Does the claim "there is no God" require evidence/reasoning to support it?

[Windfish]

I am quite new to the ongoing debate between atheism and theism, so I will be asking very basic questions to orient myself properly before I attempt to tackle the “big” topics.

“There is no God.”

Is the above a positive claim? Does the above claim require evidence/reasoning to support it?

I have always understood a positive claim to be a matter of fact statement, whether it affirms or denies something. I know Wikipedia is hardly an authority, but here is its definition:
Wikipedia:

A positive claim is any claim about reality. It may in fact be a “negative claim,” that is to say a claim that something is “not real” or “not true.” Positive claims should be supported with evidence in scientific settings.

I have been told, though, that the the above claim is actually a negative claim, and a negative claim cannot be proven. If this is the case, why make such a matter of fact statement in the first place if it cannot be proven?

I hope someone can help me with this basic question.

 

[allenirvan]

True atheism makes no such matter of fact claim, they simply assert that they do not know due to the lack of evidence and that any further assumption isn’t warranted due to the lack of evidence.

 

[Windfish]

True atheism makes no such matter of fact claim, they simply assert that they do not know due to the lack of evidence and that any further assumption isn’t warranted due to the lack of evidence.

I have thoughts about this, but they would be for another discussion, not this one.

 

[The_Reginator]

True atheism makes no such matter of fact claim, they simply assert that they do not know due to the lack of evidence and that any further assumption isn’t warranted due to the lack of evidence.

Educate me please.
I always thought that atheism was based on the belief that God does not exist.
Agnosticism, however, is stating that we cannot know if God exists. (Again, that’s what I always thought was the difference between the two.)

Have I misunderstood these two terms?

 

[Windfish]

Educate me please.
I always thought that atheism was based on the belief that God does not exist.
Agnosticism, however, is stating that we cannot know if God exists. (Again, that’s what I always thought was the difference between the two.)

Have I misunderstood these two terms?

I do not mean to be rude at all, but I would appreciate it if you take it to PM’s. Again, I am not trying to be rude, but the semantics, I have noticed, can often derail a thread.

 

[Belloc_Fan]

I do not mean to be rude at all, but I would appreciate it if you take it to PM’s. Again, I am not trying to be rude, but the semantics, I have noticed, can often derail a thread.

I don’t think that this is semantics at all. This is the answer to your question. If someone is an agnostic, and says, “I don’t see sufficient evidence to prove that there is or is not a God,” there’s no particular need to provide evidence – the belief is premised off of the notion that the evidence is insufficient to arrive at either conclusion.

On the other hand, if someone is an atheist, they’re affirming the proposition that there is no God. This is the central point on which they disagree from agnostics. And since they don’t simply say that the evidence is insufficient to prove God, but say instead that the evidence shows that there is not a God, some recourse to evidence can fairly be called for.

Or, to put it in your original terms, atheism makes a “postive claim,” while agnosticism doesn’t necessarily (although some agnostics make the postive claim that the truth of the existence of God is unknowable, rather than simply unknown to them).

 

[allenirvan]

Sorry I did misplace Atheists for Agnostics there… They both don’t know, Atheists just make the further claim that a claim with lack of evidence is indistinguishable from a claim that is false hence, the claim that there is no god…

And BTW, you brought it up so I thought it was for this discussion…
" If this is the case, why make such a matter of fact statement in the first place if it cannot be proven?"

And since I involved myself in your discussion, I’ll discuss your first question…

It seems to me that for a claim to be positive or negative there should be a corresponding opposite claim, positive for a negative and negative for a positive. IF this claim, “there is no God” is a positive claim, then what is the corresponding negative claim? IF this claim is in fact a negative claim, then the obvious corresponding positive claim would be “there is a god”… The negative claim requires no evidence, only lack of evidence, which any athiest would be glad to point out. SO the question then rests upon the party making the positive claim to present some evidence…

This is my reasoning on the subject, I make no claims as to its truth

 

[allenirvan]

And since they don’t simply say that the evidence is insufficient to prove God, but say instead that the evidence shows that there is not a God, some recourse to evidence can fairly be called for.

I think this statement is incorrect. Atheists can no more provide evidence proving God’s non-existence than a Christian can provide evidence for God’s existence. I know of no Atheists who make such a positive claim providing evidence - only the negative claim touting a lack of evidence… This is easy, if someone made the positive claim that I stole their car, the judicial system in my country demands some evidence, as would myself and my lawyer who I would be paying to make the corresponding negative claim that I in fact did not seal the car, citing the lack of evidence. Now in that case, it would help to have some evidence to the contrary such as an alibi during the time in question, but it seems to be God’s way to keep himself just beyond the scope of empirical evidence and in the scope of Faith, afterall, “that’s what the ancients were commended for” Heb 11…

 

[JDaniel]

I think this statement is incorrect. Atheists can no more provide evidence proving God’s non-existence than a Christian can provide evidence for God’s existence.

Not so. St. Thomas did a commendable job of presenting “evidence” for God’s existence. Furthermore, an Atheist who denies the “proofs” of St. Thomas can, in fact, call that evidence, of some sort.

God bless,
jd

 

[Belloc_Fan]

I think this statement is incorrect. Atheists can no more provide evidence proving God’s non-existence than a Christian can provide evidence for God’s existence.

Christians can provide proof for God’s existence. It just isn’t the form of proof which is considered acceptable to those who dismiss, a priori, non-empirical evidence.

For example: all matter, time, and space has a beginning and a cause. This beginning and cause cannot be itself matter, time, and space, since matter can’t create itself (hopefully, that’s sufficiently clear). So at some point, an Uncaused Actor not bound by matter, time, and space – which is to say, an Immaterial, Eternal, and Universal Actor - created those things. Aquinas lays this out, more or less, in the Summa. The logic is sound and 100% accurate. Everything we’ve discovered since then (for example, the Big Bang Theory, which points to the notion that matter, time, and space have a beginning some 13.7 billion years ago) only strengthens this general case.

The faith which the ancients were praised for wasn’t an irrational faith, it was a trusting faith. So when you’re a kid, and your dad holds out his hands and says he’s going to trust you when you jump off of an edge, it’s a virtue that you have the love and trust to believe him. But if some stranger, 50 feet away, says the same thing, it’s not a virtue – it’s stupidity. Christianity is commonly misrepresented to encourage “blind faith.” But that’s true only in the sense that we don’t know precisely what God has in store for us, not that we’re blind to what kind of a God He is. If He were a cruel God, we wouldn’t trust Him.

I know of no Atheists who make such a positive claim providing evidence - only the negative claim touting a lack of evidence…

Then atheism is invalid. It’s just over-stated agnosticism.

This is easy, if someone made the positive claim that I stole their car, the judicial system in my country demands some evidence, as would myself and my lawyer who I would be paying to make the corresponding negative claim that I in fact did not seal the car, citing the lack of evidence.

Except that, using your judicial analogy, a finding of “not guilty” doesn’t mean the person didn’t do it.

In your hypo, Person #1 comes in and claims Person #2 stole their car. Person #1 can’t prove it. Does that mean Person #2 is innocent? Absolutely not. The mere fact that Person #1 is alleging they did it is suggestive of guilty, although it nowhere near proves it. It may be that Person #1 simply has no way of proving it. So even under your own hypo, it’s an argument for (at most) agnosticism in the face of a lack of evidence, not atheism. If Person #1 can’t find the keys proving it was his car, it doesn’t automatically disprove his story. That would be drawing a conclusion completely unfounded on the evidence.

So the most that could be said, even if theism had no evidence proving it (which it does), is that there isn’t enough evidence to assume the existence of God. NOT that there is no God.

Now in that case, it would help to have some evidence to the contrary such as an alibi during the time in question, but it seems to be God’s way to keep himself just beyond the scope of empirical evidence and in the scope of Faith, afterall, “that’s what the ancients were commended for” Heb 11…

I answered this above. There are a number of proofs for the existence of God which are pretty compelling to me. What I find is that people who don’t believe in God assign faulty attributes to Him, and expect Him to work according to their own whims – that is, if God doesn’t appear like a genie when I call on Him, He must not be real.

Likewise, they argue against God on the basis of naturalism and an atheistic perversion of materialism. In fact, even these things support the existence of God. The fact that there is order in the universe means that it **cannot **have been created randomly. I don’t mean, here, the appearance of order – I mean actual order. For example, there’s a universal constant; there are the four fundamental forces (gravity, strong force, weak force, electromagnetism), and they operate the same way all the time; physics don’t suddenly stop changing on the atomic level; solids are always solids, etc. Science is built on the back of the order of the universe. If the universe weren’t orderly, it would mean you could never repeat an experiment, which means there’d be no way of acquiring any sort of meaningful empirical data.

So empiricism, and the related notions of naturalism and materialism, are all built upon the idea that there is a stable “it” out there. It may be moving, but it’s moving according to solid mathematical laws, not randomly. All of this **requires **a Empiricism relies on Math to be true. But Math isn’t material – it’s immaterial. It’s not as if the Big Bang produced “2 plus 2 = 4.” And yet, 2 plus 2 is always and everywhere 4, never 5. That’s only because a Stable Being created the universe. This stability isn’t an intrinsic quality the universe should possess, but it does, and if it didn’t, we wouldn’t even be able to have this conversation.

 

[davidv]

If anyone wants me to take this claim seriously, they will have to provide supporting evidence.

 

[Windfish]

I was hoping to avoid the semantics. All I’m interested in right now is answer to thread title’s question.

 

[AntiTheist]

Christians can provide proof for God’s existence. It just isn’t the form of proof which is considered acceptable to those who dismiss, a priori, non-empirical evidence.

And all reasonable people dismiss a priori, non-empirical evidence when it comes to evaluating claims about the world outside of our heads.

Anyway, to address this thread topic, “atheism” is simply a word for not having a belief in god, and it includes both “weak atheists” (i.e. those who don’t think there is sufficient evidence to support the god claim, or sometimes called “agnostics”) and “strong atheists” (those who actively assert that there are no gods).

Both are equally without a belief in god, both are equally a-theist.

So yes, strong atheists have a burden of proof if they wish to convince others of that claim.

 

[Belloc_Fan]

And all reasonable people dismiss a priori, non-empirical evidence when it comes to evaluating claims about the world outside of our heads.

Really? You never accept anything (anything?) outside of your head, except on the basic of emperical evidence? A woman says she loves you, and you dismiss it, a priori, because no woman has ever fallen in love with you? And that’s what “all reasonable people” do?

Can you point to a single individual, anywhere on earth, that lives their life believing only things proven by empirical testing? How would that even work? What empirical data set “proves” to you that you’re your mother’s child? Did you get a genetic test, just to have the data? Or is her being your mother just inside your head? Or is this standard maybe, just maybe, absurd?

 

[AntiTheist]

Really? You never accept anything (anything?) outside of your head, except on the basic of emperical evidence?

Claims about the world outside of my head are evaluated on the basis of how much evidence they have going for them. The more evidence I have, the more certain I am that they are true, all the way up to 99% (because, obviously, we don’t have absolute knowledge of things).

For some very ordinary claims, I would probably be willing to accept them for the sake of convenience – for extraordinary claims, I would not. If you told me that you had a dog, for example, I’d probably believe you because that’s a very ordinary claim and because it doesn’t really affect me one way or another. If, however, you told me that you have a dog that can fly and breathe fire, I would not believe you until you showed me some very convincing evidence.

A woman says she loves you, and you dismiss it, a priori, because no woman has ever fallen in love with you? And that’s what “all reasonable people” do?

Um, no. If a woman says that she loves me, that’s one piece of evidence. I would probably take her word for it, assuming that the claim is also supported by even more important pieces of evidence: her actions towards me. Claims of love need to be supported by the very real and tangible evidence of actions.

[quoteCan you point to a single individual, anywhere on earth, that lives their life believing only things proven by empirical testing? How would that even work? What empirical data set “proves” to you that you’re your mother’s child? Did you get a genetic test, just to have the data? Or is her being your mother just inside your head? Or is this standard maybe, just maybe, absurd?
[/QUOTE]You’re misunderstanding me. I’m not saying that every claim needs to have data obtained by formal scientific testing – merely that all claims that I believe need evidence.

I don’t need to do scientific tests to know that my car will start when I turn the key. All I need is the evidence of my experience and some inductive reasoning.

For things like believing your mother is really your mother, this falls under “ordinary claims” that I accept for the sake of convenience. If I ever had any real reason to question whether my mother was my mother, I could have tests done to confirm it.

 

[JohnDamian]

No Black Swans.

Enough said.

 

[Dameedna]

Agnosticism, has to do with wether or not it is possible to gain knowlege about a God.

Athiesm, is a lack of belief/a belief there is No God.

You could be an agnostic athiest, or an agnostic believer, keeping in mind that athiesm is rejecting the concept of a “theistic” God as it is typically described.

As to the OP, It’s a tricky one, but putting in terms of the way science usually does, can help understand the position.

A hypothesis is presented. That Hypothesis is that there is a Theistic God. Without this hypothesis, no athiest would ever say “There is no God”, because it’s not something the athiest hypothesized.

The athiest, is looking for proof of this thiestic God, therefore until some is presented, there is no God. God, is still a hypthothesis(and idea yet to be proven).

If I said that aliens invented the universe, you would not have to try and prove me wrong. It would be up to me, to prove I am right. Therefore, the statement “there is no God” is simply a rejection of your hypothesis. It ISN’T a hypothesis in and of itself.

And to the individual that said St Thomas came up with proof, he did not. Even he admited that himself. His proofs, were that which an indvidual who already believed, could contemplate on to help strengthen their faith. He said it would never convince an non-believer.

Athiests, are looking for proof. Not philosophies, not books, not churches, and not human experiences. All of that can be challenged. They are searching for a truth, that cannot be challenged, and while it can be, it is only an idea, and not an idea that we support

Hope that makes sense
Cheers
Dame

 

[allenirvan]

I was hoping to avoid the semantics. All I’m interested in right now is answer to thread title’s question.

You have gotten the variety of all the classic answers… This question has been debated in one form or another for thousands of years, what on earth makes you think something profound, new, and definitive will suddenly arise here on CAF?

My answer is NO, for the reasons I stated in post # 7.

 

[Belloc_Fan]

A hypothesis is presented. That Hypothesis is that there is a Theistic God. Without this hypothesis, no athiest would ever say “There is no God”, because it’s not something the athiest hypothesized.

The athiest, is looking for proof of this thiestic God, therefore **until some is presented, there is no God. **God, is still a hypthothesis(and idea yet to be proven).

It’s not true that if there is a God, “until evidence is presented, there is no God.” What I mean is that, if God exists, and Christians are just bad at giving evidence atheists are willing to accept, God doesn’t suddenly not-exist in that stretch.

As I’ve said before, if this is really about proving or disproving a hypothesis, and the problem is simply a lack of proof, then the correct answer for someone who isn’t compelled of the proofs for God can only accurately say that God’s existence hasn’t been proven, not that the lack of evidence proves His non-existence. Edison is said to have tried over 1000 different ways to make an electrical light before settling upon one that worked – had an atheist come along 900 into it, they could have said that the evidence for the possibility of electric lights was lacking… but they would be factually and logically incorrect to say that 900 failures proved the non-existence of the possibility of electric lights.

There’s a related problem as well: Christians say the Holy Trinity exists, and atheists respond by arguing that neither the Holy Trinity, nor any other God, exists. Now claiming the Holy Trinity doesn’t exist is a positive claim requiring proof, for all the reasons I mentioned above. But claiming that no other God exists is even more irrefutably a positive claim.

And to the individual that said St Thomas came up with proof, he did not. Even he admited that himself. His proofs, were that which an indvidual who already believed, could contemplate on to help strengthen their faith. He said it would never convince an non-believer.

Where does he say this?

 

[Belloc_Fan]

No Black Swans.

Enough said.

Exactly.