Is the statement "Claims demand evidence" always true?

[Mudhammam]

I think you're making a category error by considering all claims to be equivalent relative to evidence requirements regardless of what's being claimed. I honestly thought this thread had already pushed through that and am quite surprised that you are making the error, unless of course you are intentionally being coy.

Oh no, I've been defending that very conclusion. I'm just curious as to why atheists who make the claim that you're attempting to make don't believe theists are entitled to the same presumption about other possible truths, namely what they consider to be logical deductions that point to some ultimate being.

If you are struggling with the difference, in terms of evidence requirements, between "my favorite color is red" and "the god of The Bible exists", there's probably not a lot of room for discussion here.

But those aren't at all the sorts of claims that would be exempt from a demand for evidence, since neither involve strictly metaphorical concepts or epistemological principles that only reason can justify. I'm surprised that I have to point that out to you, quite frankly.

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How long has it been since you began doubting in ways that you found inconsistent with remaining a believer?  Because I once felt this way but the more I read and the more I became involved in the lives of those who left their ideas in print, the less emotionally and even intellectually bound did I feel to my former baggage.  I'm to the point now that I have no belief and no inclination to believe in Christianity left in me, and furthermore I don't feel any worse off for it either -- just the opposite in fact.  And if I were to be wrong about its being false, I don't see that it would make much of a difference; I would simply belong to the majority lot of human beings whom have existed.

Well it's been about eighteen years since it clicked 'there is no god', but in the time since, my confidence in atheism has grown mainly by learning and developing other much more plausible ideas about reality from science, psychology, neuroscience etc, rather than debunking Christianity. That's where I've gone wrong I think. To put it the terms of contexts, an unrelated (to Christianity) context of science/physchology/neuroscience has taken the forefront in my mind but the old Christianity context was never truly addressed, and thus never allowed to die. In my opinion only (I have no wish to misrepresent his intentions in any way... it's me that's thinking in terms of contexts, not him... I'm just saying how imo his behaviour would fit in practically with this model but not that that is his intention) it seems that Min addresses it all the time, leaving its tendrils no opportunity to get a foothold and top up the context, and it sounds like you've done the same thing but in a different way, by reading and getting involved in presumably debunking Christianity (as opposed to learning more about unrelated subjects)? I think you guys are on the right track... you can't expect to let something go unless you debunk it and cease to feed it. I don't mean I've deliberately fed it at any point, but by not challenging/dismissing every single thought about it that comes up, I essentially give it implicit authorisation to carry on doing what it's doing, which is maintaining and bootstrapping the context. That was my mistake... so now I think I'm gonna take the minimalist approach maybe not out loud but definitely in my head... any time a Christian thought comes up I've gotta say 'that's bullshit' or otherwise dismiss it

I think a good dose of the Socratic method as you find in Plato's dialogues is helpful for de-programming from dogmatism. It really helped me to read the Classics, a variety of Greek and Roman authors, and even those more ancient works like The Epic of Gilgamesh, to put into context the sensationalized triviality of the New Testament, i.e. the recycled themes and ideas that the earliest Christians borrowed from preceding traditions -- which were often articulated far more coherently, and (in my view) aesthetically more "divine," so to speak -- and then packaged specifically for the most gullible of the masses; which, by the way, is *still* observed to be what pretty much every moderately successful religion does. All you can do is be honest with yourself. You don't choose to believe what you in fact believe. Remain open-minded and at the end of day, you'll continue to forge your own beliefs, exactly as human beings were designed to do.