Hands up, all the atheists here who are 100% certain that there is no god.
…Not too many hands, I imagine, because most atheists are well aware that such certainty is impossible, because it’s impossible by design. Proving the non-existence of something is virtually impossible, and given the traits attributed to God, you might as well try to prove the non-existence of slime molds in the Andromeda Galaxy - this is a hypothetical being whose traits make it functionally impossible for us to learn anything about it.
Now, there are good reasons not to believe in such a being - the burden of proof, our understanding of how various other disproven god myths came to be, biblical scholarship demonstrating how this god myth came to be, science showing that many claims made in the bible are just straight-up wrong, et cetera - but none of this is definitive proof that there isn’t some invisible sky wizard who tortures us forever when we die unless we believe in them. This is the position most atheists take - we can’t disprove God, but we have plenty of good reasons to doubt its existence, and absolutely no good reasons to believe in its existence.
So please, don’t strawman or weakman the position of atheists. Most of us do not have faith that there is no god, and I will denounce those who hold that faith quite loudly.
Right. This is why when I say “there’s no such thing as an invisible pink unicorn that takes the good little girls to Fairyland in their dreams” and my (hypothetical) three-year-old daughter insists that there is, we’re both going off nothing but faith, and we’re both equally fucked in the head. Right?
So do you believe that at least one god exists or not? “I don’t know” doesn’t answer the question. “We can’t know” doesn’t answer the question. It’s not about whether you know, it’s about whether you believe. Do you believe that at least one god exists? Congrats, you are a theist. Do you not believe that at least one god exists? Congrats, you are an atheist. There is no fence to straddle here, unless your dismissal of logic earlier in the thread includes a dismissal of the law of the excluded middle. You either believe something… or you don’t. Whether or not you know it has nothing to do with whether or not you believe it.
Because they fundamentally do not understand the concept of the burden of proof. And it’s really not a hard concept - if you make a claim about reality, the burden of proof is on you to demonstrate it. When I reject your claim, this does not suddenly shift the burden of proof onto me.
If you say, “I believe there’s a psychic walrus living on neptune who talks to me in my dreams” and I say, “I don’t believe that, what’s your evidence”, it is not suddenly my burden to prove to you that there’s no psychic walrus living on neptune. It’s on you to provide evidence of said walrus, or to admit that you do not have good reasons to believe what you believe.
Now, if my response was, “There is definitely no walrus on neptune”, it would be on me to prove that. Which would be a fool’s errand, because the psychic walrus can turn invisible and intangible at will, and Neptune is really freakin’ big and really far away. But I’m not saying that! I’m saying that I don’t believe your claim about the psychic walrus, and that you should provide evidence for it.
This really isn’t that hard of a concept.
Excellent video, excellent channel, can recommend.