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Something Unfinished
I am starting a new thread to continue the part of the closed "Define God" thread that was not yet dead. Here is my post in reply to Rym's rebuttal(scroll up or ctrl+F), if these points have been addressed sufficiently then I concede but this has yet to happen:
My responses aren't in chronological order.
@ Rym:
1.They hold that God is truth, among other things, and if truth is the result(i.e. the end) of reasoning, then so is God. This was included not to reason for the existence of God, but to answer the original question in part.
2.Concerning my bringing up of Shrodinger's Cat: I used the idea derived from it, that by observing something one affects the outcome. Should we then assume that this claim is false? It is an unfalsifiable proposal.
3.Catholics believe that God is omnipresent , and thus would be an unobservable affect. Your reasoning also begs the question if everything is nothing.
This is last and most important because it is the tool you have used to disprove the existence of the spiritual:
4.The burden of proof has no place here. Where does it lie and how can this be determined when arguing philosophy? What makes the claim no existence of God any more or less ordinary than the claim of the existence of God? So in the arguments of philosophy where the argumentum ad ignorantiam is so common in philosophy. Nothing can be assumed here, as opposed to arguments of law, so the claim of spiritual being can neither be proven nor denied.
Comments
The concept of burden of proof is itself derived from philosophy, specifically from skeptical philosophy. Thus, it's always relevant to a philosophical discussion. In fact, the question "HOW do you know what you think you know" is one of the most fundamental in all of human consciousness. To ignore that question is to ignore a fundamental inquiry.
Person A makes claim B.
It is now the responsibility of person A to provide evidence for claim B.
If the evidence for B is valid, it becomes a valid argument. If not, it is not a valid argument. No matter what B is, if it cannot be backed up, it is merely speculation.
Really, though, you need to define the arguments a bit more rigorously.
For example, a person may claim, "It is impossible for anything to exist beyond our ability to measure it." That's a relatively extraordinary claim, because it claims total knowledge.
However, atheism doesn't really make a claim per se. Rather, it's a state indicating an absence of faith in any particular theistic system. There's no one belief system that describes "atheism."
My personal position as an atheist is pretty simple: being that it is impossible to reasonably and intelligently place faith in any one of the theistic systems so far designed by man, I elect not to place my faith in any of them. The choice to subscribe to any one system would be largely arbitrary. Now, if we want to talk about what might be, I'm all for that. Once you make a claim that something is a particular way, though, burden of proof is on you.
EDIT: Also, you can't prove a negative. Prove to me that you didn't steal your computer.
Atheism is the default because it represents no specific position. It's only once you make a specific claim that burden of proof kicks in. The absence of a thing is not that thing. The absence of a position is not a position. It's the absence thereof, and nothing else.
Edit: In response to what you added in: you refer to the position on most government testing slips when asking belief which is 'I have no preference or affiliation.'
If you want to set the claim of atheism to be "God does not exist" for the purposes of this argument, that's fine, but you're giving it a particular focus that is not necessarily part of its normal usage.
Likewise, there is no such thing as a claim to "theism" except in a broad, useless sense. The Bible, for example, is really a collection of various claims that may be assessed independently, as are Newton's Laws of Physics.
Saying "God does not exist" is not a sufficiently specific claim. Which God? The God of the Old Testament or the God of the New Testament? How about the one that Jehova's Wintesses pray to versus the one that Muslims pray to?
The argument goes something like this: `I refuse to prove that I exist,' says God, `for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.'
`But,' says Man, `The Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED.'
`Oh dear,' says God, `I hadn't thought of that,' and promptly vanished in a puff of logic.
`Oh, that was easy,' says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets
himself killed on the next zebra crossing.”
The whole point is you do not prove your belief, if you have proof you do not have faith. When a faith looks for proof they are defeating themselves. If you look for proof (and you will) you'll end up a generic deism/agnostic/atheist.
Someone comes up to you with a closed box. They say the box has a bar of gold in it. Philosophically speaking, you can not believe them unless they provide evidence, probably by opening the box and showing you the contents.
Someone comes up to you with a closed box. They say the box does not have a bar of gold in it. Philosophically speaking, you can not believe them unless they provide evidence, probably by opening the box and showing you the contents.
A negative claim is still a claim. You can't be fooled by the negativeness of it. All claims, even those containing negatives, are philosophically false by default unless evidence is provided.
Philosophically speaking, the claim that god exists and the claim that god does not exist are both equally false as there is no direct evidence for either one.
The reason that atheism is the default is because there is a gap between the philosophical and the practical. This is why we always complain about agnosticism and atheism being answers to two different questions. Agnosticism is the answer to a philosophical question about the nature of knowledge, cogito ergo sum. Atheism is the answer of how you practically live your life.
Let's say someone comes up to you and says that grass is green. Philosophically speaking, that is false until they provide evidence. The same goes if they come up to you and say that grass is not green. However, practically speaking, you can't live your life according to that. Despite the philosophical reality that we all might be living in the Matrix, and the grass might actually be purple, or non-existent, you can't functionally live your life that way. We may not be 100% philosophically certain that grass is green. However, we are 99.99999% practically certain that grass is green.
Therefore, for practical purpose, if someone says that grass is green, you can accept that as true based on prior experience. It's what we call an ordinary claim. If someone says that grass is not green, that is an extraordinary claim. While there is always a philosophical doubt, there is no practical doubt. Grass is green. 1+1=2. Triangles have three sides. E=mc^2.
Before I conclude, allow me to introduce one more concept. Think, for a moment, about the supposed exodus of the Jews from Egypt. Supposedly, many many people wandered the deserts in Egypt for many many years and ended up in Israel. If so many people truly wandered an area of land for so long, there would be evidence. There would be poop. Fossils of the dead. Pottery. Garbage left behind. All sorts of stuff. Yet, all our searching in the desert, we don't find any of these things. In a case like this, practically speaking, the absence of evidence is evidence itself.
Let's say someone is on trial for bank robbery. Their alibi is that they were drinking coffee at the Starbucks at the time. So we check the Starbucks receipts, and they didn't sell any coffee at that time. It was an empty store. There is no physical evidence to prove whether or not the person was at the Starbucks or not. But that lack of evidence is itself evidence. If they were drinking coffee at the Starbucks, there would be a receipt. The lack of a receipt proves they did not buy a coffee there at that time.
And that is why, practically speaking, though not philosophically, natural claims, such as atheism, are the default and supernatural claims, such as religion, are extraordinary claims. If the supernatural claims where true, there would be evidence, just like there would be a receipt at the Starbucks, or fossils in the Egyptisn desert. The lack of evidence for supernatural claims is in and of itself evidence that nothing supernatural does, or has ever, existed. Thus, if you are arguing practically for the existence of some supernatural phenomena, the burden of proof is on you to provide the evidence.
If someone says "there are ghosts" and someone else says "there are no ghosts", philosophically speaking, both claims are false until backed up with evidence. And even then, neither claim can ever be proven 100% true, because that is agnostic philosophy. But if you want to talk about practicality, the real world and every day life, there are no ghosts. The person who says ghosts do not exist is true by default because the absence of evidence for ghosts is evidence itself. If you want to claim ghosts exist, the burden of proof is on you to provide evidence to support the claim of the existence of ghosts.
Do you get it now?
One issue that seems to be present is a misunderstanding of what it means to be an "atheist." Scott has expounded on this before. Many people would call your quoted position "agnosticism," but that's not correct. "Agnosticism" indicates an absence of knowledge. You can be agnostic on many topics; for example, I'm agnostic on the topic of which London eatery makes the best yorkshire puddings, because I have no applicable knowledge in that field.
"Atheism" specifically addresses faith. Most people who identify as "agnostics" also have no particular faith. Ergo, they are necessarily atheists.
EDIT: What Scott said.
Here are a few outright contradictions to get you started on.
Please explain why there is such bollocks written as the word of God. If you would like, I could go on and on with a plethora of disprove. I thought I would start somewhere easy.
Edit: If you are planning to shrug these off, I would like to offer evidence, as to how and why Jesus is an immoral, terrible, terrible man (excluding the fact there is no evidence for his existence).
I present to you a small rebuke to Jesus and his morals
EDIT 2: You know what, I just realized this is more of a God issue opposed to Christianity issue. I read Catholic a few times, and that got me pretty fired up. Motherfuckers are goin' down. Ignore my links, if it is not relevant enough for this discussion.
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?
And to Rym, when I said the logic of my religion teachers has some merit, I mean that it is more than how the majority of people treat the theology(e.g. Zeehat).
That's why it's called Believing, because it transcends the bounds of the rational as someone's conscious choice to ignore it on certain claims, and still keep his believes in whatever god he wants to believe.
Atheists consider it stupid as it "ignores the evidence".
Religious people don't care because evidence isn't the point, it's usually the moral implications they're concerned about.