Amie

No Kevin
We are saying God exists. We are making the claim that he exists therefore the burden of proof falls on us.
The atheist simply does not believe in God.

so according to your quote here:
does this imply you believe that all theists and atheists are all irrational? and the only rational position is agnostic? Is this what you believe?

Dr. Retard

Here's problem 1: "Atheist" is ambiguous. "One who believes in God's nonexistence" is one meaning, and "one who doesn't believe in God's nonexistence" is another meaning. People often associated the first meaning with "positive atheism" or "strong atheism", and the second meaning with "negative atheism" or "weak atheism". The difference between the two meanings should be obvious. If it's not, here: note that, employing these meanings, 50-50 agnostics, unreflective people, and people that just don't care can be negative or weak atheists; positive or strong atheists, in contrast, have to be prepared to defend their belief in God's nonexistence. If you want to insist that you have the one true definition of "atheism", a definition unsullied by human frailty, then perhaps you could tour the country, convincing people to change their linguistic habits.

Problem 2: For a belief to be rational, it doesn't need to "proven" in the manner of a mathematical or logical demonstration. It only needs to be well-supported somehow or another. My belief in the sun's existence is not susceptible to demonstration; but it's rational all the same. Of course, people disagree over what counts as good support; but wishful thinking, for example, is obviously not good support. In any case, though most theists and atheists agree that God's existence cannot be decided one way or the other by demonstrative reasoning, most theists think there is some good support for God's existence, and many atheists think there is some good support for God's nonexistence. Most arguments, pro or con, are like this: mere evidential support; "good enough" proof. (The only exceptions I can think of offhand are ontological arguments and divine incoherence arguments.) So, we all tend to agree that there's no demonstrative proof here; but if you say there's no good support one way or the other, then we'll nearly all disagree with you. And then your "atheism is irrational" argument will be question-begging (and so unpersuasive).

Ronin

What you appear to be looking for is a "strong" or "positive" atheist ~ so, here I am.

Since you desire to be clear on definitions ~ please define your concept of what a "God" is.

Oxymoron

You need to distinguish between the concrete God and the abstract God - they represent two different arguments.

Belief in a concrete God - that of xianity or other organised religion - relies on making certain statements about the world: historical events, philosophically and scientifically testable hypotheses, etc and are thus open to refutation.

Belief in an abstract God is tougher, and in general impossible to disprove or prove for that matter. However, no theist I have ever encountered believes in an abstract God because religions are cultural phenomena, not intellectual ones.

I therefore feel utterly happy to state: given any theist's concrete God and the context of the theology, cosmology and philosophy that comes with it, beyond all reasonable doubt that God does not exist.

See, it's really quite rational. What is utterly irrational is that thing called faith, choosing to believe something without testing its truth because it makes you feel better about yourself or the world despite the fact that it contradicts other personal experience and general knowledge of the world.

Ronin

Aw, Shit, Oxymoron ~ you sank my battleship.

Howay the Toon

Your setting quite a high standard for rationality there. I can't PROVE that I am sitting in from of a computer goofing off from my proper work by writing this reply, but I am being perfectly rational in believing it to be true since all the evidence supports that hypothesis.

It is not irrational to believe something to be true on the basis of evidence without it being formally PROVEN.

I will assert that God does not exists and I am entirely confident in my assertion even though I am perfectly well aware that I can't formally prove it.

If you want to say this is irrational, you are going to have to explain why my other assertion that "there is no invisible pink dragon in my garage" is irrational.

Vorkosigan

"God does not exist."

A statement that is consistent with all credible logic and evidence is not "irrational." It may be right, it may be wrong. But it is not irrational to be a strong atheist.

Oxymoron

Rationality - or otherwise - is inevitably describable in terms of "testability". In general, it is poor form to make statements about the world that cannot be tested in some way for validity. Faith is a denial and a refusal to allow testability of beliefs. Thus the whole debate is not really "rational vs irrational", it is "testable vs faith".

Keith Russell

Greetings:

There are ways to prove negatives. It is relatively easy, for example, to conclusively prove that this sentence does not contain any twenty-five letter words.

It is also easy to prove that the local mall does not include a topless bar.

As for 'God', to prove that 'God' does not exist is impossible, as long as we don't define 'God'.

But, 'God', once defined, is impossible.

The concept 'God' is contradictory to both itself and to reality, in the same way that the concept 'square circle' is contradictory.

Keith.

Oxymoron

Quite!

Proof by contradiction: instead of proving statement A, show that ~A results in nonsense. To prove a negative N, turn in into ~N and disprove that reductio ad absurdum.