for a positive existential claim is on the one making the claim.
Bertrand Russell famously made the point that it is extremely unlikely, but marginally possible, that a china teapot is orbiting the sun. So one is not obligated to prove that no china teapot is orbiting the sun, but there is an obligation for one asserting such a claim to give a reasonable argument to support the claim. Otherwise, the simpler assumption would be skepticism of the claim.
However, evidence for the nonexistence of God leads to a longer discussion, beginning with the observation that lack of evidence is sometimes, but not always, evidence of lack.
If you are saying what I think you are saying I agree. Just because you do not recognize the evidence that does not mean it is not there.
Exactly. But, if you have tried diligently to find evidence for an existential claim, and you keep coming up with nothing, then the likelihood of existence decreases. For example, if you may have left your purse or wallet in the taxicab, and you can't find it anywhere in your possession after leaving the taxi, it is time to call the cab company. It's the Sherlock Holmes solution: when all other possibilities are eliminated, the remaining explanation, however improbable, is the truth.
There are a host of other reasons that lead me to reject belief in God. They range from the observation that God is based on a formerly pagan deity (or blend of deities) in Semitic folklore to my reasons for rejecting Cartesian dualism in favor of physicalism. You've been around long enough to know the drill, although most atheists would rather do the easy fallback on Occam's Razor and not overcomplicate things with positive reasons for their skepticism.
Could it be that God is something other than what is presented in the formerly pagan deity (or blend of deities) or in Semitic folklore?
That is what I believe to be the case but I am in a small minority, in a religion called the Baha'i Faith that is yet to become accepted as the older well-established religions have been accepted. That is where I derive my belief in God.
I suspect that you possess a lot more hidden assumptions that you take for granted but that I would not. There is that fundamental belief about the existence of immaterial spirits that I think you accept intuitively and I do not. I think that there is overwhelming evidence against it. So arguments about the existence of gods are not just about evidence for the existence of any particular god. They are also about what one believes about the ground level of reality.
