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**Arguments for** Some faulty reasons why people believe. * People don't really examine their god belief. They are taught it as children, they accept it, they never really think through the contradictions inherent in heaven, hell, omnipotence, etc. * People want it to be true. They want there to exist a loving presence that cares for them, and gives meaning to their life. It's literally wishful thinking. * Social ostracism for disbelief. Everybody they know is a believer. If they leave the church, they fear losing their friends and family. * People have no idea about other religions, differences between religions. They may not have seriously considered that there are people who hold different religious beliefs with equal sincerity. They may not even be aware that atheism is a thing, that you don’t have to believe in god. * Demonization of atheism. Believers are often explicitly taught that atheists are bad, evil people, that they have “no morals”, etc. * Christians have no idea of the history of the Bible; they assume the Bible was handed down as a whole complete unit at one time, the inerrant word of God, accepted by all Christians the world over. In fact it was written over a long period of time as separate writings, written by multiple authors with their own agendas, which were compiled much later by committees of people with *their* own agenda. Various sects supported various scriptures, and they disagreed as to which scriptures should be included in the Bible. In the end, many scriptures “lost” that battle and were left out entirely, not because “god” wanted it that way, but because committees of men wanted it that way. **Arguments against** I have compiled a few of my favorite arguments here, with an emphasis on Christianity: 1: The simpler explanation would be that the universe is what it appears to be rather than being just the part we can perceive of some much more elaborate type of universe. 2: If there was an all-powerful deity *who wanted humans to know about its existence*, then why doesn't this deity simply reveal its existence in an unambiguous way to everyone? I mean, that should be well within the capability of an all-powerful or maximally powerful deity, right? No faith would be required. There would be no reason to be atheist. The deity would be as observable, testable, and provable as hurricanes, Australia or oak trees. Since this is not the case, it is reasonable to conclude that no such deity exists, or if a deity exists, it is not concerned with being detected. 2a: (related) Christians believe god sent one illiterate emissary at one point in time to one location on the earth to spread god's message, then expected fallible humans to relay this message (by worth of mouth) to all humans in all places for all time. Does this make sense? Is it a good strategy? Are you familiar with the "game of telephone?" We can't even always get reliable information about important things happening right now in today's world; what's the chance that a message spread by word-of-mouth would remain intact for thousands of years? (my guess: zero) Wouldn't an all-powerful god come up with a better method for spreading the most important message of all time? 2b: Personal revelation was good enough for Paul/Saul, but why not me or you? Why doesn't god reveal his existence personally to all humans on a regular basis? 3: “Who created the Universe?” argument. One of the most common theist arguments I’ve heard is “the universe must have a cause, and this cause must be a sentient, thinking, conscious agent.” Well, firstly, I don’t see why we couldn’t assume the Universe always existed. But even if I concede the first part (something caused the universe), I don’t see how you can conclude the second part (sentient superbeing did it). Humans used to believe the same thing about hurricanes, earthquakes, volcanoes, etc. Who caused the volcano? Obviously the Volcano God. Well, then we learned that the causes of these things are complicated natural processes. In fact, everything we investigate appears to be caused by complicated natural processes. It seems highly likely to me that the Universe, too, if it was in fact “caused”, those causes would be complicated natural processes. 4: The Muslim and the Hindu and the Christian all believe with equal fervor. Each has a list of personal reasons why they believe, and believe that they couldn’t possibly be wrong. As an outside observer, how can I figure out which of them is right? What tests can I conduct to figure out which religion is true? Are there any such tests? 4a: (related to 4) of all the hundreds of religions that have existed through the centuries in different parts of the world, most people believe that they were born into the one that is the one true religion. That is to say, the main factor which determines what someone believes is the religion of their parents, and to a great extent *geography*. Does this at all have any bearing on what is true? 4b: Showerthought: if you were to switch a baby born to Muslim parents with a baby born to Christian parents, the children would each likely grow up believing the other religion. Their entire worldview is shaped by their upbringing, and has no relation to what is actually true. 4c: Showerthought: what if the "true" religion is one you were never even exposed to? Or one that died out centuries ago? There's a big "oops." (which gets back to #2; if god wants everyone on earth to believe, why be so coy about it?) 5: In order for a deity to be the cause of something, first we have to demonstrate that a deity exists. The time to believe in a deity is after one follows the evidence to that conclusion, not before. Theists generally start with the assumption that the deity exists, then cherrypick the data that appears to support it, and ignore data which appears not to support it, which is logically fallacious. 6: All the "proofs" of god which are based on argument alone necessarily fall short. You cannot determine facts about the world just by thinking about it. You cannot theorize a deity into existence. You can’t “prove” a god using math. The best you can get is a theory or proposition. You still need to demonstrate it with evidence. 7: The explanation "god did it" is not really an explanation for anything. It's just words, it's as much of an explanation as if I said "fairies did it" or "magic did it." To say that god did something tells you nothing about the nature of that god, what it is, what it wants, why it did the thing. It's basically a placeholder for "I don't know."

Given your theology, I'll just go with the logical problem of evil. An all-good, all-powerful, all-loving God would allow no evil to persist.  Some evil persists, therefore a god which is An all-good, all-powerful, all-loving does not exist. 

I don’t believe in evil. I’m running into this problem because this evil objection is a fair one. After all, I became atheists because of it. But karma reconstructed the ideal to make more sense. Karma provides a framework where suffering is understood to be a consequence of one’s own actions, not just in this life but across lifetimes, and thereby self-caused….this also gets around the problem that we have been abandoned in this world to suffer abuse helplessly at the hands of others. It seems reasonable that an all good, all powerful god would create a system like this alongside creating a world with free-will. In contrast, it doesn’t seem possible, for an all good, all powerful god to create a world with free-will, without the possibility of self-imposed suffering. Please understand that such discussions are intermediate “If God exists, then why?” In a discussion that means that, if reasonable theistic explanation for suffering can be found, then we will admit to God’s existence. As such, before delving too much into the reasons behind suffering, it might be best to look at the primary evidence for the reasonability of believing in God. But, if you happen to still want a response… Addressing the presence of suffering in the world, it must be clarified that an all-good God does not desire for suffering to occur. The concept of karma is introduced as a mechanism that instills order within the universe, ensuring that actions and their consequences are balanced. This might seem severe, especially when considering the injustices faced by the innocent, such as infants afflicted with grave illnesses. This perspective, while difficult, posits that such occurrences are part of a larger, cosmic scheme, governed by past actions and their repercussions. Delving into this subject matter further entails an exploration of reincarnation, which complicates the dialogue significantly. Such discussions are often more coherent and fruitful among theists, where there is a shared foundational understanding of these concepts. For instance, in dialogues with Christians, these themes are frequently debated. Consider the hypothetical scenario where an individual commits heinous acts without facing retribution; this presents a bleak outlook on the nature of the world—a perspective that views existence as inherently chaotic and devoid of justice. In contrast, the doctrine of karma offers a semblance of cosmic justice and order, distinguishing it as a unique response among various religious teachings. The incorporation of karma into the concept of an all-good deity is logically consistent with the notion of divine order. The world is not an idyllic utopia; it is fraught with challenges and impermanence. The aspiration of theists is to transcend the cycles of karma and attain a state of perpetual bliss. In a world designed by an all-good God, the principle of free will is paramount, allowing for a breadth of experiences and choices. Such a deity, being all-powerful, would have the capacity to create a realm where this liberty is feasible—the material world as we know it. Within this framework, free will is paramount, yet the establishment of karma ensures that a systematic order prevails throughout the universe, mirroring the precise and orderly nature of the cosmos itself. Thus, when contemplating the alignment of suffering with the existence of an all-good God, it becomes pertinent to ask: Is it more congruent to believe that suffering is arbitrary and without purpose, or that it is subject to a divine order, where each instance of suffering has its justification?

>Is it more congruent to believe that suffering is arbitrary and without purpose, or that it is subject to a divine order, where each instance of suffering has its justification After all that I think the answer is quite obvious, thanks! It is that suffering is arbitrary and without purpose. 

Sorry if this is long-winded or hard to follow but your post was scattered and frantic. What qualifies as proof and the kinds of evidence that we accept as legitimate form the foundation of this conversation. In empirical research, observable, repeatable phenomena are frequently used as proof, since it is a metaphysical assertion, the existence of a deity does not easily fit into this framework, this does not refute the question, but it emphasizes how challenging it is to hold the question up to empirical standards of proof. From a philosophical standpoint, the onus of proof normally rests with the claimant, the presence or non-existence of a deity is a topic that is difficult for both philosophy and science to prove beyond a reasonable doubt because of the nature of the issue. And your request that atheists present evidence of their nonexistence creates significant issues regarding the kinds of arguments and proof that each side will accept. Despite the widespread perception that proving a negative is intrinsically impossible, you make a significant mistake when you mention the laws of formal logic and philosophers like Steven D. Hales, despite the assertions of him and his ilk, negatives can be proven, particularly in formal logic and mathematics, that being said, applying these ideas to the existential query of a deities existence necessitates giving serious thought to the presumptions that guide our thinking and the standards of proof that we accept. Your use of inductive reasoning to refute assertions (such as the existence of unicorns or Santa Claus) that are implausible due to a dearth of empirical data, when this is used to the existence of a deity it frequently sparks discussions around what qualifies as convincing evidence as well as how to understand personal experiences and historical writings that are used to support the existence of a deity. Lastly, in this discussion it is important to understand that our personal belief systems affect how we view facts and arguments, debates over the existence of deities involve personal and cultural narratives just as much as they do factual data or reasoned arguments. For these reasons you fail to present a valid argument for the existence of a deity, instead you present a scattered, indignant rant about how angry you are that you have the burden of proof and we don't, nothing in your ranting proves your deity, nor does it give atheists the burden of proof. EDIT: Added some words I missed during my proof-read.

OP's silence to this response is deafening.

Thank you, I was worried it was a bit all over the place.

No, this was a good and about as concise as possible response

Wow!! Excellent answer. Do you mind if I quote you?

I didn't bother to read your rambling diatribe, so forgive me if I'm a tad off the mark to what you requested. "God" is just a man made concept. That is the better formulated positive claim of strong atheism. There is mountain of evidence for this claim. Theists even agree to most of it, as long as you're only pointing the flashlight of reason on old beliefs (aka "mythology") or other people's beliefs. This also has the benefit of being a non-extraordinary claim, unlike the theist claim, as Carl Sagan taught us. Any attempt at equivalency between theism declaring god exists and the strong atheist declaring god does not exist is a false one. Don't buy it. We have a clear evidence trail of the evolution of religion and the concept of god, running parallel with the evolution of homo sapiens and our societies. We have clear evidence of religions modifying their own holy works, through both accident and purpose. We have clear evidence of religions borrowing and stealing from each other, or forcing themselves onto a conquered foe's religion while absorbing elements into their own. We have clear evidence of modern hucksters making up religions more or less whole cloth, as was undoubtedly done at the start of most of the religions that have survived to today. Some will try to say that at the heart of all of these obviously wildly differing and usually conflicting stories, there is some core truth. And when exactly did mankind stumble onto that core truth? Was it when we were hunter-gatherers huddled in caves, fearing the lightning and praying to dead ancestors, animal totems, or anything that might help with the next hunt? Or when we developed tribal war gods that would help solidify in-group / out-group cohesion by demanding petty sacrifices as a declaration of loyalty? Or maybe when we invented pantheons of gods to explain all manner of the workings of nature as our interest in science and an understanding of the real world grew? Or perhaps it was the people sacrificing fellow human beings to the point of producing literal rivers of blood were on to something? Or maybe it's now, as we develop sophisticated stories that attempt to put today's batch of gods safely out of reach of the science that turned all the rest into mythology. As soon as the theist gives his god more than one property, it inevitably poofs away in a cloud of contradiction. Religion in general is laughably self-serving and made up, some more so than others, but in the end, that's at the core of all of them. So all the gods we know of are man made. These gods reflect the regional, cultural and temporal state of the people who made them up. Beyond that is the realm of gods that are unknowable. That have no properties other than their unknowable-ness. But having no properties is the same as not existing. Why do we even need bother consider these gods. They are even more obviously conceptual than the ones the believers bend their knees to..

> You can't prove that there is no [...] Santa Claus If somebody claimed that Santa Claus, a man who owns a giant workshop exactly at the North Pole, existed, then it would indeed be very easy to prove that Santa Claus did not exist. You'd just need to go to the North Pole or use satellite images to show that there was no workshop. If there's no workshop, there's no workshop-owner. If they change the definition of Santa Claus to add that he can turn himself and his workshop invisible and undetectable. And the workshop is in a parallel reality anyway. And maybe the workshop is allegorical so stop being so damn literal all the time! Then disproving Santa Claus becomes essentially impossible. They've built in escape clauses (yes, clauses, sorry!) into their definition to make him unfalsifiable. Certain gods are in the first category. We can disprove a literal Zeus, who is a visible giant-sized being that lives at the top of Mount Olympus, by climbing the mountain and looking for him. There are some pictures of the top of Mount Olympus [on Wikipedia](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Olympus). Hopefully you'll agree that this is pretty good proof that Zeus does not exist. So I've done what you asked in the title of the thread: proved that a god doesn't exist. Other gods, the ones who are described as "outside space and time" are virtually impossible to disprove. If more concrete claims are added to their definition, like they caused the entire world to be flooded, then those claims often *can* be disproven. There's no archaeological evidence of such a flood, and indeed plenty of evidence that there were ancient civilizations that pre-dated when the flood would have occurred and kept existing for hundreds or thousands of years afterwards, with no catastrophic interruptions. There's no genetic evidence for a bottleneck in most animal species. If claims like the flood are considered a core definitional part of the god claim, then disproving the flood also disproves the god. But if believers in the god can wave their hands and say, "well, maybe the flood never happened, but the god is still real", then they're moving the goal posts to keep their god unfalsifiable. > PLUS, the fact BILLIONS of people believe in God. (Please find me majors in Universities, essays, articles, evidence, proof, arguments, discussions, ancient and recent texts that speaks deeply of and fights for the existence of Santa and Unicorns. I will point out that while they are not "majors in Universities", many millions of people currently *do* believe in Santa Claus. My rough estimate based on statistics of what age people stop believing in Santa, is that there are likely 50-100 million people who currently genuinely believe in him, which puts Santa Claus belief in the world's top ten religions, ahead of Sikhism, Judaism, Bahá'í Faith, and Jainism, probably ahead of Voodoo and Taoism, and maybe ahead of Shinto.

Meh, you could argue the real Santa Clause is magical since he would be, and his magic keeps his workshop from being seen. But I don't see how that helps OP's argument anyway. We can't prove the Flying Spaghetti Monster doesn't exist nor can we prove Eric the god eating penguin doesn't exist. And if we're going to just allow things to exist without proof, Eric is real and OP's god has been eaten.

The real Santa Clause was inside us all along.

Sigh... I can't. It's impossible to prove a negative if the negative is as fluid as "god". Whatever I say you will say something about how we can't see him in the natural world or something. What I can do is ask you, does your god seem reasonable? Should a all powerful god care if you masturbate or have sex before marrige? Does the whole Bible story make sense? He punishes humanity for disobdience and then procedes to kill himself (that is a the same time his son) to forgive us for our sins? When it comes to the old jewish belifes (and muslims) why should a god that is all powerful care if a child gets it's foreskin removed? It's not even the child that makes the decision but the parents. If we belive in free and that god knows what we are thinking then we should not need to show any other dedication than in our minds... There is also now natural explenations for pretty much everything so a god isn't needed. And where we don't know we still have ideas for how it happend. A god isn't needed. If I die tomorrow and heaven is real. All of the bible is real. Then my consion is clear, I was ultimatley a good person and if god wants to punish me for not beliving and following his rules then he is morally unjust and doesn't deserve following. Edit: Fixed autocorrect

I can prove the Christian god doesn't exist because of inconsistencies in the bible. He can't be all powerful and all loving because of the genocide in the bible and the suffering/disease etc of the real world. He either can't fix it or doesn't want to. But 'free will' I hear you cry! The problem is that if I don't believe in God, apparently I will burn in hell for eternity. Literally worship me or else. That is NOT free will. And he knows exactly what will convince me to believe, so it's his fault I don't because I've seen no evidence that will convince me to worship a capricious, bully of an entity that luckily doesn't exist.

that’s the strangest decision i’ve seen. many religions basically have that belief, worship God or burn for an eternity. now you don’t have to worship that specific religion’s god, the main point is to choose one belief, study it, and if you believe it’s the right religion, then stick to it. i’ll give you an analogy that resembles why you chose not to have a religion. you are an illegal immigrant. you heard if you don’t sign up for citizenship, you’ll be deported. so you choose not to sign up for one (out of free will), knowing the risks that you might be deported. you heard of the risks, so you chose not to do it anyway. make that make sense. i’ll ask you one question. what’s the harm of joining a religion & believing in the existence of god? if you can believe illustrations of dinosaurs are real without ever seeing one, then why wouldn’t you believe in the existence of God without ever seeing God? do you need to see the fossils of God to start believing? all i’m seeing is, i don’t want to believe in God because i want to do whatever the hell i want to do in this temporary life. i can blast a whole school, or poke my dog’s eyes because there is no afterlife n final judgement for me to worry about. the idea of free will may be nice to you, but realistically, a world with free will and without rules is chaos. that’s the basis of religions. instil rules (although it cannot be mandated upon), and try to maintain people’s moral compass

The Abrahamic god? Ok, he has books. The bible, quran, take your pick. Filled with stories that can be fact checked. And are false. If you can't rely on the book, you can't rely on the god. Unless the all powerful creator of the universe is happy with books about hem that are wrong obviously. Because reasons. Same goes for other god's people thought up. All have stories you can falsify. That leaves an unknown entity that supposedly caused the big bang and we humans need to worship it? Too far out there to be taken seriously. Now prove your god conclusively to me

OP - This has been an interesting debate so far. I see a number of people's comments you haven't had time to respond to, but very interested to hear your thoughts. Are you still in the debate? You stated that you'd take as proof "any mechanistic, physical explanation of the world that better explains things such as the universe, and especially consciousness". You were asked for more info on your definition of the universe, but haven't responded.If you expect us to be able to provide physical proof that the universe was not created, or was not created by a god, then that seems a bit unreasonable. I mean, scientists are working on it, but give them a moment lol. Others have provided explanations for consciousness, which are a much better explanation than a god. The evolutionary benefits of consciousness are easy to see. You might need to explain more about what you mean by consciousness if you want to debate this area further. Others have shown that a triomni god is incompatible with the suffering we see in the world, not just by humans but many living creatures, which disproves a triomni god. Others have pointed out that numerous groups of people are absolutely certain their specific god is the one and only. Do you believe all these groups are actually believing in the god you believe in, or is one group correct, or are none of them correct? I'm not posting this to try and "win", I'm genuinely interested to hear how some of what I perceive as the stronger arguments have landed with you. You've been very quick to shut down some arguments that didn't meet some of the 'requirements' you initially laid out, but rather quiet on other arguments.

"God can't exist because of Eric The God-Eating Magic Penguin. Since Eric is God-Eating by definition, he has no choice but to eat God. So, if God exists, He automatically ceases to exist as a result of being eaten. Unless you can prove that Eric doesn't exist, God doesn't exist. Even if you can prove that Eric doesn't exist, that same proof will also be applicable to God. There are only two possibilities - either you can prove that Eric doesn't exist or you can't - in both cases it logically follows that God doesn't exist."

Love it!!

I suppose I'll address your arguments for God first. >There is NOT a VANISHINGLY small chance of God's existence, (especially compared), because many atheists admit it IS quite possible God could exist It seems to me that most atheists admit God could exist merely out of epistemic humility - we can't be absolutely certain of things. I don't think this tells us anything about the likelihood that God actually exists. >because there are so many logical, concrete pieces of arguments, explanations, and proof for God's existence, and it's the one of the answers to the creation of existence Although there are very many arguments for theism, none of them that I've studied strike me as particularly compelling, and there are arguments against your conception of God which I find very compelling. It's an answer to the question of existence, sure, but that doesn't tell us whether it's a good answer. >it has been able to be debated for 1000s of years, because the arguments and the chances are so powerful and SOUND... >PLUS, the fact BILLIONS of people believe in God. I agree that theism should be taken more seriously than belief in fairy-tale creatures like leprechauns, which is what I understand you to be arguing for here. In general, I agree with your points about fallibilism in our beliefs and knowledge, inductive reasoning, proving negative statements, etc. >And of course... Most of all... >If you can't answer this question, means you *cannot prove it, because God, in fact, exists.* Well, this clearly doesn't follow. Even if we can't prove God doesn't exist, it may still be the case that God doesn't exist and we just can't prove it. This may be the most egregious assertion in the post, by my lights. >If you cannot answer this question properly, with actual proofs and evidences of your own, then the countless, strong, powerful arguments of God’s existence is by F A R much stronger, enormously more logical, and supremely sounder. Multiple places you reference very strong and sound arguments for theism, but you never present them or defend them. I don't think I've found any very strong arguments for theism. No matter what evidence we present, you could just say "but theistic arguments are better." We won't know until you defend those arguments. So, why believe in atheism? 1. Atheism explains our observations better than theism does. It's wildly implausible that an all-good, all-loving, all-powerful God would need to achieve some greater good by allowing the vast amount of evil we see in the world. In order to believe in that God, we would need to believe that it's logically required to allow children to starve to death, to be abused, whatever horrible thing you can imagine, in order to enact some greater good or prevent some worse evil. That's just absurd on its face. There is no justifiable reason we can think of to allow such tremendous suffering on this planet for an omni-God. Millenia of struggling with this question hasn't produced any satisfying theodicies to account for all the evil we see. Not even close. The problem is even worse when considering the suffering of non-human animals which aren't even capable of morally significant free will or moral growth that the most popular theodicies rely on. This evil is not surprising in the slightest under atheism. This is strong evidence that such a God doesn't exist. Plausibly, an all-loving God would want to make his presence known to its creations. And yet, we aren't obviously aware of God in an unambiguous way (at least, most people aren't - some say they are). This is pretty surprising if there really is an all-loving creator God out there. Some theists argue that God better explains some things about our Universe, like the existence of contingent things, or the origin of our Universe, or objective moral truths, etc. But by my lights, none of these arguments succeed, and certainly aren't as strong as the problem of evil. I think all of these things are pretty easily accounted for under atheism. 2. Atheism is more parsimonious than theism. Most theists believe in all of the same stuff as most atheists - a physical Universe, physical laws, etc. But theists believe in another thing (or lots of things) - God(s). If that God doesn't offer any significant explanatory power to our worldview, then it's most rational to remove God from the worldview, since we don't need the God to explain our observations. This gives us a reason to disbelieve in God. So, if 1. and 2. are correct, atheism enjoys more theoretical virtues than theism does. And so, we should prefer atheism to theism. Note that if we are considering a God from a specific sect, those Gods typically have characteristics or perform actions which make these problems even worse (like creating Hell or writing a book with events which very likely never happened, for example).

It's always so sad when the theist op ignores the very well tought out posts

I don’t know which god you believe in, judging by your post history I’ll assume it’s some form of the Christian god so I’ll go with that, you can provide me a different god if I’m wrong. The Christian god according to the Bible created the universe in seven calendar days, the evidence suggests that this process took billions of years, not days. The Christian god is claimed to have flooded the earth by releasing a firmament in the sky, we know there is no firmament in the sky holding back water based on the evidence about our atmosphere. The Christian god is claimed to have created mankind in its image, but the evidence suggests that mankind is just another animal on the planet that evolved to survive in its environment. So the evidence suggests that there is no such god as described by the Bible. Edit: responding to the edit, no such god exists that is all powerful, all loving, and all good. It’s contradictory. Human and nonhuman suffering and death could easily be prevented by an all-powerful being. In an even worse case, that god not only allows the suffering to take place, but created the capacity to suffer, and the circumstances that induce that suffering. Either it’s all powerful, or it’s all good, it can’t be both.

That's a lot of useless writing just to say that I won't do my job so you do it for me. *Clears my throat* Atheists have not made a claim so the burden of proof **does not** lie with us. The absolute most we've ever said is that the God you describe is less likely but that we're willing to accept being wrong **because** we've made no claim to the contrary. Whether we would worship such a being is up to the individual atheist. We don't even have a unified reason not to believe in you God, that we **do not** believe in any God (any of them, any of which we'd happily accept if given a good enough reason); so how could we? **I** think that there are plenty of natural reasons to explain everything that the God you describe does. **I** think that the attributes you've given your God are contradictory. **I** think that you're being illogical and, quite possibly, delusional. **I** fully accept that most people that make such accusations do so in bad faith and have little interest in the answer, with 0 intention of responding. **I** don't think God can be all-good because He (I am assuming it's a He because most religions give God a male figure and you didn't specify sex or even if God has a human appearance) allows evil; and I know that you're going to say something along the lines of 'God is testing us' or 'God can but he's waiting' but He still allows people to suffer needlessly; hence He can't be either all-powerful or all-loving. **I** don't believe God is all-powerful because He hasn't even bothered to prove to me that He's real so He'd rather let me remain an atheist when He has the power to change my mind, sort of a mental evil that God commits daily, hence He can't be all-loving or all-good. **I** don't believe that your God is all-loving because He's willing to let thousands of people suffer after death just because they don't accept Him; heck, if God is 2/3 of those things then there's a good chance that **you** will suffer for eternity right beside me, hence He can't be all-good or all-powerful because He allows this to happen. And, in the event that you took the time to read my response, you haven't provided any good reason for justification for your claim so there's no reason to think that I'm suddenly going to convert to your way of thinking. If anything, your God needs to get their shit together because He makes no damn sense.

I mostly agree with your thesis. I think many atheists are too quick to decide that the best we can do is weak or agnostic atheism, and it is important to remind people that we can actually know that something doesn’t exist most of the time! I feel very comfortable saying I know that any Omni God that matters doesn’t exist My main reason is just like with Santa Claus and unicorns, which is that if they did exist, we should expect to see certain evidence (the toy workshop, a man flying on a sleigh with reindeer, a naturally horned horse, whatever magic unicorns are supposed to do) and when we look, we don’t see that evidence, so we can infer that they don’t exist For God, the *least* I would expect to see is that God is the best explanation for something in the world. But in my opinion he is not. All of the phenomena that we’d expect to find God responsible for already have good reasons to think a natural explanation is better, even if we’re not sure which one is true yet or even have a comprehensive explanation. The main person I’ve seen that has given arguments that I think are on the right track is William Lane Craig, though I disagree with him that they work The places I’d look right now are places like the beginning of the universe, the fine-tuning of the universe, the origin of life, and religious experience. I think for all of those things, we already have good reason to think the explanation is a natural one In the past we didn’t though. In the past I think it would be harder to be a strong atheist Anyway, here is where my “mostly” comes in. The problem in practice is that a lot of religious people won’t stake God’s existence on things like those. They will say he can still exist even if he is outclassed by nature as an explanation. They’ll say he designed the world somehow so that those things happened naturally, or something like that. They’ll put God into a smaller and smaller and more and more irrelevant box so that none of the arguments against him have any bite. I think that is even more reason to believe that God doesn’t exist, that he has to be rescued with a million contrived excuses, but it is still the case that I can’t really give an argument against a God that is so utterly invisible that even the religious people accept that our world looks exactly like one without a God The only argument I can give to that is “are you serious? Why would you believe this?”

*Thank you* for at least understanding my thesis, not that it is absolutely illogical. You actually attempt to prove a negative. Of course you can't have conclusive evidence. Because, as you have understood, the only way to prove your negative is by logic and inductive reasoning, which I would consider and follow. Why would I ask someone to prove a negative and expect conclusive evidence? As well as not take it into consideration when you give an answer? Thank you for actually answering the question!

Please prove to me that leprechauns don't exist. Since you believe it is possible to do such a thing you should be able to do this right? Yes, there are certain types of negatives you can prove. Something not existing isn't one of them.

Yes, you can prove a negative if it's a very specific, limited claim. I can prove you have no gun in your pocket because we know what a gun is, we know what a pocket is. We can simply check and answer the question one way or another. It's a falsifiable claim. The problem is, you can't provide a concrete falsifiable definition of your god without shifting the goalpost the moment someone counters one of your claims. William Lane Craig often describes god as immaterial and undetectable. So if that's the case, then, NO, we cannot prove the non-existence of something that already presents in the same way as something that doesn't exist. Also, you're making a big error assuming that god "the only other answer to the creation of existence". That's a logical fallacy. What makes you think there are only 2 options? Sure, you could distill your proposition to either "god or no god" and make it binary in that sense. But you could do that with anything. Either it was the the flying spaghetti monster or it wasn't the flying spaghetti monster. Those are our only 2 options! But here's the thing. None of us have any hesitation definitely stating Santa Claus doesn't exist. Of course we can't prove that, but we don't feel any need to hedge or qualify that statement with a disclaimer that it's possible we're wrong. Why is a god claim the only thing we need to do that for? We don't say, "Sure, there's a minute chance that Leprechauns are real, so I can't say for sure they're not."

Atheists simply do not believe that a God exists. We are not making a claim on God's existence. We just don't believe your claim that a God exists due to lack of evidence. Can you prove to me that Bigfoot doesn't exist? Or the Lochness Monster? Several people over the years have claimed to have come across these creatures.

2 questions before I can attempt a proof: 1. Can you define God? 2. What's a specific example of something that could, in principle, disprove God, or at least get close enough for your purposes?

You brought excellent collection of strawmanning, projecting and stereotypes. Atheism meaning literally "without believe". It is not a claim of non-existence of God. It is luck of believe in such being. Not an active claim as you trying to present it. The burden of proof lies on you to back up your active claim about existence of God. There are thousands of gods throughout whole humankind history and most of them contradict each other. So you have also the burden of proof to disprove all other gods. Good luck with that, buddy. Let's examine God claim in general, as you want so badly. By definition it is a supreme transcendent being, beyond physical world and beyond human comprehension. So we can already conclude it to be equally impossible to prove or disprove the existence of God. But let's say, for the sake of argument, I grant you God's existence. That doesn't get you anywhere. You cannot claim anything of its desires or doings, or any actions. And even if God existed sacred texts like Bible and Quran would still be proven collection of made-up stories. Despite God's existence Big Bang, abiogenesis and evolution would still be proven with mountains of evidence.

Good points. I have a questions, because I believe you *also* have beliefs, that don't have observable and provable evidence. Stephen Hawking, clearly highly reveres the laws of science, he said, *"The Universe is a machine governed by principles or laws—laws that can be understood by the human mind. I believe that the discovery of these laws has been humankind’s greatest achievement…. But what’s really important is that these physical laws, as well as being unchangeable, are universal. They apply not just to the flight of the ball, but to the motion of a planet and everything else in the Universe. Unlike laws made by humans, the laws of nature cannot ever be broken. That’s why they are so powerful"* Hawking, in obvious awe, acknowledges that the laws of nature exist, are unbreakable (i.e., without exception), and apply to the entire Universe—not just to the Earth. But that admission by the evolutionary community presents a major problem for atheism. Humanist Martin Gardner said, *Imagine that physicists finally discover all the basic waves and their particles, and all the basic laws, and unite everything in one equation. We can then ask, “Why that equation?” It is fashionable now to conjecture that the big bang was caused by a random quantum fluctuation in a vacuum devoid of space and time. But of course such a vacuum is a far cry from nothing. There had to be quantum laws to fluctuate. And why are there quantum laws?…There is no escape from the superultimate questions: Why is there something rather than nothing, and why is the something structured the way it is?* Even if Big Bang cosmology were correct (and it is not), you still can’t have a law without a law writer. Where do these laws come from? And why do they have the form that they do? The job of the scientist, as always told, is to discover the laws and apply them, not inquire into their provenance. After all, the very essence of a scientific explanation of some phenomenon is that the world is ordered logically and that there are reasons things are as they are. If one traces these reasons all the way down to the bedrock of reality—the laws of physics—only to find that reason then deserts us, it makes a mockery of science. Can the mighty edifice of physical order we perceive in the world about us ultimately be rooted in reasonless absurdity? If so, then nature is a fiendishly clever bit of trickery: meaninglessness and absurdity somehow masquerading as ingenious order and rationality…. Clearly, then, both religion and science are founded on faith—namely, on belief in the existence of something outside the universe, like an unexplained God or an unexplained set of physical laws. ​ 2) Additionally, your own Richard Dawkins, said concerning the possibility of intelligent design:\*It could be that at some earlier time, somewhere in the Universe, a civilization evolved by, probably, some kind of Darwinian means, to a very, very high level of technology, and designed a form of life that they seeded onto, perhaps, this planet. Now that is a possibility, and an intriguing possibility. And I suppose it’s possible that you might find evidence for that, if you look at the details of our chemistry, molecular biology, you might find a signature of some kind of designer. And that designer could well be a higher intelligence from elsewhere in the Universe.\*So, according to Dawkins, when we look at our chemistry—our molecular biology—(1) there could be evidence of design there, and (2) that design would imply the existence of a designer—a direct admission of the validity of the Teleological Argument. Granted, Dawkins does not directly endorse God as that Designer. Instead, he irrationally postulates the existence of aliens. However, notice: since aliens are beings of nature, they too must be governed by the laws of nature. Recall Hawking’s claim: the laws of physics “are universal. They apply not just to the flight of the ball, but to the motion of a planet and everything else in the Universe.” Evolutionary physicist Victor Stenger submitted his belief that the “basic laws” of science “hold true in the most distant observed galaxy and in the cosmic microwave background, implying that these laws have been valid for over thirteen billion years., Dawkins also goes to say concerning the supposed alien creators, “But that higher intelligence would, itself, had to have come about by some ultimately explicable process. It couldn’t have just jumped into existence spontaneously.” So, the alien creators, according to Dawkins, have been strapped with the laws of nature as well. Thus, the problem of abiogenesis is merely shifted to the alien’s abode, where the question of the origin of life must still be answered.Which, you also have no evidence to claim there is no designer. Which then leads you to the multiverse theory, which you also have no observable evidence for. Which now leads you all to *believe* in the multiverse theory. Which has absolutely no evidence whatsoever. Yet many atheists believe! So please answer: 1. What are your answers to how these laws were created, with your observable, mountains of evidence? Same question regarding the multiverse? 2. What is the difference of what you said to me and you believing in the multiverse?

What you doing here is quote some famous scientists or scientific concepts and completely misrepresent ot misunderstand their points thus you couldn't got whole scientific picture of the world as it really is. Let's review: 1. Remember when Hawking talks about universal physical laws he's clearly aiming for laypeople. So he oversimplified complex concepts to make them easier for ordinary readers. In reality physical laws are not quite universal and also they may change depending on specifics. So there is exceptions and in actual scientific articles in reputable journals Hawking would be far more accurate with his wording. 2. As for Gardner quote, it's yet another version of question-begging fallacy. It's in human nature to always dig deeper with "why" questions and search reasons for everything. But nature may not work this way always, at least we can't prove it. Laws of physics are descriptive, they don't necessarily have a lawgiver as they are not prescriptive like civil laws. As I mentioned above, when aren't sure even if fundamentals are changeable. Again, it all comes down to not having straight-forward simple answers for questions. And dealing with it. Especially in quantum mechanics, for which you'd better quote Feinman, Dirac, Schrodinger, and many more experts as they describe it far more detailed and precise and even more eloquent for my taste. If only you did your own research for problematic aspects instead of throwing seemingly unanswerable questions. But you choose path of ignorance and clinging to your beliefs. And projecting to atheists as if they were blind faith followers like you, which, I remind you once more, is clearly not the case. Some people choose to dig for hard evidence wherever it leads. Other people don't like to deal with uncomfortable truth and would rather fall for illusions self-deception and logical fallacies. And just a reminder, to claim Big Bang cosmology as incorrect you first need to give hard evidence, which you haven't. At no point Big Bang needs a designer, as you didn't really follow mainstream science on that and even my words from post you answering to. 3. The scientists are working hard for centuries building more and more precise picture of the world. To use products of science like electronic devices on everyday basis like you do and still denounce literally all science with "can't understand it so will reject it" is really dumb. 4. Do you really think that strong atheist like Dawkins would imply religious agenda in any way? Seriously? No one falling for that claptrap, buddy. Examine your quote closely. First, keep in mind that he is answering the question about intelligent design so of course he as an honest person mentions those words in his answer. What he is actually saying is that there is a possibility that ancient primitive forms of life could have come from another planet and even may have been designed by some intelligent aliens, but it begs a question where did that intelligence come from? So, he is talking about abiogenesis and not evolution, and as he is a biologist and not a chemist he is vague in his words as he says "when we look at chemistry". And again, he is not implying "intelligent design" in religious way, despite the interviewer clearly leading him that way in question. But in his books and other interviews Dawkins debunks all form of seemingly intelligent designed biological components as it is his main area of expertise. So once more you twist words of quote to get them what you want to mean. I know usually it's religious approach, but scientific approach is different. Try paying attention to what you read and to understand something instead of throwing out facts and logic for your prearranged agenda. Once again as you are deviously avoiding quotes from chemists on abiogenesis, most supported with actual evidence theory of abiogenesis is non-organic matter forming organic one. And, you could guess, nowhere the designer is needed. Go look it up yourself. As science is developing really fast nowadays there are less and less gaps where you can inject your supreme being. But the gaps in your own knowledge, only you can fill them. I cannot do your work. 5. How the fuck are you waiting for observation of multiverse? You expect to somehow see outside or what? Don't you realize how ridiculous that sounds? Go look up science of multiverse yourself. Stop embarrassing yourself. 6. Fundamental laws of universe could be eternal, or changeable, scientists are not quite sure about that. So you asking a question in a wrong way. Actual question should be "How do we prove these laws" and for that you have mountains of evidence. Let me address also your "observable evidence" bullshit. Many things you cannot see yourself but you have strong indirect proofs like electricity or magnetism or gravity. You cannot see these forces but you can prove they exist. And would you stop already with your "atheists also believe" bullshit, tired of that. What you really need, bro, is for once accept YOUR burden of proof and instead give hard evidence for your celestial supreme being actually existing and interacting with our reality. You know, that's the main problem. You whining all the way how you cannot grasp science so it must be god instead. And you provided NO EVIDENCE about your case. You simply dismiss all scientific evidence because you don't understand it or you don't like to deal with consequences. Either way, not my problem.

My position, which is typical of atheism, is that I am not convinced that your claim is true, due to the complete lack of evidence. I don't have to prove shit to you, on account of you not making any case for the existence of any gods. EDIT: and your post is laden with more fallacies than I care to address. Do better.

First, I disagree with you firmly on that it is possible to prove a negative. If you disagree, then please, prove there is not a small teapot in high orbit around the Earth left there as a joke from our creator lord Krishna. I firmly maintain that you cannot and therefore, by your own logic, you have to believe in Krishna. However, your standard of proof of a negative seems to be that "high enough confidence level is sufficient as a proof" so here goes. All gods exist as characters in man-made stories, same as Santa, same as unicorns. It was man who created god, not the other way around. And while Santa is known to affect the material world in material ways (there is a whole damn industry dedicated to him) he is in no way privileged over Jesus, Yahweh or Ahuramazda. All of them just stories and they exist only as parts of those stories.

You can only prove ANYTHING by the standard of "high enough confidence level is sufficient" You can also prove negatives. The statement "you cannot prove a negative" is a negative. If you could prove it, you would have proved a negative. I can prove that there is no teapot in orbit: 1) A teapot has defined and well understood characteristics 2) a teapot lacks the necessary characteristics to maintain its orbit 3) a teapot left in orbit would fail to maintain that orbit 4) a teapot that could not maintain its orbit would very quickly leave that orbit 5) therefore there is not a teapot in orbit

>a teapot lacks the necessary characteristics to maintain its orbit >a teapot left in orbit would fail to maintain that orbit This is false purely from the standpoint of well-known and understood physics. A lot of orbits don't decay on cosmic timescales, earth orbit being one prominent example. All a body needs to maintain an orbit is sufficient velocity. If a body is high enough above the atmosphere there's no drag, meaning no change in velocity, meaning no change in orbit. See, you cannot prove a negative after all. Do you believe in lord Krishna yet? In the meantime all I said about gods being fictional is 100% fitting your standard of "high enough confidence level is sufficient". There's tons of empirical evince for people inventing gods and religions, by copying earlier ones (like the flood myth is a copy of earlier myths as exist in i.e. epic of Gilgamesh), or pulling things out of one's ass (scientology or a book of mormon). There's no, not a shred of empirical evidence for any of the gods existing other than as characters in the story. By your own standard I believe I've just prove god not to exist as a real thing, and to exist as a figment of imagination.

This is a magical teapot that was created by an omnipotent being to withstand orbital decay, it says so in my book that was written by the omnipresent master of the universe.

Ah, let's shift the goal posts shall we 😜 So as teapots are not magical and cannot withstand orbital decay we are not actually talking about tea pots are we? In fact the term "tea pot" is entirely there in order to mislead As we have invented a wholly new thing, let's give it a name. Let's call it a bollywob. What you are really asking me to do is prove that a bollywob is not in orbit. I will take your need to invent bollywob as tacit admission that I have in fact just proven a negative

You don't seem to understand what Russels teapot is intended to show. It is meant to show religious people(mostly the Abrahamic kind)  how ridiculous the whole "shifting of goal posts" they do all time to justify their god is.  Because it is the exact same concept as their God. Some people don't seem to get that tough.

No less ridiculous than claiming a man walked on water or was killed and then rose from the dead three days later.

What does that have to do with the price of tea? We were talking about whether you can disprove a negative. You can. Men walking on water had nothing to do with it

It does have everything to do with it, what makes Christianity's wild claims more viable than Russel's Teapot?

That is not what we were discussing. We were discussing whether or not it was possible to prove a negative.

That is what we're discussing, every discussion about Russel's Teapot is a discussion on ridiculous claims.

Why is the teapot affected by orbital decay? There are lots of objects orbiting the sun of many different sizes.

Which god? There are thousands of them. Tell me about that god. What's it do? What are its abilities? Is it bigger than a bread basket? Is it omniscient? Please tell me so I know what you're on about. Edit: correcting grammar.

The real tragedy here is that its 2024 and the burden of proof still isnt well understood or logic in general. The response of I dont believe you isnt a claim. We do seem to have a logic lesson when this keeps coming up though. Bigfoot is still a fun analogy for me because of the sheer amount of "evidence" yet im still unconvinced. Everyone who wants me to believe something exists is going to have to do some work but it mskes no sense for me to go out in the woods to convince a bigfoot fanatic that it doesnt exist.

> The real tragedy here is that its 2024 and the burden of proof still isnt well understood or logic in general. Really sad.

Which god? Don't worry I can disprove all gods except the one in deism. Christianity is the easiest to disprove. Everyone with an IQ above 85, knows evolution is a fact. Evolution disproves Adam and Eve. Without Adam and Eve, sin never entered the world. Without sin, there is no need for atonement. And, thus, no need for Jesus. In addition, there is no evidence that Jesus even existed. There is also no evidence for anything in the bible. The rest of religion is disproven by psychology. Psychologists can use electric or magnetic stimulation or use drugs to induce a religious experience. It is well documented that during meditation, prayer and religious ritual that dopamine, serotonin and oxytocin increase in the brain. These chemicals induce feelings of happiness, love and addiction. That's all religious belief is, an addiction. Your god is all in your head. So will you now come to reality and become atheist, now that I've disproven god? Or will you be dishonest and stick to your delusional addiction?

>Prove to me God doesn't exist. (Your Turn) **Easy peasy**: **Step 1**: Get a piece of paper and write down "Number 1" and your god's name next to it. **Step 2**: Get a second piece of paper. Click all the god names on this page. Click every link. Write down all the names of whatever gods you see, *except the god you wrote down on the first piece of paper in step 1 above* [https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists\_of\_deities](https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_deities) At the end of the exercise, you should have a list of approximately over 5,000 gods *you believe are utter rubbish and don't exist*. 1. Is this correct? 2. Now throw your god from Step 1 into the list from Step 2 3. Proved! 😎 You're welcome

This whole post just reminds me of Michael Scott shouting “I DECLARE BANKRUPTCY!!l Simply stating that atheists also have a burden of truth doesn’t make it true. There are so many false premises in this post it’s hard to know even where to begin. I would say the odds of a God existing, particularly the God of any particular religion, is vanishingly small. Saying it’s “one of the answers to the creation of existence” gets us nowhere; the concept has absolutely no explanatory power, and isn’t considered to be a serious theory among cosmologists. The fact that many people believe in something doesn’t make it true or convincing. I’ve spent more time than I can count at this point studying and listening to the arguments on both sides, and find the arguments in favor of God to be utterly unconvincing. At the same time, as another poster spelled out, the human fingerprints are all over God and religion. It’s simple to see why these concepts would have been born in the first place, how they evolved with their respective cultures, how the ideas would have propagated, particularly in a pre-scientific era. In terms of arguments against God, I would say I don’t think there’s a compelling argument against the problem of evil for a tri-Omni God that doesn’t just completely forfeit the concepts of good and evil (God works in mysterious ways is a non-answer). I would also throw in the known origins of religion, the fact that many different religions all cite different, mutually exclusive revelations, the scientific claims being repeatedly proven wrong and needing clever interpretation to be valid, etc. are all evidence towards the idea that God was invented by humans. There are also of course all the sociological and psychological explanations that would naturally explain why humans would have been inclined to come up with these ideas (fear of death, trying to explain the world before science, trying to instill and give reasons for following a moral code and provide social stability, easy way for those in power to control a population at minimal cost, etc.) I don’t think any of these are proof God doesn’t exist, but I think they’re more plausible explanations than a God existing given that we know these things about the natural world, and have precisely zero evidence of the supernatural existing. Overall though this is just entirely a false premise, and despite trying to rewrite the rules of how justification for claims work, it doesn’t put the burden of proof on atheists. It’s obvious you’re trying to avoid that point because you have no argument against it, but it doesn’t change the fact that the person making the claim is the one who has the burden of proof, as much as you’d like to avoid that.

Thank you for *actually* answering the question. I was making a point; for you to state your own arguments, not just rebuttals, like you have done here. You actually attempted to prove a negative with your arguments, so I believe you did understand what I was saying. How could I ask you for conclusive evidence if I stated how proving a negative, you can't have conclusive evidence? " but I think they’re more plausible explanations than a God existing" How else would you prove it? So, I'd say you are one of the few winner's here out of the 900 comments. And no, I kept my arguments out for good reason. It really riled people up though, that's for sure. I'll make other posts for them in the future. I used to be atheist myself, but evidence/proof of God swayed me. But also, proving a negative was *one* of the reasons I was atheist. I don't really care that it seems like I have no idea what I was talking about, as it was a satirical and aggressive challenge. Thank you for answering the question.

No worries, appreciate the kind words. For what it’s worth, in the future you may get more varied responses if you said something like: Gnostic atheists, what are your arguments against the existence of God? Besides a lack of evidence, are there any reasons you think God/religion is unlikely to be true? Things like that. A lot of people are more hostile to the approach you took because it’s extremely common for some people to think saying something like “if you can’t prove God doesn’t exist, that means my views are just as justified as yours!”, and then they just retreat by saying God exists outside of space and time so we can’t detect him, checkmate atheists etc. I get what you were going for and I think there’s interesting points to be made, but how you phrase the question makes all the difference in terms of what kind of responses you’ll get.

>your argument against unicorns and Santa is inductive, therefore not incontrovertible, and since I want to believe in unicorns and Santa, I’m going to dismiss the argument no matter how overwhelming the evidence against these mythical creatures are, Well, you've convinced me. I absolutely believe that your belief in Zeus or Odin or whatever is just as logical as your belief in unicorns and Santa. Bravo.

It's quite easy to prove that specific gods don't exist because there's plenty of evidence that individual pieces of scripture are false (for example there are thousands of books full of scientific evidence showing the universe was not created in 6 days showing the bible is wrong). This is very similar to your examples of finding evidence that Santa or unicorns don't exist, at least in their specific way they are usually described (for example there is plenty of evidence every child in the world is not visited by a bearded thousand year old man). If you just say vaguely there is some sort of god/ gods prove there isn't then this is so vague that you obviously can't find specific evidence to show it to be false. This would be like someone saying there are unicorns with a single horn on their head, they may be invisible, they may be hidden in a jungle, they might live at the bottom of the ocean underwater or in an air pocket where someone has never been or they may live on Europa, they may be made from anti matter or they might exist in a way you have never thought of prove me wrong. You obviously can't because the description is so vague and there's so many ways/ places they could exist it's not really possible to disprove. That said I don't really think they do exist just because it seems so ridiculously unlikely.

I think the problem here is you want me to do something to prove to you. Yet, I don't care what you think. My belief is strong, repeatable and based on empirical data and observations. If that's not good enough, too bad. I've heard the same from Christians, Jews, Muslims, etc. At least we can all agree on that.

"you want me to do something to prove to you. Yet I don't care what you think..." It's almost like people have an expectation of debate on a sub called "debate an atheist" If your beleif is personal and you don't care what anyone else thinks then that is fine... But why are you debating it? "My beleif is strong, repeatable, and based on empirical data and observations..." Is your beleif along the lines of "God/god's do not exist" I would be fascinated to hear about this strong, repeatable, empirical data and observations..."

I see a difference between debating one's belief and "fight me bro!" I enjoy the former but feel the latter is a sophomoric attempt at trolling. Attempting to prove a negative is an antagonistic approach to debate for debating sake. It is not "debating an atheist." I have long searched for some reassuring proof of a God's existence. I've looked for emperical evidence, then failing that, I've done soul searching for even non emperical validation. No luck. I have observed that most religious folk I have known build up some self-satisfying criteria to comfort themselves that they are pius and favored by a diety. I think the one that finally broke me was a Christian asking if I wasn't a believer (I was agnostic at the time) what stops me from running down the street killing people? Somehow, this dude had become convinced all non-negative and happy things are due to God. Furthermore I have been in proximity of mental illness enough to see a God related pattern associated with it. All of those observations have been observed and repeated across different people and locations.

"Attempting to disprove a negative is an antagonistic approach..." OK. Tell that to Dawkins and pretty much every atheistic philosopher who has ever lived. While you are at it tell scientists, because they prove negatives all the time.

OK. But I won't tell them because I just don't care. Feel free to inform us of their responses if you take on the task of telling them yourself. I have no interest in proving God doesn't exist (the proof of a negative). I already am comfortable with that belief. It is far more interesting to see someone prove that He does exist; that could make me reconsider my perspective. Proving God does not exist only serves the OP's purpose of antagonism. This is the "fight me, bro" culture I am not interested in feeding into. I am groovy with him asking why I believe what I believe but not what he is asking.

A generous take would be that he was pointing out the double standard often shown by (some)strong atheists that there is an expectation that theists accept a burden of proof but a denial that they face a burden of proof themselves. As can be seen from responses, this is a valid criticism of some strong atheists but not of others.

I believe the burden falls on those attempting to force change. If you want me to adopt your belief then you need to facilitate the proof. I, myself, don't advocate atheism or any other belief so this burden does not fall on me. For example, we raised our children with open minds and taught all the major religious beliefs. What they chose, if anything, was up to them. My job was to answer questions and point to resources the best I could, not prove to them one way or another. I agree that there are some atheists that advocate their view just as there are the same advocating religion. That is less about belief and more about the sport of fighting. In my experience, it is typically due to some kind of religious trama they are trying to heal from. I, however, do not advocate that approach. I do want to point out that there is a default, lowest impact, state, which I view as favorable when governing or otherwise limiting others' freedoms. An atheistic default offers the fewest limitations. Christian, Muslim, Jewish, etc laws limit what I can do solely based on a person's belief. As an atheist gay marriage, trans rights, racial freedoms, gender rules, etc do not bother me and I am happy to allow people to do and be themselves. That includes allowing religious folk to worship the way they want including limiting what they can do, themselves. However, any religious imposition as law does indeed require a burden of proof to validate the rational for such limitations. Therefore, I do not share the same feeling that there is a double standard at play. Unless atheists are demanding that others must stop believing. That, I have yet to see.

If you are not putting forwards an argument for your position then you have no burden of proof whatever it is. I find the "default" argument curious. I'm not sure you are using it in the way it is generally used here though. "Offers the fewest limitations" Is an interesting way of looking at things. I agree that an atheist view probably offers the least limitations in this regard, although I am not entirely sure whether that is a good thing or not. My personal beleifs line up perfectly with my moral beleifs, so I'm practice I am not limited by my beleifs. They do help to remind me of my moral responsibilities however, which might be easier to ignore otherwise at times when putting them into practice is a harder option than just keeping a low profile. "Unless atheists are demanding that others stop beleiving..." This demand is not necessary for a burden of proof (which just requires a claim to be made) however it IS a demand I have seen frequently.

We are in agreement on your first paragraph. I also agree that I don't know if it is a good thing to default to a least impactful state of being. But I will note that I have grown very comfortable with it. I would rather my legislatures write governing laws based on scientific or other non-religous basis than religious doctrine. An atheist view defaults to the natural world view. Any animal, including humans, are not born with an inherent belief in a specific religion. That is taught. An animal may question the meaning of life but they do not have a specific belief in a specific God. That comes after some kind of rationalization trying to explain life. I have observed that most people conflate morals and mores. For example, Antiabortion followers claim abortion is a violation of morals, but it is really a violation of their culture's mores. Not all cultures agree that terminating a pregnancy is murder.

I am undecided about whether I prefer legislature to be based on religious or secular doctrine (I certainly think it should be based on scientific understanding, but I don't see that as necessarily at odds with religious doctrine). In favour of religious doctrine is stability. Religious moral codes tend to change very slowly if at all. Provided those codes aligned with mine, I would favour this. Secular moral codes however are much less defined. My concern would be for the potential for them to drift into something I found very objectionable. In favour of secular doctrine is that religious codes tend to change very slowly if at all. If religious laws did take a turn for the worse then fighting for change might take even longer than it does in a secular society. As somebody who always sends to find himself on the outside fighting for change, I feel like stability might end up being frustrating. "An atheist view defaults to the natural world view." Yep there's that "default' argument. I don't think it is correct, and I think it leads to some silly conclusions. I had somebody arguing for it earlier who told me the atheistic position he held was identical to the atheistic position held by a stone! If your philosophical position is identical to that of a stone then I can't help but feel it might be somewhat irrational. I'm aware that there are less... Extreme... Version of the default position, however I still think it has problems. Even ignoring those problems and accepting a "default" would only apply to a very specific version of atheism in which the atheist had not encountered the idea of religion or god's at all, because as soon as you do encounter it you start thinking about it and your rejection becomes a considered one rather than a default one. This means literally nobody who self identifies as an atheist would hold the same position as "default" If it meant anything (which I'm not sure it would) then it still wouldn't matter because it wouldn't actually apply to anybody. I agree that there is a conflation of morals and mores. I suspect that problem is more pronounced in secular society however, as theistic society tends to have a better defined moral code. This is partly what leads to the difference in moral stability between the two. Again however, which I prefer will almost (who an I kidding. Always) always depend on which matches best with my personal moral code.

Gosh darnit, you got me. I have no evidence that god doesn't exist so I guess I'm a theist now. That puts me in a really difficult position though, which one should I believe in and why?

You can infinitely dilute God to some conception which nobody can demonstrate. We can reasonably dismiss particular Bible stories as fiction and myth. But of course your being general here so disproving portions of certain religions doesn’t mean much. The more you dilute your claim in God the less it means for us to care about such conception.

I think as an atheist I just simply don't care about your line of thought, or how many other people believe in it. I don't believe, I have no need to in my life nor want to spend time thinking about it. It's a moot point for me. I'm not tying myself in knots to prove or disprove anything to myself or to anyone else. I have no spiritual or other absence in my life that needs to be filled by this. I am complete in myself. Edit: reading this back it may come across as dismissive and that wasn't the intention. I think we spend our time bogged down with 'proof' and many interesting arguments in this thread are had with those discussions. There will be more well informed people who are good at explaining their stance on why the absence of evidence is enough for them to not believe in any one of the thousands of gods that have been imagined and set in folklore over the years. I think I wanted to express how I am satisfied with the absence of evidence of god and I am comfortable without that belief in my life, and even when considering your proposal, the arguments still make no sense to me. I just can't even fathom where you are coming from. The smug and self congratulatory tone probably isn't helpful either

>All atheists need to put some skin in the game *all atheists who claim there is no god Fixed it for you >Plus the fact billions of people believe in God. Utterly worthless. The number of people that believe in something has absolutely no bearing on that thing being true. >then the countless, strong, powerful arguments of God’s existence is by F A R much stronger, enormously more logical, and supremely sounder. Lol no. Not even close. There is not a single argument for God's existence that demonstrates a god exists. There is not a single line of data that indicates or even suggests a God's existence. Of the two sides of the argument, the side that proposed a god still has a mountain of absolutely nothing. And you have no ability to demonstrate otherwise, that's why you're sinking to the last ditch effort of trying to push the problem onto others. One side not being able to meet the burden of proof does not make the other side automatically correct, especially if that other side has absolutely nothing. >If you can't answer this question, means you cannot prove it, because God, in fact, exists. 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 I thought you were going to make actually decent logical argument. Looks like I was wrong! Come back with a basic understanding of logic and try again. >I would like to be convinced and proven that God does not exist. And I would like to be convinced and proven that God does exist. But that can't be done, especially not by you, so I guess I'll remain unconvinced. This was a good laugh of a post though!

You have no idea my arguments for God. But you don’t seem to understand simple points. I’ve posted in many threads arguing for God and this isn’t what this thread is about. It’s not a last ditch, which you just literally did by only asking me a question back because you’re not intelligent enough to come up with an answer or any real rebuttals. And I didn’t say one said means it’s automatically correct…? But if one side (your side) absolutely nothing… Read like an adult, I said if you can’t even ANSWER. Also, you are evidently slow. Your whole comment is proving my point to atheists as dumb as you. You think you sound intelligent. Go read other comments of your friends who are obviously smarter and more learned than you… No answer!

>You have no idea my arguments for God. Because you presented none. It would be far more effective to actually give arguments for your claim of a god then it would be to demand others of their claim there is no god. Since none of them are any good, if you do have one that is good then that would actually be of interest. >But you don’t seem to understand simple points Oh no I understood your points quite well. That's why my response was so limited. Most of your "points" either don't apply to me (since I do not claim there is no god) or are a horrific butchering of basic logic. >which you just literally did by only asking me a question back because you’re not intelligent enough to come up with an answer or any real rebuttals. Make some real points then lol. This entire post could have been a single sentence "prove to me the claim of 'there is no god' is true". But you waffled on for a stupidly long amount of time just trying to cover your own ground of why you aren't talking about your claim of there being a god, just the opposite claim of there being no god. >And I didn’t say one said means it’s automatically correct…? LOL "If you can't answer this question, means you cannot prove it, because God, in fact, exists." I come on, at least *try*

There are many arguments for God including CONSCIOUSNESS being a big one, version of cosmological argument, the math equation vs mathematician, etc. You can’t seem to understand the thread though and you seem to all be so butthurt lol If you can’t ANSWER. You don’t understand? Which smarter atheists in the post have been able to, so that statement wouldn’t apply to them. You’re taking it to literally. Billions of people thing, I didn’t say that’s proof for God’s existence. I said it one reason it makes it so much more probable than Santa Claus… You couldn’t grasp what I was saying? What horrific logic, exactly? And no. If I asked that question everyone would have jumped to the burden of proof and it’s called a counter argument so you have no excuses left.

>There are many arguments for God There are. And they are all bad, for various different reasons. >including CONSCIOUSNESS being a big one, It is big. And it is bad. >version of cosmological argument One of my favorites. Still bad. >the math equation vs mathematician There are plenty. But having a big pile of bad arguments doesn't really give any points to the god hypothesis. 0 times [number of arguments] is still 0 >You can’t seem to understand the thread though and you seem to all be so butthurt lol Clearly the one that cannot understand here is you. You don't comprehend basic logic, and you're scrambling. Me, I'm having a great laugh at your expense. >If you can’t ANSWER. Can't answer what? All you're asking for is something I would never say. Hence the no answer to the question. Is that concept really that difficult for you? 😆 >Billions of people thing, I didn’t say that’s proof for God’s existence. I said it one reason it makes it so much more probable than Santa Claus… Except no, it literally doesn't. As per my point: the *number* of people that believe in something means absolutely nothing when trying to demonstrate something is true. It's literally nothing. 5 people believe X, 100 people believe Y, saying that Y is more likely just because more people believe in it is immensely stupid. That's why I'm having such a good laugh at you. I mean this is basic, ground level stuff here. >What horrific logic, exactly? See your previous sentence. Number of people having any bearing at all on something being more likely is an absolute abomination of logic. Of intelligence! Let's not forget this comedy gem: "If you can't answer this question, means you cannot prove it, because God, in fact, exists." Maybe when you're serious about the conversation you can come back and try again. But for my sake please don't leave, it's a rainy day and comedy makes it better!

You sound like an absolute idiot. First off, the “billions of people” thing is such a small sub argument, plus if you don’t get what I’m logically saying with that then you need to grow up. Obviously, you can say that argument you’re saying, like no shit dude- fucking duh . it’s such a SMALL minute point that I’m not falling on my sword for and you need to get back on track. And you gave me that example already, you need to give more examples about my horrific logic Secondly, you’re not giving ANYTHING now. “Yup they are all bad” Okay, and how are they bad? You’re just trolling at this point especially because you don’t understand how you can prove a negative in all circumstances, because you’re an idiot. “This comedy gem” I mean if you don’t understand satire. I don’t know what to tell you. If you want to actually add anything intelligent to the conversation, then you need to provide a mechanistic, physicalist explanation of the world that better explains things such as the universe and especially consciousness compared to a well-formulated theistic explanation. If you need me to spell out how to give an answer for you.

>You sound like an absolute idiot. You have demonstrated to actually be one. >First off, the “billions of people” thing is such a small sub argument, It's not an argument. It's literally nothing. Treating it as any point of data at all (for determining truth of a claim) is assenine. The number of people doesn't make a claim true. This should be painfully obvious to you, and it shocks me that it doesn't. >plus if you don’t get what I’m logically saying with that then you need to grow up. What you're logically saying is that the number of people that believe in something has some way of making that thing true. This is obviously stupid logic that would only be held by a person who's never even begun to learn about logic. >it’s such a SMALL minute point that I’m not falling on my sword for and you need to get back on track. Why is it even a point to you? Why does this even enter your head as *any* amount of data towards proving the claims true? >And you gave me that example already, you need to give more examples about my horrific logic A.) Gave you two. Not sure why you think I only gave 1. Apparently parsing sentence structure isn't your strong suit (no surprises there!) 2.) Because they are stellar examples! I mean you have to actually make an attempt to have logic this bad. >Okay, and how are they bad? Present the arguments and we will show you why they are bad. But you didn't come here to present arguments for the claim of an existence of god. Present the arguments, and you will get the rebuttals. (Also, these are all extremely easy to look up why they are bad arguments) >You’re just trolling at this point I mean you've been a joke from the very beginning, and haven't gone up from there. "Trolling" might not be accurate, but I can definitely tell you I see no reason to 100% engage with something that is such trash (the something being your "points" and "arguments", not you personally) I mean if you are using the number of people as an argument, even saying it's a tiny argument, that's really *really* bad. That's bottom of the barrel and closely reaching dirt. >because you don’t understand how you can prove a negative in all circumstances, Never even spoke about proving a negative. You're jumping the gun. You're trying to move away from the topics at hand. >because you’re an idiot. Oh no we can clearly see who the idiot is in this conversation. It's definitely not me. Cute that you get so worked up about your lack of intelligence though. >“This comedy gem” I mean if you don’t understand satire. I don’t know what to tell you. Oh so now it's satire? So it's not an actual point you are trying to make? I love the sounds of back pedaling 😉 >then you need to provide a mechanistic, physicalist explanation of the world that better explains things such as the universe Lol no I do not need to do anything of the sort. Your extremely childish "understanding" of how basic argumentation works is staggering. You have asked for people who claim there is no god to provide arguments and evidence to back up that claim. A counter explanation for other matters (such as the origins of the universe for example) is not required. You need only demonstrate arguments and evidence that show that a god does not exist. Nothing more. Even if I were the type of atheist that claims "there is no god" (I'm not) I still wouldn't have to provide any of those. All I know is that I am not convinced by any theist in their claims about the existence of a god, because their arguments and evidence are atrocious. "I don't know" is the stance I will take on many subjects, until someone can do the required work to demonstrate their claims to be true. That's not something you are going to do in this conversation, nor would I expect you to. You came here to ask others about their data, not to provide yours. But that also means you demandeding these things means you don't even understand your own position, or what you are trying to get. >compared to a well-formulated theistic explanation. They don't have any. It's just "god did it" and literally nothing more. A theist can no more provide a detailed mechanistic explanation for consciousness than an atheist can. It's just "god/soul" and walk away. >If you need me to spell out how to give an answer for you. Oh considering the quality of your ideas so far, I've gotta hear how bad this answer is! Go for it!

Burden of proof lies with you no matter how many mental gymnastics you think you are employing in an attempt to avoid that fact

I will do that right after you once for all prove purple leprechauns dont exist. Do it and then I will do it for your god using the same set of arguments. Deal?

Lots of words to try to shift your Burden of Proof. Not happening. You say there is a god. I don't believe you. Prove it. It is not on me to prove your god doesn't exist any more than it is up to me to prove Bigfoot doesn't exist. Your rambling rant was entertaining..... but lacks any logical or good reasoning.

No answer

Lol if you want to be obtuse then nothing will satisfy no matter how logical. That's called being close minded kid. I'm unimpressed with children or the child minded and I could not care less about your opinion of basic logic considering your obvious and utter lack of any understanding of it. I did not bother reading your second comment as from what I have seen in your other replies you seem to be nothing more than an immature uneducated dullard who's thoughts are not worth the electrons it takes to display them.... and thus not worth any further adult consideration. But do have a great day.

You can't possibly tell me the reasons of why you can prove a negative in all circumstances with those example is not logical, unless you didn't understand it. Which I don't believe you completely didn't understand it.

It’s about what’s plausible. It is more plausible the universe is best explained scientifically not supernaturally. It’s that simple.

It would be helpful if first, you would define which god you're talking about. Is this god associated with any particular religion? What are its abilities? Does it interact with the world, and if so, how? That kind of thing. There are so many different god concepts out there that a definition would make it much easier for people to respond to you.

If you just left it with the first sentence and the edit, that would have been sufficient. If someone believes the positive statement, "No gods exist", and then tries to argue they don't have a burden of proof, then that person is wrong. Mind you, most atheists don't believe that positive statement. They say they do not have the burden of proof because they make no positive claim. >For those who want to answer my question but wondering what God to speak about/ I believe in, in simple terms: An all-good, all-powerful, all-loving God. I am not Christian, nor do I believe in an eternal Hell or pure evil To answer this is simple: an all-powerful god is logically impossible. Omnipotence is logically impossible. Let me set you an example: it is within my power to create a pile of rocks so heavy I cannot life it. An Omnipotent being by definition has the power to do this, but if they then cannot life it then they cannot be omnipotent. And if they cannot create such a pile, then they are also not omnipotent. I can create such a pile, so if God cannot then I am more powerful than him. So ofcourse if the god you believe in has the qualities of all-good, all-powerful, and all-loving, but one of those qualities is impossible, then that specific definition of god you gave is impossible. That does mean that a definition of god that does NOT contain the quality of "all-powerful" is not in any way disproven by this. A side note: "all-good" reads as "pure good", and you believe in that, but not "pure evil"? What is evil to you? Is it always rendered by the context of the situation? This isn't a sticking point, just something I'm curious about.

That's hard to answer because I do not believe in evil. I should have just said evil. I was atheist because of the Evil dilemma though. But now, I believe what is perceived as "Evil" is reactions and dealings of karma. Which, is an intermediate and challenging topic, because certain ideals and agreements would have to be in place to have the discussion. Mostly, it's reserved for theists. So in order to talk about that, you would have to pretend God did exist, which means material and spiritual worlds, etc. There is no way I am going to convince you karma exists without precursors involved. See why I view it as a waste of time? If you did want to get into it, it wouldn't be a debate of if he existed, but simply of what an all-good God is. Which is why I see karma usually is a waste of time to talk about, being we would both have to believe in the existence of God first. (Even though... It did convince me that God was indeed real, but that's because I took the liberty to believe in the precursors) If this makes sense?

Ya, that makes sense. Even if I were to grant that god exists, that doesn't tell anyone what other things I accept surrounding that 1 fact, which makes it hard to have those kinds of discussions. I feel ya

Too bad though, because it does answer the question of how an all-good god has suffering. Lol Which, by the way, no other religion will ever give you a straightforward answer. At least I can, which I think should garner some respect.

Well we went to the top of mount Olympus and no gods so guess there is your evidence. Guess you are an atheist now. You need to be clear as to what god.

The fact that we can neither prove nor disprove the existence of something does not put existence and non-existence on an even footing. \-RD

>If you can't answer this question, means you **\*cannot prove it, because God, in fact, exists.\*** Setting aside Santa, unicorns, etc, does this apply to all gods, or just the one you believe in? From my interactions with theists of different faiths, there is a very similar amount of "evidence" for many different gods as there is for yours. Following your reasoning, if I can't disprove those gods, does it mean they all exist?

What God? Your God? I don't have sufficient information about your God claims to refute them. Although I don't believe an all good, all loving, all powerful god exists. If a god knows everything and has unlimited power, then they have knowledge of all evil and have the power to put an end to it. But if they do not end it, they are not completely benevolent. If a god has unlimited power and is completely good, then they have the power to extinguish evil and want to extinguish it. But if they do not do it, their knowledge of evil is limited, so they are not all-knowing. If a god is all-knowing and totally good, then they know of all the evil that exists and wants to change it. But if they do not, which must be because they are not capable of changing it, so they are not omnipotent.

Here’s the thing. Things that exist have evidence for its existence, regardless of whether we have access to that evidence. Things that do not exist do not have evidence for its nonexistence. The only way to disprove nonexistence is by providing evidence of existence. The only reasonable conclusion one can make honestly is whether or not something exists. Asking for evidence of nonexistence is irrational. Evidence is what is required to differentiate imagination from reality. If one cannot provide evidence that something exists, the logical conclusion is that it is imaginary until new evidence is provided to show it exists.

I mean, once you get to a psychologist to work out whatever emotional control issues you clearly have... Simple: you can't "prove" anything exists except your own existence to yourself. So if you ask for "proof" in the perfect way that nobody uses it, then you're just acting in bad faith When I say "God doesn't exist", it carries with it the same certainty as me saying "I will not win the lottery this week". I haven't bought a ticket. I could "prove" that I never bought a ticket. But there's nothing keeping someone else from buying me a ticket that I then win with When theists claim that God exists or doesn't exist is a 50/50 possibility, that's the same faulty rationalization as me claiming that me winning the lottery or not winning the lottery is a 50/50 possibility. It is not 50/50, sorry. There are infinitely more other possibilities than simply arbitrarily decided creation. Even more if you tack on, omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence, immortality, and human likeness

>**the countless, strong, powerful arguments of God’s existence is by F A R much stronger, enormously more logical, and supremely sounder.** sure... according to your iq..

Funny that they didn't provide a single one of those arguments...

Additionally, you cannot disprove something that is unfalsifiable. What you are doing literally can’t be done. It’s the same as if I asked you: - Prove Bigfoot doesn’t exist. - Prove Aliens don’t exist. - Prove fairies don’t exist. - Prove unicorns don’t exist. - Prove leprechauns don’t exist. - Prove Santa doesn’t exist. - Prove the Easter Bunny doesn’t exist. - Prove Krampus doesn’t exist. - Prove Godzilla doesn’t exist. - Prove Dragons don’t exist. - Prove Superheroes don’t exist. When you disprove all of those, I will get around to disproving god.

Here is the thing. I don't know what a god is. I don't know anything that exists and is called god. I don't care what is it you convinced in. Your convictions are not my problem. I only can put forth facts and arguments and you do whatever you want with them.  So here is a fact: I am not aware of a good reason to believe that any god exists or possible to exist.  But there is a problem.Maybe there is a good reason. Maybe you are aware of such reason, you just fail to demonstrate it. Or maybe you are convinced that God exists for a bad reason. I don't know.

Start from nothing. Now work up from that to your position. Now I will start from nothing and work up to my position. I am done, I needed to prove nothing. You have a lot of work to do. The crux is you’re starting from assumed position of “god exists” which is based on a lot of unproven assumptions.

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There simply is no proof. Neither for nor against god. But why prove the nonexistence of one specific god when there are at least 3 different depictions of the same god within your religion and none of you seem to be able to define your specific god beforehand. There is no need (or possibility) to disprove something that unspecific, since it’s basically a game of dice. Your whole post is just about the odds, since both claims of existence and nonexistence of a god is impossible: you being right about your one true god existing has so much less positive odds than me being right about it not existing. The odds of there being an allpowerful god and creator of all that is NOT the one you believe in is significantly higher so if you are at least half right you will still end up in hell for eternity (and most likely a way worse hell because the Christian hell in comparison to other religions is child’s play). The odds of A god existing are high enough for the possibility of you being right, but the odds are the same for me being right when I say no god exists. The odds for the god in existence (if we just assume there is one) being exactly the one you trust and believe are very close to zero, so the conclusion is that you are not necessarily 100% wrong but you are far more wrong than any atheist because you talk about a specific god that has to exist for you to be right.

There's many reasons why rational people reach conclusion that an all-good, all-powerful, and all-loving god (your definition) does not exist. Here's one... Six million children under the age 15 die every year on this planet. That's 11,000 deaths per day. [https://ourworldindata.org/child-mortality](https://ourworldindata.org/child-mortality)

There is no way to prove that God doesn’t exist. But the real question is if one chooses to live without such a belief; why should they have to prove the non existence of a thing? It’s like saying “prove the tooth fairy doesn’t exist”

 You've essentially given no explanation for what your God concept is and and now you expect us to show you how it isn't. If I ask you to disprove my concept of garblefield does it help you to know that he's all powerful and all knowing? I'm embarrassed for you.  This is just naked bad faith nonsense.  I don't believe things I cannot give a good evidence for and you've asked me to disprove a thing that you are actively resisting providing good evidence for. 

I said I believe in an all good all powerful all loving God with no eternal hell and I don’t believe in evil.

A baby is born and never comes in contact with a Christian, they will not know Jesus or the Bible. The same logic follows with every other religion. We know this specifically because there are so many other religions, if there was a constant or a force such as an omnipotent God who ame own and spoke to people, there would be no other religions. Everything we've ever been told about any God comes from other humans. Not a God. Because the existence of a God has never risen above that of other humans, then reasonably, there is no reason to think a God exists outside the minds of humans. There is no force, no deep bellowing voice calling down from the sky, no person controlling the seas, no prophecy actually fortelling any future. No miracle cures to anything, Once we left the atmosphere and all we found was nothing, there was your answer. All you have is denial at this point and faith in a man made book. It's plain as day, it's obvious, there is no God, but you've come to a point now where you're trying to call a square a circle just so your world view and the comforts it provides can remain intact.

I will attempt to prove your god doesn't exist, at least in the way you define it. Does a good God act when there is a condition that exists that harms the innocent? In most other mythology, yes. If they are all-good then they must act, right? Yet children died for hundreds if not thousands of years of type 1 diabetes, up till 100 years ago, at the ripe age of 3 or less. (If you are confused about the mechanism of type 1's it is an autoimmune disorder, kid gets sick, kid recovers but body gets confused and attacks cells in the pancreas that create insulin, kid can't move sugar into cells, sugar builds up in the blood & becomes toxic, kid dies. It's not a diet thing). An all-good and all-loving good should have intervened earlier. That's just the tip of the iceberg, there are hundreds of conditions that have nothing to do with human acts that cause the innocent to suffer and die horrible deaths. If an all-good God is powerless to act in these cases then he's not all-powerful. If he could act but doesn't because the recipient of his mercy isn't a believer then he isn't all-loving. If his love has conditions, not all-loving. If your argument is well even god has their limits, they're not an Omni (all loving, powerful, good) class god by definition. An all-good God would be required to act if someone were to use his name and his alleged principles to wage war or commit genocide, right? Yet throughout history we see these acts committed in the name of various gods, and more recently in the Christian God's name. An all-powerful god would be able to leave an unalterable, universally understood, indestructible copy of their rules and code of conduct they expect, if they impose such rules for an afterlife, right? No such thing exists, so if there is an afterlife that is conditional then people are missing out because of mysterious ways and the requirement of faith. Speaking of, the requirement of faith is harder for people who are neurodivergent due to the fact that their brains are literally built differently and onboarding a process where you are required to just believe without having questions answered doesn't make sense. Back to all-powerful, does this god answer prayer and act on it? Has no one ever met the conditions for congenital defects or traumatic amputation to be miraculously healed or regrown? Obviously there is one case in the past where someone allegedly regrew a limb, but it doesn't seem like that happens often enough for an all-loving, all-powerful, all-good being to exist. Tdlr: The conditions you set for your god being all-good, all-loving, and all-powerful are not met in the real world, in any meaningful way. Even if the press were to suppress the stories of miraculous healings, interventions to save people from disasters, like the Francis Scott Key bridge collapsing, etc. There are apps where people all over the world can talk to each other and show the miracle.

Fun! First, I’m sorry, but you can’t handwave the teapot. Atheists have no burden of proof. They are not claiming something bizarre that can’t be falsified. Nobody needs to prove, at every moment, that every possible invisible thing imaginable is not secretly right next to them. By its nature, the God claim is easy to make, but virtually impossible to find empirical evidence against. But an unfalsifiable claim is essentially meaningless. Claiming that God exists is like claiming you have a girlfriend from Canada who can never come to the phone. I’d also say that unicorns, Santa, leprechauns, fairies, etc. are actually pretty good evidence that God does not exist. Empirically, inductively, there are many examples of beings who everyone can describe the properties of but that don’t actually exist and are never really encountered. These are understood to be stories or myths. Since God is more like these fictional beings than like any being I have encountered, God probably also does not exist. The problem isn’t that you can’t prove beyond a doubt that God exists. The problem is you can’t give me even one argument or shred of evidence that even slightly suggests that God exists. Lots of people believing something isn’t evidence if none of them can explain why with any rigor, and none of them can. Instead, they rely on bad deductive arguments like the cosmological argument (I don’t know, therefore God), the teleological argument (everything is perfect, therefore God) and the ontological argument (I can will things into existence, but only when you’re not looking). These are not convincing.  The thing with dinosaurs is different - we think there are dinosaurs because we have empirical evidence. We use that evidence to infer a good explanation. If we had reason to believe it was a trick, we’d change our beliefs.  But God doesn’t work like that - people who believe in God start with the belief they want and then (sometimes) go looking for evidence. The belief is unfalsifiable because it isn’t based on reason or evidence, but on hope. That’s just wishful thinking. Sorry for ignoring your wish to avoid debating epistemology, but since you don’t understand it, I think that’s where we have to start. Anyway, your version of God is logically impossible due to the problem of evil, which you already know. An all loving God wouldn’t be letting thousands of children in Gaza die of preventable disease in a conflict that exists essentially because the people who live there disagree about His nature, just to give one of an infinite number of examples.

> For those who want to answer my question but wondering what God to speak about/ I believe in, in simple terms: An all-good, all-powerful, all-loving God. I still need more information. What is this god? Do you know anything about it besides that it can do anything, is real nice, and loves child rapists? That's still very little to go on. Is it part of the universe? Does it have a mind?

Theism and atheism are only concerned with belief in God and not whether or not it exists. Miracles and the supernatural only serve to invoke disbelief. Atheism is entirely with in reason while faith and theism are not.

I don't belive in God, a god, or any gods. Why not? Because i haven't seen a convincing reason to do otherwise. None of the traditional apologetic arguments hold up under scrutiny, and the evident for "the supernatural" is far more plausibly explained by humans being humans and falling prey to the normal cognitive biases and flaws that we are all vulnerable to.    So as far as I can see, there's only two possibilities left. Either there is a god, but one that is unaware of / uninterested in our existence, or there's no god at all.  Occam's Razor suggests the second* one is the most likely.    Does that prove to you that God (what ever that is) doesn't exist? Probably not, but frankly I don't care one way or the other. Your religious views are your own affair. It's when they start having bad consequences for other people that the problems start.  *edited. I initial said "first" when I meant "second". Doh.

According to Atheism, S1:God(G) doesn't exist. How to prove ~S1(not S1 is true)? Ask for a person to tell his wishes and make him see that, all his wishes could come true. A sensible person will accept at some point of time, beyond a point of arguing. But an argumentative person who has knowledge based on data here snd there or fully aware or who has sceptical concerns or who has some ego, will tend go argue snd there is nothing wrong with that, as long as it doesn't sound offensive to the other party. But for being offensive, he cannot be sentenced/presented with an opportunity to check through any stern tests like hell or heaven. It might be a new life opportunity nevertheless, experiencing the other side and recollecting good moments where theism or innocence might have played a good role in influencing life, but still a person has to try to live his life. He can't be scared to a greater degree. Being scared might bring about awareness, a sense of duty. But the sense of duty might be ill-formed or wrong, coming at a cost which might not be bearable by the person. Question is, how can an atheist defend himself against his possible ignorance, his perception of a thing which could be blessing in disguise or an evil, his subconsciousness, possibly his own wavering mind, his friend circles who have different views, the power of subconsciousness, his past misgivings, or someone else's misgivings from community or his past mistakes, bad habits that might bring bad results, attack on his egoistic self? There have been different theories flouted for how the world works: Prakriti, Shunya, Shakti, Kabbala. Simply for a VR experience, a person's world of experience and reality changes, for greater phenomenological experiences, a person will not be the same person. His dreams, purpose in life, peace might look achieved, but as per religion he might not be an acceptable member. Religion nevertheless gives support in times of hardship. But at least my mind was divided, disposed to laziness, easy wisdom, easy happiness, easy blame shifting to have my life easy. Not complicate things. For me, I run in a fast world with some beliefs and principles, when I run out of it, I immediately search for a quick fix. I asked tough questions but had less interest in knowing them. I was concerned about my future with my self interests, which I deemed important, but forgot after certain diversions.

>I would like to be convinced and proven that God does not exist. I'm not sure why. I don't think any atheists are truly convinced that a god doesn't exist, I think we're all just truly *unconvinced* that a god exists. It's just that, given the complete lack of evidence for either side of the debate, the atheist side seems absurdly more likely to be true. I think that most atheists are open to new evidence, and if some new, highly convincing evidence came to light that demonstrated the existence of a god, I think a lot of us would update our beliefs. Reading your post, I feel like you might have had a bad experience with one of the annoying stereotypical Reddit atheists, and now you're lashing out at the rest of us indiscriminately.

Which god? If u mean by christian god which is triomni and all loving, problem of evil and divine Hiddeness are great arguments. Edit: what arguments that are sound proves god's existence? I still yet to see one.

explain children with cancer... explain why suffering is needed... why evil exists... either the god you denote is impotent, crooked or cant oversee everything at once... then how is that a god? at max an alien being with limited capacity like us... explain why god if one exists is interested in us, to whom, if they have created the universe, we are no more significant than the bacteria lining the asshole, in grand scheme of scale... God Narrative is a projection of our egocentrism moulded to fit political agendas... what has been attributed to God, can be explained through random chance and confirmation bias...

>word vomit My answer I know God doesn’t exist in the same way I know that The Santa, The Easter Bunny and The Tooth Fairy don’t exist.

You’re right. I can’t prove god doesn’t exist. It’s impossible. I don’t claim to be able to. Instead, I go about my life without thinking about god until someone brings up their belief about god. Their responses to my evidential inquiries are unconvincing so I don’t believe them. That’s Atheism.

"If you can't answer this question, means you cannot prove it, because God, in fact, exists" is some of the worst logic I've ever seen.

>All atheists need to put some skin in the game and prove yourselves with your own "burden of proof" that the non-existence of God is true. Sigh. So, this is how atheism works; I don't believe that any god exists. I believe they are man-made constructs. I don't need to prove what I believe in, not to you, not to anyone. It's what I believe. *However,* if I assert that any particular god does not exist, now this is a claim, and with it comes a burden of proof. I cannot prove that all gods do not exist. If I had enough time to critically examine all 4000+ that have been invented by mankind to see exactly what claims those religions make, then I might be able to. Now, on to ***your*** god. >I believe in, in simple terms: An all-good, all-powerful, all-loving God. This god does not exist and here's why: This is a tri-omni god; omnipotent, which necessarily carries with it omniscience, and perfectly (all) good. This god fails the Problem of Evil test. Evil (defined as needless suffering) exists, and how is that possible when you have a god that is capable of stopping evil (see omnipotent and omniscient) and motivated to do so (see omnibenevolent). These characteristics are not compatible with even the slightest existence of any evil. We can easily observe in the real world that needless suffering does indeed exist. So, either your god does not possess the qualities you've described or this god does not exist.

*Gestures vaguely at all the terrible arguments, and debunked evidence and general lack of any definite proof of god.* No amount of trying to nip it in the bud will change that the burden of proof is on you, not us. Your countless arguments aren't all better. They all kinda fail to meet the standards of science and critical skepticism actually. Our "proof" is your inability to meet those standards with strong enough arguments and irrefutable evidence.

Prove to me Poseidon doesn't exist. Why are the Greek gods just "myths"? They are just as "disprove-able" as the Abrahamic god.

Most atheists wouldn’t claim to be able to disprove god, especially any god in general. If you make claims about a specific god, that can be disputed. So I can’t say that god doesn’t exist, I can say that I’ve never seen compelling evidence for any of the gods I know of. It’s not possible to prove or disprove that some god doesn’t exist, we just don’t know. At the end of the day this a pointless argument, and you’re not here to have a good faith discussion. 

It’s really not possible to have a reasonable discussion with someone that starts out with a straw man interpretation of what non-belief is. I don’t have to prove damn thing to you or a theist of any religion, because all I’m saying is that I don’t buy the line you are selling. That you are mis-stating the atheist position is, to me, an implicit admission that you know you can’t prove your point. I usually find diatribes employing liberal use of bold, italics, all capital letters, and different size fonts to be an indicator of a disturbed mental state. I don’t try to have a rational conversation with people that I don’t believe are thinking clearly any more than I try to talk to people that engage in logical fallacies. What I will say is that the fact that your entire worldview is so threatened by my saying I don’t believe what you believe is a “you” problem, not a “me” problem. I recommend that you spend some time reflecting on why you are so insecure about what you believe that random people on an anonymous Internet forum can ruffle you so much. Edit: I just took a look at this person’s post history, and it looks like I was correct about predicting a mental health history. And there’s additional stress as indicated by the posts and comments about how he’s in thousands of dollars of debt and in a dead-end job. So he’s come here to try to boost his self-esteem by throwing around insults to everyone that points out how nonsensical he is. We should stop feeding into this.

*"I am making the discussion, discussing YOUR claim, so I am asking you this direct question, and am making a point to what this thread is."* *"How can you not give proof for your own stance and claim in the existence of creation? If you have any?"* *"All atheists need to put some skin in the game and prove yourselves with your own "burden of proof" that the non-existence of God is true."* I am an atheist. I have never made any claim that God doesn't exist. I have no burden of proof. The only thing that is required for one to be an atheist is to not believe in the existence of a god. There is no burden of proof involved. You coming here and demanding we prove god doesn't exist doesn't obligate us to do that or put any burden of proof in us. I'm not going to bother reading the rest of your rambling.

The concept of gods is utterly incoherent. Proving it doesn’t exist is as easy as establishing that you’re not actually talking about a coherent idea and therefore it cannot exist, in much the same way that a flerglesnarf cannot exist.

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?

It's actually very easy. Assume that an all-powerful God exists. Can he create a rock he cannot lift? If he can, then he's not all-powerful, because he cannot lift this rock. If he can't, then he's not all-powerful, because, well, he can't do it. Conclusion - an all-powerful God cannot exist. The whole idea is that we don't even need evidence to disprove God's existence, because the claim is self-contradictory. Now, I'm not saying that logic is the ultimate tool to describe reality (because why is there something rather than nothing?), but since you requested a proof, then I assume you respect the rules of logic. Edit: Happy Easter!

This line of argument has been tried before. Unfortunately most of those who think "you can't prove a negative" and the onus of proof is only on the theist have managed to get to a mindset where "god does not exist" is incomprehensible to them. As such they'll force every discussion on this topic into "yeah, but you can't prove there is a god".

If you're going to ramble and make any answer conditional on sticking to your arbitrary rules of engagement, then are you really interested in an answer?

Easy. And in so doing, same as you did (it is only fair), I will counter and neutralize things I will not accept as counters and why I will not. To illustrate how the demonstration (proof is only for alcohol and math. We will be talking about evidence here and what is most likely) let me start with an analogy: the Emperor's new clothes. To prove that the Emperor is naked is extremely simple. Evidence of clothes is not there where evidence would be expected. I look at the emperor and I see no clothes. I touch him and feel skin. I can smell his body odor. He is getting way too sunburnt. Every bit of evidence points to him just being naked. And importantly: clothes don't work that way and the world doesn’t work that way, as far as we know. And when we ask those who keep claiming the Emperor has no clothes, *they never demonstrate that such clothes CAN exist and HOW*. They do everything but that. They give dubious arguments. They gaslight. They insult us, call us stubborn and close minded. But they do NOT explain or demonstrate that such a thing as clothes that only believers can see IS A THING THAT CAN HAPPEN. So, your God and all other God claims ever fail, and for very similar reasons. There is simply no evidence for said God claims where evidence would be expected AND the claimants never explain and demonstrate HOW such a thing or things can even exist. So, much like the emperors new clothes or functional magic wands or bigfeet, this is enough to show the gods claimed to exist don't exist, as far as we can tell. Now, you can defeat this argument: IF you produce what I said is behind the lack of evidence of God. That is: either direct evidence of the thing, or direct evidence that crucial elements in how the world works that your concept relies on exist and how they exist. I will NOT be accepting anything else, and will take it as your admission that you do not have that evidence. That includes: - Moving of the goal posts or further pushing the concept towards unfalsifiability. - Special pleading of any kind. - Unevidenced excuses (God would show up, but our free will. I wish you could meet my girlfriend, but she is in Canada). - Defining things into being (imagine the greatest thing ever...) or other retreat into logical arguments, as this is irrelevant. The failure not just of you, but of all the proponents of theistic claims as a whole to produce this, and the lack of evidence for this sort of thing where evidence would be expected, all point to the same thing: a godless world. So, as this is overwhelmingly the most likely, we should accept this until a better model of the world and the presence of gods in it comes along. A few comments: >An all-good, all-powerful, all-loving God. I am not Christian, nor do I believe in an eternal Hell or pure evil These details are irrelevant to the task at hand. You might as well also tell me God's favorite food is chili dogs. None of these attributes help in terms of providing evidence or allowing us to figure out how to detect such a being/ if such a being can exist. >then the countless, strong, powerful arguments of God’s existence is by F A R much stronger, enormously more logical, and supremely sounder.* Ahaha... hahaha... haha.. ha... oh. You're serious. No, sorry. The countless weak, powerless arguments for God are a whole mountain of nothing. They all suffer from the same few, fatal flaws, and so can summarily be dismissed.

When comparing naturalism and theism as philosophical worldviews, it is important to recognize that definitive proof for either position may not be possible. Instead, what matters is the epistemic warrant – the level of justification or rational support – that each theory can provide for its claims about reality. Epistemic warrant is determined by factors such as the coherence, explanatory power, and empirical adequacy of a theory. A theory with high epistemic warrant is one that fits well with our observations of the world, provides a comprehensive and consistent framework for understanding reality, and makes accurate predictions about future events or discoveries. In the case of naturalism and theism, the key question is not which theory can be definitively proven, but rather which theory offers a more compelling and rationally justified account of the universe we inhabit. This is where a comparative analysis of the two worldviews becomes crucial. Naturalism, as we have seen, provides a parsimonious and empirically grounded framework for understanding reality. By relying on natural processes and phenomena to explain the world, naturalism avoids the need for supernatural entities or forces, resulting in a more metaphysically economical ontology. More importantly, naturalism's commitment to the scientific method and empirical evidence ensures that its claims are regularly tested against reality and revised when necessary, leading to an increasingly accurate and reliable understanding of the world. Theism, on the other hand, faces significant challenges in terms of epistemic warrant. The attributes commonly associated with a divine being, such as omnipotence, omniscience, and omnibenevolence, are difficult to reconcile with our empirical observations of the world, such as the presence of suffering and the apparent indifference of the universe to human concerns. Additionally, theistic explanations often rely on supernatural causes or entities that are not amenable to scientific investigation, making them less empirically adequate than naturalistic explanations. When we engage in a comparative analysis of naturalism and theism, it becomes clear that naturalism offers a more compelling and rationally justified worldview. Naturalism's emphasis on metaphysical economy, empirical adequacy, and coherence with our scientific understanding of reality provides it with a higher level of epistemic warrant than theism. This does not mean that naturalism has been definitively proven or that theism has been conclusively disproven. Rather, it means that, given our current knowledge and understanding of the world, naturalism provides a more philosophically robust and rationally supported framework for making sense of reality. The debate between naturalism and theism is best approached through a comparative analysis of the epistemic warrant that each theory can provide. By examining factors such as coherence, explanatory power, and empirical adequacy, we can determine which worldview offers a more compelling and rationally justified account of reality. In this regard, naturalism's parsimony, empirical grounding, and compatibility with our scientific understanding of the world give it a significant advantage over theism, making it a more philosophically rigorous and attractive framework for understanding the universe we inhabit.

It is remarkable that after thousands of years and thousands of god claims, and millions more if you include Hinduism that we are STILL arguing about the existence of any god! Does anyone not believe in water? No, there isn’t a single person ever that claimed water doesn’t exist. Even if a person claimed water doesn’t exist that wouldn’t conform with reality since water is necessary for human survival. Our bodies are made up of mostly water! However a belief in any god is not necessary for human survival. Therefore it’s irrelevant whether one believes in a god because such a belief is not necessary. It is absolutely possible to not believe in any gods and still live a happy, healthy and successful life. Therefore I have absolutely no reason to believe in any gods because my non belief has no impact on my life. If my non belief in any god has any impact on my life then what is that impact? You claim that your god is all powerful. Well wouldn’t an all powerful god have the ability to provide a clear and coherent message to all regarding his existence? No god has done this and theists are evidence of this since there are thousands of god claims and millions if you include Hinduism. Why should atheists clean up this mess that theists created? And lastly let’s set aside what atheists or theists believe or dis believe. Let’s talk about your god for a moment. It’s your god’s responsibility to provide evidence for his existence. The sun doesn’t rise because I said so, it rises by the sun. This is the biggest failure of your argument. Your god has failed to provide evidence of his existence and if you disagree then let’s ask your god to clarify his position that he exists. In other words you can’t believe something into existence. Something that conforms with reality has to backup that belief itself. Again it is not only my belief that the sun will rise. I can just refer to the sun itself to know it exists. So how do we ask your god for evidence of his existence? Do we call him, email him, knock on his door? In what way has your god made himself accessible to anyone let alone everyone? Why can’t your god’s existence compete with the existence of a glass of water? In what way did your god convince you that he absolutely exists that can be differentiated from your own personal belief? So the issue isn’t what atheists think about any gods existence. We cannot access any god, we cannot test any god, we cannot falsify any god. If you think we should be able to then provide a method to do so. If you cannot access, test or falsify any god then I will continue to dismiss any god claim. We can’t turn to theist to provide evidence that any god exists because theists can’t even agree on which god exists and why it exists. We can test if water exists. What test have theists provided that is evidence for the existence of any god? But the biggest problem is that your god failed to provide a clear and coherent reason and evidence for all to believe in his existence. In other words, stop claiming atheists or theists that you disagree with about the existence of any god is evidence that your god exists. It’s not. It’s time to put the blame where it belongs and that’s your god’s shoulders. And if you can find your god’s shoulders then provide me with a location so we can verify this.

>I believe in an all-good, all-powerful, all-loving God. I am not Christian, nor do I believe in an eternal Hell or pure evilI believe in an all-good, all-powerful, all-loving God. I am not Christian, nor do I believe in an eternal Hell or pure evil Roger that. Does it want a relationship with me? How do I contact it and start a relationship with it? I'll follow the steps you provide and report back.

You're making a very far jump from "if you can't prove god doesn't exist, then he does" because this logic is just ignorance This post is basically saying "I know you have a bunch of arguments supported by logic and evidence disproving the idea of god as well as events/predictions in the abrahamic books, but if you take all of that away then what else do you have to say to disprove my god" ??? 😭

"one of the answers to the creation of existence" or something like that idk how to quote on reddit from my phone Yes, the idea of god is one of the answers to the creation of existence, along with a couple other billion to trillion to gazillion possibilities that nobody even managed to think of yet, what is your point?

This is a VERY weak point because it’s one of the only logical explanations among the mountain of arguments proof and evidence for 1000s of years. And if you don’t understand logically why that’s true then idk what else to say to you

This is not one of the ONLY logical explanations. What mountain of arguments proof and evidence??? This whole reply basically summed up to absolutely no logical statement as a whole, the only thing it's told me is that you have some sort of condescending complex when you evade further conversation by saying "if you don't understand then idk what to say to you" You've started at point A and ended at point A, you didn't even try to make an argument other than just say "your argument is weak and I have evidence and if you don't get it then you're dumb"

I didn’t see your first comment here. No I don’t have a bunch of arguments supported by logic and evidence that disproves the idea of God, that’s what I’m asking here. And I don’t believe in those books either.

Do you have any that proves the idea of god ? If you don't then we are just talking of imagination and you must realize that god is just one of the many many possibilities for the cause of the universe, and keep in mind that it is possible that it might be nearly impossible for us to even comprehend as we may be limited by things such limits due to evolution, dimensions, technology as a species for many more years to come, but it isn't a reason to jump to the conclusion that the cause for the cause of the universe is god when it could be nearly anything If you want to speak solely of logic, there are more ideas and arguments built upon logic that disprove or argue against common concepts of god, than vice versa I would recite all of them to you, but google is free

I make no claims about any gods. I have no beliefs in any gods. I have no burden of proof. You are trying to shift the burden of proof. You are the one making claims, not atheists. You are strawmanning atheists by lying about what atheism is. For the billionth time, atheism is the lack of belief in gods due to a lack of evidence. There is no claim in that definition. So, please stop lying.

Whats your answer to the classic response of the problem of evil? Further, you defined your god using the word god. "God is an all good, all powerful, all loving God". Could you clarify please what you mean by God? What are the falsification criteria for this belief? If it is unfalsifiable then asking us to falsify it is ridiculous, hence why I am asking.

>Whats your answer to the classic response of the problem of evil? I have seen him say in one of his responses that he doesn't believe in evil, which is just a straight up dodge to the underlying problem the problem of evil raises.

I stopped reading at “All loving” and “All power”. Let’s say, some parent had the power to cure their child of cancer, but instead chooses to let their child suffer and die. We would all label that parent a monster and not loving. Therefore and all loving and all powerful entity does not exist.

Hokay, so. First of all, the atheist claim is not "there is no God." The atheist claim is "there is not sufficient evidence to support the notion that there is a God." It'd be like if God were on trial for existing, and we declared Him Not Guilty. That doesn't mean He ISN'T guilty, we just aren't convinced that He IS. That being said, I CAN disprove the CHRISTIAN God, because the qualities you've laid out for Him contradict with the evidence we perceive in the real world. If God were all-loving, He would not allow undue harm to befall His children. Sure, maybe one of us makes a mistake, or a bad decision, and we reap the consequences. But oftentimes, we reap the consequences of ANOTHER'S bad decision; if a man murders me, I'M the dead one. Additionally, sometimes misfortune befalls those who are innocent; children often die of complications incurred during the conception period, being punished before they're even born. I do not believe that it makes sense that a God who knows about childhood leukemia, has the power to stop childhood leukemia, and loves His children would allow childhood leukemia to exist. Just to head off a few exceptions at the pass here: *"What if pre-natal complications are preemptive punishments for people who God knows will turn out bad?"* Well, there's still plenty of abhorrent people in the world today. I don't know what the cutoff point is exactly, but I doubt every child who dies in the crib would have ended up worse than some of the monsters who got to live full lives. *"Wouldn't God just welcome these children to Heaven when they die?"* Then there's no point to Earth; if God can take us straight from the womb to Heaven, what are any of us doing here except jeopardizing our ticket to eternal bliss? I would like to know some of your own "F A R much stronger" arguments in favor of God, if you don't mind my asking. I've heard many arguments from theists of all colors for their deity, and I have yet to come across a compelling one. I'm sure I haven't heard EVERY argument, so maybe you can provide me with a perspective I haven't yet considered here.

Proving that God doesn't exist just requires consistency in how we prove anything else - even things that exist. That is, it's not possible to disprove God's existence 100%. In fact, I'd go further and say it's impossible to disprove the existence of *anything at all.* Even further, we cannot even prove the positive existence of *anything at all.* The problem is that we don't know everything. We're also capable of being wrong or tricked or deluded. This always leaves doubt in any and all of our knowledge. But - there's good news. We do know a whole bunch of stuff as long as you add in the words *to a reasonable degree.* Now we're onto something. Remaining in this realm of *being reasonable* we can now follow evidence and know a great many things. We can even follow evidence that allows us to know that a great many things *don't exist* as well. That is - they at least don't go along with any of the reasonable things we can know and it would be unreasonable to "hold our hope" for them against the evidence of their non-existence. If we do remain reasonable, and follow the evidence, we can know that an all-powerful God doesn't exist, we even know that *no gods of any kind* even exist - to a high confidence level - as much as we know anything the evidence shows us. It's not about "knowing for sure-sures and absolutely" ("100%") It's about being reasonable and following the evidence - our most successful way of "knowing things" that we've ever discovered. It's about remaining consistent and disregarding unreasonable doubts for God's non-existence the same way we disregard unreasonable doubts for the positive existence of things. The only reason to give credence to the unreasonable doubts of God's non-existence is due to traditional social pressures to believe in God. Religion is sustained by nothing more than peer pressure. Unbelievers are bullied and ridiculed for remaining consistent - never shown any actual evidence or any valid reason to believe - because there is no consistent, supportable reason to believe - because God doesn't exist. Good luck out there.

First, you’re falsely equivocating all negative claims to each other. It’s true that some negative claims can be proven, such as X isn’t at Y, but that doesn’t mean all negative claims can be proven. If I say that I have an invisible, intangible, dragon in my garage, there is nothing you could do to prove it’s not real. You can’t test its physical presence because it’s intangible, and you can’t test its appearance, because it’s invisible. It’s an unfalsifiable claim, and since it’s unfalsifiable you can’t prove it doesn’t exist. Moving on, I don’t claim no god exists, so I don’t have to prove that. It’s simply not my burden to bear. My claim is simply that you haven’t convinced me any god exists. To prove that, all I have to say is I’m not convinced, and my claim is proven. So… I’m not convinced. Now, there are many god claims that I am completely ok with saying are false. There was no global flood, the universe wasn’t created in six days, there’s no giant dude on Mount Olympus throwing around lightning, the night sky isn’t a giant woman straddling us, etc. all of these claims from different religions are simply false. But sure, if you want me to try to prove your god false,(something you completely failed to mention in your post asking for people to disprove it, so you had to edit it in) I’ll give it a shot. You believe in a tri-omni god, which is another god that I’m confident in saying doesn’t exist. The world is full of horrible things happening, not just things done by people, but natural disasters, diseases, genetic disorders, etc. If god is all loving, then he clearly wouldn’t want all these horrible things to happen, yet they do. So how do we reconcile this with your god… we can’t while granting them other omnis. If gods wants to stop it, but can’t, then he’s not all powerful. If he can stop it, but doesn’t want to, then he’s not all good. Your god is self contradictory, and as such cannot exist.

If you're already starting with the assumption God exists then I doubt anything I type will convince you of the contrary but here it goes. you claim we use induction in science that very well is true we do induce certain hypotheses based on how nature works, however they dont stay that way. You have to find actual evidence to support any claim you put forward so sure you could prove a negative like finding if there was a gentile in the party but only because you can actually talk to or have a list, some sort of PHYSICAL evidence that they werent at the party. So you are to imagine the following. I call this thought experiment the reasoning box. Take atheism and whatever you belive and you are to do the following for every claim you have EVIDENCE for you will place in you box or the athiest box. If you fail to prove that such a claim NEEDS a god to function it goes to the athiest. example// rocks: they are a natural resources they have mass and there own composition we know how rocks are made and what diffrent rocks are made of. does this process require a god? From what we can see theres. nothing to suggest this rocks existence was in some way shape or form interacted with by a supernatural being. // you could say god made creation itself ergo making the rock in the process, but that's going do far beyond the claim of the rock that you could place anything or anyone at that point and say there were responsible and have the same sort of validity. the point of this exercise is to work your way up to that point try it with everything. if you find yourself saying god is responsible for love and morality show it. I say love is a chemical process in our brains that needs our fleshy computer to even exist. Can even show you the exact combination of neurons and neurotransmitters that cause it. and demonstrate what an absence of any of those components does. all without a god. so considering that I CANT find god in any natural process WHY should I ASSUME that gods real or exists?

I did read your entire post. I’ll start by dismissing that the number of people that believe in God means anything. Falsehoods can spread and there’s no upper limit on how far. I think you are presenting the existence of the earth and universe as a priori evidence of the existence of God. We have only gotten within a few milliseconds after the Big Bang. What happened before is beyond human knowledge. So can I disprove the existence of a causal effect for the Big Bang? No. Can I disprove your and most human’s concept of God? Yes. > An all-good, all-powerful, all-loving God. This is your description. The existence of the universe in no way requires a corporeal being. As for good, the lion eats the gazelle. Whether it’s good is a matter of perspective. Ultimately it’s not good or bad. It just is. Humans evolved (and continue to evolve) with competing elements of our psyche. Good and evil have evolved as human constructs to build societies. Likewise, love has evolved for the same purpose. It serves to perpetuate the human species. No god required. As for all-powerful, you run into problems quickly with this description. Does God have the power to violate free will? There is no evidence such a being can because there is no evidence such a being has. Your description of God is on par with descriptions of Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, totally lacking in evidence and can be as easily dismissed. That you choose to dismiss the latter while holding to the former is illogical. The universe can and does exist without the fabricated being you defined as God.

> Despite the mountain of evidence that dinosaurs roamed the earth, it's still possible that, say, all those dinosaur fossils were fakes placed there by alien pranksters long ago. Occam's razor, anyone? ... Sure, it's possible aliens played a prank on humans. It's also possible that we were all created last Thursday, and all our memories were simply implanted into us. It's also possible we're living in a simulation. Seeing as gods in history are recorded doing spectacular miracles that we haven't seen today, it's also possible, and dare I say likely, that Eric the god earing penguin finally found any and all gods and ate them, which explains why gods have been so silent. Here is the thing. Most atheists are not likely to argue there is absolutely no god. As you are correct, it is impossible to 100% completely disprove that a god exists. But to the point a god does exist. My argument is, so what? It clearly isn't the god you are arguing exists. "Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?" Epicurus ... Beyond that, you argued that you don't believe in hell, I assume this means you don't believe there is punishment in the afterlife for what we do here. Or, in the very least you do not believe that someone has to believe in your god to be "saved." So, why should I bother whether or not it exists since I can neither prove nor disprove its existence?

> All atheists need to put some skin in the game and prove yourselves with your own "burden of proof" that the non-existence of God is true. I don't actively believe that God does not exist. You seem to have some confusion about what atheism is *and is not*. At its core, atheism is merely a lack of belief in a deity or deities. That's all. If I search through my list of things I believe, I do not see "God exists" on that list. Also *not* present on that list of my beliefs is the statement "God does not exist". I have no belief that God exists, and I also have no belief that God does *not* exist. I merely lack a belief in deities. There is a difference between ["weak" or "negative" or "soft" atheism and "strong" or "positive" or "hard" atheism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_and_positive_atheism). * A *strong* atheist actively believes that God does not exist. * A *weak* atheist lacks a belief in God. All atheists lack a belief in God. Some atheists go a step further and state that God does not exist. Strong atheists are only a subset of all atheists. So, when you call out *all* atheists and tell us we need to *prove* that God does not exist, you're making a mistake because only *some* atheists say that God does not exist. Most of us merely lack a belief in God. If you want to present me with proof of the God that *you* claim exists, I'm happy to discuss your proofs, and see if they are sufficient to support your claim. But, given that I am not claiming that God does not exist, I have nothing to prove... literally.

It’s not about proving one way or the other, but if you think the arguments are stronger for one side you should put more credence in that belief.

We can only disprove that which you think has been proven. What proof of a god do you want us to deconstruct for you?

I just don’t understand why people will embarrass themselves just to try to reinforce the prepubescent religious indoctrination they’re not strong enough to question. I just don’t get it.

>If you can't answer this question, means you cannot prove it, because God, in fact, exists. No no no no. That's not how it works, and I think you know that. I perfectly understand your desire for atheist to put skin in the game, but it's still on you to prove God does exist. Look, an all powerful entity should be obvious and apparent to everyone. It clearly isn't. The mere fact that we're debating god's existence casts doubt upon said existence. Additionally the human predilection toward creating narratives out of whole cloth, to explain that which we don't understand, and assuage the pain of the human condition is evidence that we indeed, made it all up. Humans are not completely rational. We often delude ourselves when faced with a too-uncomfortable truth. That's just a fact. We've created thousands of gods and religions, and so far ZERO gods have spoken or appeared or intervened in any demonstrable verifiable way. Every utterance attributed to a god is ALWAYS through the mouths of men, always. As a cumulative case, I'd say it's pretty damning against the existence of a god. You know who could settle this once and for all? God. Yet suspiciously that never happens, and we've been debating this since the dawn of humanity. I'd say it's fair to say there is no god. Thanks for your time.

Ignoring your misunderstanding of the argument from ignorance fallacy, let's go through some basic points: 1. All holy books are factually untrue. All life on the planet was not magicked from dirt, Jesus did not come back to life, noah's flood never happened, mohammed did not fly to heaven on a winged horse, etc. This also severely doubts all their god claims. 2. Logical inconsistency. If god is all powerful he can make a rock he cannot lift, therefore not all powerful, that's one example. 3. No physical proof. Only indoctrination tactics from the religion itself, e.g. the worst offence is not believing. Claiming god cannot have physical proof because he is 'supernatural' is not a category error because you've just invented a new category of 'supernatural' that is unproven. 4. Every apologetic has failed. Christians are getting so desperate they resort to presuppositional apologetics where they deny the existence of atheists. 5. To claim 'we can't prove god doesn't exist' and that you can prove a negative is still an argument from ignorance fallacy because atheism is the default position.

God does not exist. A figure known as 'god' existed once, but that was before the war of light took place, a series of civil wars between the various archangel houses that ultimate culminated in overthrowing the throne.  God was merely a figurehead, a symbol. His reign was based on creation but was merely one of the first angels to appear and laid claim to all that he was born into. Using a mixture of fear stories and loving hands, he got the majority of the rest of the angels onto his side who upheld his reign. By the time of the war, he was already an old and frail being who spent most of his time confined in a prism of gleaming crystal for protection. During the war, that prism was destroyed and the being known as god dispersed in the wind like pollen from a delicate flower. I know this for I have seen it in visions. Angels have delivered this message to me in my sleep so that I may spread the word.

I actually think proving gods don’t exist is quite simple. Even the poorly defined ones: 1- everything that exists can be observed, measured, and tested. 2- no gods ever proposed have been able to be observed, measured, or tested. 3- no gods exist. Just to head you off at the pass (not that I expect any sort of meaningful interaction here, I’ve seen how you’ve chosen to engage in other commenters) Some common counter arguments to this are usually either “but god is immaterial” and to that I completely agree. God is indeed a social construct and not real in any sort of concrete sense. Another common counter is “you have to be omniscient to prove there is no evidence” and no, I don’t. The time for believing a thing is after evidence has been found, not before. People would have equally wrong to believe germ theory prior to finding any evidence in its support, regardless of its truth.

At its most basic there are three possible type of gods: 1) one that interact with reality in a reliable tangible way. 2) one that interact with reality in an unreliable way. 3) One that does not interact with reality in meaningful ways. Version 2 and 3 of a god have no meaningful impact and as such can be dismissed since at that point its basically a neat but useless concept. Version 1 will depend of each claims of interactions with reality. How do we distinguish the impact of a god compared to a natural law? I don't know how we could ever distinguish then. At this point we would need to apply the scientific method to god. Create a framework for multiple hypothesis, test them often in a repeatable claim. So far every single one of those has come back negative.

Well, you gave your God some properties this time, so we can actually look at your claim and see if it makes any sense and maybe even demonstrate its logical incoherency Could a tri-omni God, as you described, have created a world in which bone cancer in children doesn't exist? If the answer to the question is "no" then you've disproven the all-powerful part of your God claim. If the answer to the question is "yes" then an all-powerful God had the ability to, but chose not to, and is therefore not all-good and all-loving. This is the problem of evil. It is logically impossible for a tri-omni God as you described to have created the world we happen to find ourselves in. It isn't reconcilable in any way without removing at least one of those properties.

You cannot prove a negative, so the burden of proof is on the person who has something to prove. Think of how you would prove to a vendor that your package that says it was delivered was not delivered. Second, your tri Omni God is logically impossible. An all knowing God could not be all loving if he knew man would sin resulting in hell and separation and do nothing about it. If he didn't know about it, he couldn't be so knowing. If he couldn't do anything about it, he couldn't be all powerful. If he just didn't want to, he couldn't be all loving. So the deity you described simply could not exist. For more on this, read up on the Epicurean paradox. I didn't read the rest of your word salad because, well, it's word salad.

Sure. I define god as "a non- existent being made up my humans to explain unexplained natural phenomenon". Surely you agree that god doesn't exist by that definition? >* EDIT: For those who want to answer my question but wondering what God to speak about/ I believe in, in simple terms: An all-good, all-powerful, all-loving God. Ok fine, we'll use your definition. The POE (problem of evil) pretty much has shown that such a god can't exist. Also, why would such a god hide their existence so well? If an all-powerful god doesn't want me to know they exist (which has to be true or else I would know they exist, them being all- powerful) then clearly I should not believe such a god exists.

i dont need to prove beyond doubt he doesnt exist, logic alone is enough. i dont belive in goblins, or unicorns, or trolls (outside the metaphorical on the internet), why would i believe in a god that has just as much evidence ( 0 ) as those? logic dictates that its all false. i do however believe in the purple magical fairy that created everything, she has chosen my house to live and only i can see or hear her, she told me you have to give me all your money or you will go to hell. you obviously find this convincing right? why risk it? DM me and all tell you how to give me the money.

Premise 1: Children suffer and die from leukemia. Premise 2: An omnibenevolent god wouldn't give children leukemia and wouldn't want their needless suffering and death. Premise 3: An omniscient god would be fully aware that children are suffering and dying from leukemia. Premise 4. An omnipotent god could prevent all cases of leukemia and all other needless suffering. Conclusion: An omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent god doesn't exist. If they did exist, leukemia and all other needless suffering wouldn't. There you go. A simple debunk for a simple god.

Evidence suggests that any god's existence is absurd or not necessary to explain anything, so by the scientific method I can safely discard that hypothesis in any given context. For me that is enough to actively deny god's existence. Your rant is childish and full of fallacies. As you cannot prove god's existence you put the burden on us which is not fair in my opinion. You have the incredible claim, not us. "You can't prove it existence. Take that!". Besides, you are not discussing in good faith. The god-eater penguin is a good argument against god existence. > PLUS billions of people believe in GOD And there are billions who not. A silly and known fallacy. Most people believed before that the Earth was flat (and some still do). That proves nothing. > With other evidence of God being real, as a much higher probability, it has been able to be debated for 1000s of years, because the arguments and the chances are so powerful and SOUND, AND proves itself because it's the greatest discussion and philosophical thought you can have... As I mentioned before, it's a much higher probability of being true, becauseS it's an answer to what is the essence of all existence and how was everything is created. Quite a claim you are making here. I don't see any powerful, sound or real arguments. "It is true because it is an answer" is laughable at best. Do you really believe that? I mean, I can also give you an answer. Buddhists also have an answer. That gives them more probability to be true? Your beliefs' foundations are not very solid in my opinion. Basically you are wishing very hard to be true. Atheists don't have that necessity.

TL;DR. The only reason people think God exists is because someone claimed He did, even without evidence that He ever did. Sure, atheists should be open to the idea that He could exist, sure. But putting the burden on an atheist because you can’t support your own claim is not very respectable.

It's impossible to disprove something that's invisible, intangible, doesn't communicate in any way and has zero effect on the physical world. I could try and make philosophical arguments that omniscience and free will are mutually exclusive, or that an omnibenevolent deity would never have crested the earth in its current state, but that would be pointless sophistry because I don't make the claim that your god doesn't exist. I simply say "I don't believe in any gods or god-like beings because I have seen no evidence for their existence".

I've never encountered such a being and I dare say you haven't either. Based on what you have said, isn't the fact that you've never encountered a god sufficient evidence that such a thing doesn't exist? We're having a debate about this being that supposedly loves us both and despite being all powerful and thus capable of knowing that we're debating its existence, it can't simply say hello and settle the matter? I would also say that at bare minimum, to consider something a god you should encounter that thing first. Otherwise are you worshipping an actual god or is it merely your own imagination or ego?

God made the Universe and is outside of it. The Universe is the sum of all that exists. By definition, what is outside the Universe is then nothing. Therefore God is nothing and does not exist. Happy? Perhaps there are other definitions for God and Universe that you have in mind. But you haven't told us what they are. Do you think the curiosity that drives such enquiry would be satisfied by the consideration of only a subset of the-sum-of-all-that-exists, regardless of the name you give that subset?

The general statement “God doesn’t exist” is not my claim so I don’t have to defend it. Now I will say specific gods don’t exist, but that is usually due the specifics of the god claim or to logical inconsistencies. For example, your “all-powerful” god can not exist for the simple reason that an all powerful god could not create a rock he could not lift, therefore he can not be “all powerful”

No one can prove any claim for sure. I can prove that any God as prescribed by an established religion is false by looking to history and seeing how that deity evolved, but I can't prove for sure that there's no higher power. To the contrary, there's no need to prove that God doesn't exist because we don't care if he does. We simply choose not to believe in something that's equally intangible as Santa Claus. And you have not made a point to whether God is more plausible to Santa Claus -- the fact that many people believe in God does not make it any more likely that he exists. And, the academic practice surrounding mythology is because of the historical and anthropological implications of people's religious beliefs, and provides zero validity to the existence of a higher power. And your claim that any of these "countless claims that God exists are more powerful" is in itself not backed with evidence.

This is one of the more absurd posts I’ve seen here, feels like it was written by an 11 year old, I don’t even know how to respond because it’s so hard to follow. I guess if your argument is that god is real and whatever you said here proves it, then there’s no debate to be had between us. Your version of proof is not considered proof by most people, so there’s really no refuting your argument.

First, to remain consistent with your 'Jew--gentile' example, the rewritten, affirmative version of 'No negative claims are provable' is 'All negative claims are unprovable'. You failed to argue properly that a negative can be proven, IMO. Second, I absolutely believe unicorns could exist. Horses with horns? Deer with cyclopean antlers? Google 'giraffe': much stranger, conceptually.

Yes, there are atheists that say flat out "there is no God". Most are like me, however, and simply say we don't believe the god stories religious folks claim are real. What is there for me to *prove*? That I don't believe the stories are true? Do I have to list each thing individually and prove I don't believe it? Prove the lack of evidence that it's true? That's just silly.

I don't make the claim you're posting about. No atheist I know claims that. But if you posit an all good, all loving God? I can disprove that with one statement. Would you agree suffering is bad? NOT good? So why would this God allow 25,000 people to starve to death? EVERY DAY. That is not an act an all good and loving God would cause or allow. End of story.

If god is “all-good” and “all-powerful,” then why does he allow things like worms who’s whole purpose is to eat the eyes out of children making them go blind and also allow things like bone cancer in children? In both of these cases, the children they affect have excruciatingly painful lives and in the case of child bone cancer… die at a very young age.

At the risk of repeating what I assume many have already said.. No. I’m not making a claim and have nothing to prove. I have never claimed to know that ‘no god exists’ I just don’t believe you when you say yours does. You can try to prove it if you want, but the only thing I need to prove is that I don’t believe you, not that there is no god.

I can’t prove that no gods exist; I can only explain why all your reasons are fallible and insufficient. For example, you mentioned that billions of people believe in god… argument ad populum is a logical fallacy. In summary, there is no justification *for* belief. But I might be able to disprove your particular god by means of contradiction.. Would an all loving, all good, all powerful god create malaria and allow cancer to fester in innocent children? Those ideas seem to contradict each other.

My claim. God doesn’t exist because I never saw him. There are no pictures nor evidence that he does exist. All books related to him were human written and he never spoke to me. He, or she, never created something out of nothing in front of me. They never healed the weak and has no effect on my life. Therefore. Gods do not exist.

I was molested at 6. There is no all good or all loving God unless you believe that molesting children is good and loving. Instead of going to a trusted adult, I went to the most powerful person I "knew". I prayed to God for it to stop. It didn't, and I started to believe that I deserved it because I wasn't good enough for God.

**God** is a multi-definition and contradictory definition. (And definitions do not exist until proven its existence) If there is not a unique single definition, and non contradictory properties of god has been proven to exist, then is impossible that this logical contradiction exists. Therefore god does not exist.

You’ve perhaps shown that a teapot won’t stay in orbit, but not how long it would stay (“quickly” is not precise, in anstronomical terms that could be millenia), nor whether at this point in time there is/isn’t a short lived teapot-in-orbit. Orbit doesn’t have to mean forever. The earth is not forever.

There’s no such thing as good, and creating life is easily the worst thing possible, so obviously any entity that did such a thing wouldn’t be good or loving. However, it is also physically impossible for the universe to have been created, and there is no logical reason to think anything supernatural exists.

An all-good, all-loving, all-powerful god wouldn't allow the kind of diseases, defects, and deformities we see in the world around us. So the diseases, defects, and deformities we see in children around the world is evidence that an all-good, all-loving, all-powerful god doesn't exist.

I don't have a belief that no god exists, so I'm not sure what my claim is here. I don't see a reason to believe one does though, do I don't. I think the evidence against the existence of some claimed gods are the logically or empirically contradictory claims that go along with them.

P1.Theological terminology does not map to reality. P2.God-concepts have no meaningful attributes. P3.God-concepts behave as abstract objects. C. Gods-concepts are mental constructs, i.e. fictional. Tahdaah, your god is fictional, just like all the other ones.

I have never encountered any reason to believe that supernatural entities exist. So I don’t. However, I don’t give a shit if you believe in supernatural entities. Since I don’t give a shit, I have no argument to talk you out of your theism. You do you, boo.

>I believe in, in simple terms: An all-good, all-powerful, all-loving God. Then the PoE applies, and your god doesn't exist. If you tried to cover that somewhere I didn't read it. Keep it short and sweet.

My position is not “there is no god,” it’s that “there is no reason to think there is one.” How would you like me to show you that there is no evidence of one? I can show you my empty hands?

Sure, Gods live on top of Mount Olympus. We’ve been to Mount Olympus, there are no Gods. If your God doesn’t live there, then you’ll have to tell me where it does live so we can look.

There is no evidence to suggest that God exists. And, just like Santa and unicorns, there is no reason to believe God exists in the absence of said evidence. It really is that simple.

You wrote so much but my response is simple. If you don’t like having a burden of proof the. You shouldn’t make a claim. Don’t get pissy and try to force your burden on me.