Burden of Proof is on Atheists

[Sheldon]

A 'critical thinker' is not looking to achieve a "belief", at all. A critical thinker is looking to dispel a belief.

Well I can't speak for others of course, as you have done here, but that is not true of me. I simply care that what I believe is true, thus I try to set an evidential standard that is more likely to achieve this.

 

[Sheldon]

- something more like burden to demonstrate beyond reasonable doubt is more accurate - but this burden occurs whenever somebody makes a claim of fact and wants to be believed.

Basically, you're saying that "if they can't convince me of it, it isn't so". Which is nothing more than the refrain of a bias protecting itself. And this is wow the ideal of "burden of proof" get abused, constantly.

I don't think that is remotely what he said, and it seems far more obvious that you are trying to defend a belief you hold, but can't objectively evidence. It is not bias if one sets the same standard for all beliefs, so unless you can demonstrate an objective difference between your deity and all the others, then I think that accusing atheists of bias for treating them all the same is pretty ironic.

 

[Sheldon]

Lol. One cannot be shown what isnt known.

Do you agree?

I would agree with this, but I would also not believe a claim if I can know nothing about it. For example I would have to remain agnostic about all unfalsifiable claims, as by definition one cannot know anything about them, and I would also disbelieve all unfalsifiable claims, as to believe them all would be irrational since it inevitably would violate the law of non-contradiction, and to believe some or one, and not others, would be too obviously biased.

 

[PureX]

Now that is a subjective opinion. If it were true of course, then Christianity seems to have gone "unperceived" for almost the entire 200k years humans have existed, since they first evolved.

The human mind doesn't work the way you are implying. We can't just "invent" ideas out of nothing. Mostly, we can only combine things that we have experienced to conceive of them in new ways. The history of our idea of God most likely began with our witnessing the moment of death. Of seeing something "leave" a live body at the moment when when it becomes a dead body. We couldn't see that thing that leaves, but we could see the effect of it's leaving. Even feel it with a kind of 6th sense. And so we wondered where it went. And what it means. And so on. And we could sense that same 'life force/death force' not just in ourselves, and in the animals, but in the plants, and the air, and the earth, too. And this collective 'life force' in all things became "God" to us.

We don't know exactly how it happened, and it probably happened differently in different populations of humans. But the point is that we didn't just make God up. We experienced it in various ways and forms until we eventually came to conceptualize it as as a single entity.

 

[PureX]

Well I can't speak for others of course, as you have done here, but that is not true of me. I simply care that what I believe is true, thus I try to set an evidential standard that is more likely to achieve this.

You are not much of a 'critical thinker', even if you think you are. You're a lot more of a 'knee-jerk' thinker from what I'm seeing, here.

 

[syo]

Gnostic Atheists say that there is no God

They must prove it.

 

[Sheldon]

TagliatelliMonster said: ↑
Since your OP concerns gnostic atheists, your OP doesn't address 99.99% of the atheists on this board.

Actually, it does. At least it includes every atheist that claims that they can't accept the existence of a God that they can't know to exist by objective, evidential proof. That's a very 'gnostic' a position if ever there was one. And pretty much every atheist I've ever encountered makes this claim.

Here we go again, you're trying to tell others what they think and believe, even after they specifically tell you they don't think or believe it, it's tediously dishonest.

 

[Sheldon]

You are not much of a 'critical thinker', even if you think you are. You're a lot more of a 'knee-jerk' thinker from what I'm seeing, here.

Well having my critical thinking abilities challenged is that not that troubling, and utterly irrelevant of course when it is done with purely irrational ad hominem, but then some people don't care that their beliefs are irrational.

 

[Sheldon]

The human mind doesn't work the way you are implying.

I have implied nothing about the human mind, merely made an obvious inference from your unevidenced claim.

We can't just "invent" ideas out of nothing. Mostly, we can only combine things that we have experienced to conceive of them in new ways.

Imagination
noun

1. the faculty or action of forming new ideas, or images or concepts of external objects not present to the senses.

The history of our idea of God most likely began with our witnessing the moment of death. Of seeing something "leave" a live body at the moment when when it becomes a dead body.

What has that subjective unevidenced claim to do with the inference I drew from your statement?

We couldn't see that thing that leaves, but we could see the effect of it's leaving. Even feel it with a kind of 6th sense.

The effect is a well evidenced physiological one, your sweeping unevidenced assertion is pure superstition. Though the 6th sense part made me smile.

And so we wondered where it went. And what it means. And so on. And we could sense that same 'life force/death force' not just in ourselves, and in the animals, but in the plants, and the air, and the earth, too. And this collective 'life force' in all things became "God" to us.

So just something some people imagined then, based on a fear of death, and the emotional pain of its loss, and of course without the understanding of the physiological process. Nothing supernatural or superstitious is required or evidenced here. When my heart stops my brain dies.

We don't know exactly how it happened,

Yes we do, in every singe instance the heart will stop, the brain, starved of oxygen will die, and consciousness ends at precisely that moment. The difference is you go on making unevidenced claims beyond those facts, and I do not.

the point is that we didn't just make God up. We experienced it in various ways and forms until we eventually came to conceptualize it as as a single entity.

So the Aztec deity of gluttony is as real as Zeus and Apollo? I'm afraid I remain dubious, and it all still seems very made up to me, and experienced and imagined seem to be indistinguishable here.

 

[PureX]

I have implied nothing about the human mind, merely made an obvious inference from your unevidenced claim.



Imagination
noun

1. the faculty or action of forming new ideas, or images or concepts of external objects not present to the senses.

Every time you have to run to the dictionary to try and shore up your flawed biases, you've already conceded to the lack of reason.

 

[Ostronomos]

Because "God" has no definition meaningful in reality. We have no idea what real entity we'd be looking for, nor how to determine whether any real suspect is God or not.

So there's nothing to talk about.

The only manner in which God is known to exist is as a concept or thing imagined in an individual brain.

Wrong. I can lay claim to having witnessed cosmic consciousness as well as spiritual unity. Your comment is nothing more than atheistic ignorance.

 

[Sheldon]

Every time you have to run to the dictionary to try and shore up your flawed biases, you've already conceded to the lack of reason.

So you're denying we can imagine new things, even though that is demonstrably what the word means? That's almost as hilarious as your endless projection of bias onto anyone who dares disagree with you.

Quite clearly accepting the majority's understanding of a word is the very antithesis of the bias you are using, in denying it? This is getting funnier and funnier as well, as the last part of that post is so obviously dishonest, that it's hard to imagine what you hope to achieve?

Tell me again how my posts involve knee jerk reactions?

 

[Sheldon]

The only manner in which God is known to exist is as a concept or thing imagined in an individual brain.

Wrong. I can lay claim to having witnessed cosmic consciousness as well as spiritual unity. Your comment is nothing more than atheistic ignorance.

Well that is exactly what he said, all we have are subjective concepts that individuals claim to have experienced?

 

[SkepticThinker]

Wrong. I can lay claim to having witnessed cosmic consciousness as well as spiritual unity. Your comment is nothing more than atheistic ignorance.

What is "cosmic consciousness" and what is "spiritual unity?"

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

A 'critical thinker' is not looking to achieve a "belief", at all. A critical thinker is looking to dispel a belief.

I don't know what you mean by belief. Some people distinguish it from knowledge. I don't. For me, a belief is anything I consider to be true. Having defined what I mean by belief, which may not be what you mean, then I have to disagree with your comment. Critical thinking is how the critical thinker comes by his beliefs. He either applies reason to evidence to arrive at sound conclusions, which become new beliefs that are considered correct, or he reviews the arguments of others for soundness, and if he finds them compelling, acquires a new belief and increases his fund of knowledge.

Basically, you're saying that "if they can't convince me of it, it isn't so"

No. I am saying that if I can't be convinced of it, I don't believe it. You seem to be incapable of making this distinction between I don't believe it and I claim that it is false. You've converted the first, which is my position, to the second, which is not, and I don't think you realize that the two are different. I say that because there is never anything in your writing to indicate that you can conceive of these ideas as distinct. You flip from one to the other as if they are synonymous and interchangeable.

If you had ever said something like, "I don't believe that you merely don't believe that gods exist as you claim. I believe that you actually believe that gods don't exist." A comment like that would indicate that you understand the distinction between what the agnostic atheist claims and what the typical theist converts it to. But instead, you just slip from one to the other without any indication that you realize you did or that the two are different.

Actually, it does. At least it includes every atheist that claims that they can't accept the existence of a God that they can't know to exist by objective, evidential proof. That's a very 'gnostic' position if ever there was one. And pretty much every atheist I've ever encountered makes this claim.

And there you go again conflating agnosticism for gods with gnosticism. These are distinct ideas to some people. The gnostic theist says there is a god. The gnostic atheist says none exist. The agnostic says neither of these things. You described agnosticism for gods in the skeptic, then called it the opposite.

Are you aware that you do that? I think not, but if you are, why do you do it?

None of this requires anyone to prove or "demonstrate" anything, because the assertions are all subject to the individual making them. They are SUBJECTIVE assertions. "Peas are fantastic!" "God is love!" "Evolution is fiction!" Whatever. We can discuss why we make statements like this, but no one is obliged to prove their veracity to anyone else because they're just subjective opinions.

I've already said that opinions don't need to be supported unless one considers them demonstrably true, wants to be believed, and is dealing with a prepared mind capable of critically evaluating an argument and open to accepting a compelling one. I think that most critical thinkers understand that others' opinions about the taste of peas aren't arguable. Regarding evolution being a fiction, that is an existential claim that can be refuted unless it is not stated as an unsupported belief using the words, "I believe" or "In my opinion." Do that, and my answer is, "Well, that's not my belief or opinion" or no response at all, just as with him liking peas.

It remains the case that if you wish to convince a critical thinker of anything he doesn't already believe, you'll need to make a compelling argument, which is what saying he has a burden of proof actually means. If you don't do that, he treats the claim or unsound conclusion as an opinion which is not accepted as true (believed, as defined above).

It doesn't matter if they want to be believed or not. All that matters is if they are proclaiming a universal truth: a truth that we all are expected to accept as such. Then, they are obliged to offer proof that can stand up to critical review.

So they utter what they consider to be a universal truth, one which they expect others to accept as such, but at the same time it doesn't matter if they want to be believed or not? That is doomed to fail if dealing with a critical thinker who requires justification before believing. If one doesn't care if he's believed, he won't try to convince, and he won't convince. If he expects the critical thinker to accept this claim of a universal truth with which he doesn't already agree, he'll need that compelling argument.

that doesn't mean that you must be convinced for it to be considered "proof".

Disagree. "Proof," by which I mean not proof as a mathematician means it, but a convincing demonstration, is that which convinces. It's as meaningless for somebody to call his argument that convinces nobody proof as it is for a comedian who makes nobody laugh to call his act funny.

 

[PureX]

I don't know what you mean by belief. Some people distinguish it from knowledge. I don't. For me, a belief is anything I consider to be true. Having defined what I mean by belief, which may not be what you mean, then I have to disagree with your comment. Critical thinking is how the critical thinker comes by his beliefs. He either applies reason to evidence to arrive at sound conclusions, which become new beliefs that are considered correct, or he reviews the arguments of others for soundness, and if he finds them compelling, acquires a new belief and increases his fund of knowledge.

Belief is really just the presumption of one's own 'rightness'. To "believe" is to presume that whatever it is we believe, is correct. However, this does not automatically imply that what we deem to be 'correct' according to our concept of and criteria of correctness applies to everyone else. Such that to say "I believe X to be true and correct" means that I presume that everyone else ought to agree that X is true and correct. So when we enter into a discussion with others about their or our 'beliefs' we ought to clarify this up front. Does their or our use of the term 'belief' imply a presumption of universal truth. I think that for the vast majority of people it does not. They understand that what is true and correct for them may not be true and correct for everyone. But I am also sure there are the exceptions, too, that really do see their concept of truth and reality as everyone else's truth and reality whether they agree or not.

It's why I have long tried to avoid the whole discussion of people's beliefs, and stick to just what they will assert to be universally true. As there is little point in debating people's personal beliefs, while what they assert to be a universal truth does place an expectation of the burden of proof for such an assertion. And that we can discuss and debate because the truth being asserted is supposedly universal, and therefor available to me, as well.

No. I am saying that if I can't be convinced of it, I don't believe it. You seem to be incapable of making this distinction between I don't believe it and I claim that it is false.

And you seem not to be able to understand that no one cares that you can't be convinced. Your convictions do not define what is real and true and what isn't. And no one has placed you in charge of determining that for anyone but yourself. So stating it to everyone else, constantly, as if it were supposed to matter to us is just annoying and pointless. It's why atheism as "non-belief only" is such an idiotic, annoying, and pointless definition. No one cares what an atheist doesn't believe. No one even cares what an atheist does believe (because they don't believe it). All that matters is what the atheist asserts to be universally true; if they assert anything to be universally true. And then they are expected to support that assertion via the 'burden of proof' same as anyone else.

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

Me: "Gnostic Atheists say that there is no God. Nevertheless, scientists have not come to this Atheism's claim. Are you smarter than scientists? Why doesn't science say there is no God?"

She: "Do I think that scientists are madder than me? Atheists do not do this. The one who claims must prove the claim and not vice versa."

Me: Atheists make a lot of claims. For example, they say there is no God. Does this phrase carry absolutely no meaning and no information? If it does, then they claim that there is no God. So, atheists do claim, and not only their Atheism claims. Atheists repeat the claims of Atheism.

If you don't like the atheists "No belief in God"....
It carries no information. It is just definition of Atheism, which is simply "No God". No new info is presented by "No belief in God".

1. Most of humankind is perfectly sure, there is God. They even feel God and talk to God.
2. Most of humankind is not crazy.
This 1+2 is very strong evidence.

All theists are right in one dogma: There is God. Some theists, like Einstein, are wrong that the God is not a personal god; but they are right that there is God. Polytheists are right that there is God, but wrong about His quantity.

Rubbish. Most atheists, like me, do not say "there is no God." Instead, we are much more likely to say, "I can see no reason whatever to believe in the existence of a God, so I don't believe it." And that's all. There is no burden of proof involved in stating a lack of belief arising from a lack of reason to believe.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Rubbish. Most atheists, like me, do not say "there is no God." Instead, we are much more likely to say, "I can see no reason whatever to believe in the existence of a God, so I don't believe it." And that's all. There is no burden of proof involved in stating a lack of belief arising from a lack of reason to believe.

I think I've reached the point where I'm fine with saying "there are no gods," and I feel that I'm justified in taking that position.

I don't think anyone would think it's controversial if I said "there are no living stegosauruses" based solely on a lack of evidence for living stegosauruses. The only difference I see between that claim and "there are no gods" is the number of people who feel personally invested in god existing.

Actually, wait: there's another important difference: we have good evidence that stegosauruses once lived, so we have reason to believe that stegosauruses are possible.

... so the statement "there are no gods" should be less controversial than "there are no living stegosauruses"... and "there are no living stegosauruses" isn't a controversial statement at all.

 

[Sheldon]

Does their or our use of the term 'belief' imply a presumption of universal truth. I think that for the vast majority of people it does not.

belief
noun

1. an acceptance that something exists or is true, especially one without proof.

 

[leroy]

I think I've reached the point where I'm fine with saying "there are no gods," and I feel that I'm justified in taking that position.

I don't think anyone would think it's controversial if I said "there are no living stegosauruses" based solely on a lack of evidence for living stegosauruses. The only difference I see between that claim and "there are no gods" is the number of people who feel personally invested in god existing.

Actually, wait: there's another important difference: we have good evidence that stegosauruses once lived, so we have reason to believe that stegosauruses are possible.

... so the statement "there are no gods" should be less controversial than "there are no living stegosauruses"... and "there are no living stegosauruses" isn't a controversial statement at all.

There is nothing in the universe that lacks an explanation and that would be explained if stegosauruses exist today.

In the case of God, there are many things that have no explanation , that that could be explained if God exists. … (the fine tuning of the universe would be an example)

If we ever find say a fresh stegosaurus bone, it would be reasonable to conclude that stegosauruses are still alive………………. No body would say “ohhh that’s a stegosaurus of the gaps argumnet” just because we don’t know how the fresh bones got there that doesn’t mean that there are living stegosaurus today. ,,,,,,,,,,,,,, maybe there is an unknown natural mechanism that makes the bones look young , when in reality they are millions of years old.

My point (and relevant to the OP) is that even though the burden proof is on the guy who claims that there are living stegosaurus today , once the evidence is presented, (fresh bones for example) the skeptic is expected to interact with the evidence and refute it. …………….. it would be silly to say “no no no , first you have to disprove all possible explanations, (including all unknown natural mechanisms) and only then you can propose your “stegosaurus theory”

In other words the skeptic is expected to refute say the” FT argument for the existence of God”, ether by disproving one of the premises, or by showing that the conclusion doesn’t follow , or by providing a better alternative.