Justifying atheism, is the absence of evidence sufficient.

[Desert Snake]

No, atheism is the opposite of a belief. It is not a comparable claim to theism, it is the rejection of that claim. A disbelief need not be proven, in fact 'proving' a disbelief really makes no sense. Asking a theist for evidence is not at all 'an expectation of proof that goes beyond the atheists own standard - it is the atheists standard of truth that is being applied (ie, show me the evidence and THEN i'll believe you!)
What does need to be proven is the claim that these deities exist.

How it is you imagine that atheists are asking for a level of proof that goes beyond their own standard for determining facts - when it is precisely the same standard they apply to themselves is beyond me.

Who said that a disbelief needs to be proven.
This can only be because you haven't realized that you have ''beliefs'', that aren't provable, etc. Otherwise, this would be sort of obvious.

 

[Desert Snake]

If you're trying to convince me of something, it's logical for me to ask you why I should believe it.

You're using the tu quoque fallacy here: the fact that you can find atheists who believe things without evidence is irrelevant to whether your beliefs are justified.

You missed the point. In an argument, that does matter. Doesn't matter what we're talking about. The fact that it is relevant in an argument, means that it is relevant in reality.

OTOH, if a person's standard is so low that conflicting belief systems all meet it (even if the person doesn't acknowledge this), then it's objectively too low.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

You missed the point. In an argument, that does matter. Doesn't matter what we're talking about. The fact that it is relevant in an argument, means that it is relevant in reality.

Making your opponent look bad says nothing about the truth of your argument, and hypocrites are sometimes right.

 

[Desert Snake]

Making your opponent look bad says nothing about the truth of your argument, and hypocrites are sometimes right.

Therefore?

 

[Guy Threepwood]

Reading through recent threads on atheism, it seems that the question of justifying atheism as a logical position is contentious.
To my mind my disbelief in deities is legitimised by the absence of evidence for God and the incoherence of descriptions and definitions of God. I see atheism as simply the absence of a belief in a God, and believe that the absence of evidence alone is sufficient to inform a disbelief.

So please share what you feel is sufficient justification for atheism, and if you see the absence of evidence as sufficient justification.

As I see it, there can be no burden of proof in this case - so ask that we speak to sufficiency rather than proof. If you do believe there is a burden of proof however please feel free to participate and share your ideas.

By that rationale, unless we can explain how the trick was done, we must assume that the magician identified your card by chance.

The mistake is considering 'chance' the default explanation until another is found. For our universe, there is no default explanation, no reference or precedent for how these things usually happen is there?, not God or Chance, so we have to consider both on their own merits

 

[McBell]

You seem to be confusing the map for the terrain....

There is a difference between the claim (map) and the evidence for the claim (terrain).

I may well judge the evidence for the claim without judging the claim itself.

 

[Bunyip]

Who said that a disbelief needs to be proven.
This can only be because you haven't realized that you have ''beliefs'', that aren't provable, etc. Otherwise, this would be sort of obvious.

Well you kept bringing it up mate, I began this thread by pointing put that it did not apply, you the kept repeating the idea.

 

[Bunyip]

By that rationale, unless we can explain how the trick was done, we must assume that the magician identified your card by chance.

The mistake is considering 'chance' the default explanation until another is found. For our universe, there is no default explanation, no reference or precedent for how these things usually happen is there?, not God or Chance, so we have to consider both on their own merits

No mate, you have confused me for somebody else, not sure how you managed that. No I do not believe that chance is the default.

 

[Guy Threepwood]

No mate, you have confused me for somebody else, not sure how you managed that. No I do not believe that chance is the default.

Then if belief in chance is not a default, why define your belief as a disbelief? Why not call yourself an accidentaliist, spontanteist, whatever label you prefer, why not stand behind your beliefs on their own merits?

 

[Bunyip]

Then if belief in chance is not a default, why define your belief as a disbelief?

Because it is a disbelief. What has chance got to do with anything?

Why not call yourself an accidentaliist, spontanteist, whatever label you prefer, why not stand behind your beliefs on their own merits?

Because, as I said to you before - I do not think that chance is the default, nor is it the position I identify with.

 

[Laika]

I've slowly reached the conclusion, that in the case of Marxism, it is not trying to prove "strong atheism", but rather the intellectual premises of a particular worldview which is by definition atheist. it therefore involves a positive assertion about the nature of reality which has the implication that god is excluded from the realm of possibility. In this instance, Atheism is not a "stand alone" position which can be treated as a hypothesis subject to proof, but a conclusion logically derived from accepting the premises of a dialectical materialist worldview.
Atheism appears too heavily connected with a theory of knowledge to be tested as a knowledge cliam in itself. Materialism is taken to be self-evident if a person accepts the reliability of sense-perception and therefore the existence of the objective world. The belief in the reliability of sense-perception and the objectivity of the world therefore makes it a "scientific" worldview.
The only aspect of this which could be subject to some level of proof is the cliam that Consciousness exists only as a product of the brain and cannot therefore exist seperately from it, but this is also intricately linked to a form of philosophical reasoning rather than being a scientific hypothesis. If consciousness always derived from nature, there cannot therefore be a supernatural force "behind", "beyond" or "above" and as such, religion is considered an illusion. Marxism is therefore a form of Metaphysical naturalism.

The conflict between weak and strong atheism is probably be a conflict between Methological Naturalism (in weak atheism) and Metaphysical naturalism (in strong atheism) as different ways of approaching knowledge and defining existence. Metholodical Naturalism is a way of aquiring knowledge through science, whereas Metaphysical Naturalism is a position that only natural elements exist. The former cannot bey definition rule out the existence of god because it is only a method of establishing disbelief, whereas the latter can and does because it is a philosophical system of beliefs about what exists.