Kevin DeGraaf’s Blog

I thought I’d share a recent reply to a particularly irritating godbot:

It sounded to me that you were saying that the burden of proof was on the Christian for stating positively, “God exists.” and that the Atheist who states negatively, “God does not exist.” is under no obligation to support his/her statement as truth

I do not assert that “God does not exist”. As a general rule, atheism is simply the lack of belief in deities.

There are some atheists who make a positive assertion that there definitely is no God. These so-called “positive” atheists typically support this claim by pointing out that certain properties attributed to the Christian God are logically incompatible, e.g. omnipotence, omniscience, and omnibenevolence.

While they make a good point, I espouse the “negative” atheist position, which rejects the positive assertion that there is a God (on the grounds that no reliable evidence has been presented in support of that claim) without making the opposite positive assertion (that deities absolutely do not exist).

In other words, your Christian God is just another name on a very long list, one which includes Allah, Buddha, Zeus, Thor, Baal, the tooth fairy, the Easter bunny, Santa Claus, and that leprechaun on boxes of Lucky Charms.

These mythical entities cannot be proven to exist, nor can they be proven not to exist; either way, the response of any rational person is to withhold belief in them, until and unless supporting evidence comes to light.