What the hell is wrong with “If you posit that there are gods, you are obligated to come up with evidence that they exist, because you are the one making one hellacious and totally illogical claim. I, on the other hand, do not have to waste my time to provide jack, because I hold the default position.”
If you are having a problem understanding that, though there are two sides to consider, the two sides are nowhere near equal, then deal with it-quit trying to create a false equivalency where none exists just because you can’t deal with reality.
I don’t, I just operate under the assumption that there weren’t because there is zero evidence for it. Presumably the same reason you do not look for invisible cars before crossing the street.
Your right, they are not equal. Your view is the one that conflicts with the majority of people currently alive, and with one of the foundations of human culture for billions of people for thousands of years.
The notion that you hold the default position is one of convenience to you. It is gratuitous.
The default position is “I do not know what “this” is all about…I do not know if there are gods or if there are no gods.”
The fact that you atheists want the default position to be “no gods” and the theists want the default position to be “gods” is absurd.
The fact that you think the evidence for “no gods” is so much greater than for “gods” is laughable considering the only “evidence” (if you stretch the meaning of that word) for “no gods” is…there is no evidence for “gods.”
You are the one not capable of dealing with reality, Czarcasm…not I.
You misunderstand me. Maybe I was as clear as I could have been. The initial spit in the decision tree is: “can all of the earth and life and their beginnings be explained by natural forces, or do you think something from another realm has played a role?” The former points to atheism, the latter to theism. At this juncture, the flavor or nature of god(s) doesn’t matter. Subsequent steps point you toward animism, myriad polytheisms, Christianity, etc.
Considering that you are asking for evidence against a position for which there is no evidence whatsoever, I have to ask:
Do you know anything at all, or is your whole life one big free-for-all where the possibility of anything being true is always 50/50?
Here’s the thing, invisible cars have no value in explaining anything. A god that operates outside our laws does. We do not know what caused the Big Bang. One of the foundations of science is that everything haas a cause. That would include the BB. We can devise explanations like Brane Theory but that just pushes the starting point back. Now I don’t want to hijack this thread into a discussion about whether or not there is a Creator God, but to place the theory of God in the same category of the theory of invisible cars is just sloppy. One attempts to explain a hole in a pretty solid theory of how we got here, the other serves no purpose.
No, I do not agree. You can argue natural and supernatural, but the concept of God is carries with it an enormous amount of cultural baggage and pre-conceived ideas.
For the purpose of this discussion, I am. I think the agnostic stance is a pretty sensible one, but it’s the coin on edge, if you will. But yes, I was consciously omitting it for the purposes of parsing the distinctions I’ve been discussing.
Now that is your personal bias coming out. I know the word has enormous baggage. Proof of that is that you seem unable to discuss the concept of a Creator God without assuming I’m talking about a guy with a beard or flowing robes. I’m not talking about that God or any particular god, just an entity that 1) is able to operate outside the laws of the universe as we know them and 2) was able in some way, directly or indirectly, to cause something that has no cause in our realm. This has nothing to do with any religion, any particular god, and does not even mean that we were the reason for the creation.