"God doesn't Exist"- Claim or Conclusion

[Amarok]

Do I live my life as if god doesn't exist?

Nope I live my life on a practical level of my non acceptance of the proposition in question

and yes you can lack beliefs in lacking confidence in a claim

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Speaking of unsupported claims, this is one. There is certainly nothing you could reasonably have gathered from this forum to justify you thinking that this is 'what an atheist usually inductively reasons'. The usual reasoning, as you will have encountered repeatedly here is 1. I do not know of sufficient evidence to justify belief in God. 2. Therefore I do not believe in God.

Excuse me for inferring from the usual level of animosity on this site against anyone who believes in God that it is not a matter of "you are wrong/stupid/brainwashed/clueless/liars...". While there are exceptions, this is the prevailing attitude here. In my opinion, your mild " 1. I do not know of sufficient evidence to justify belief in God. 2. Therefore I do not believe in God. " does not justify the animosity, so rather than just think that many of you just lack character, I reasoned that many of you believe with near certainty that you are right and I am wrong.

Nope

The animosity is a result of the poor character of the theists who come here(there are of course exceptions) and the quality of there arguments

As for your reasoning it flawed

[SteveII]

Excuse me for inferring from the usual level of animosity on this site against anyone who believes in God that it is not a matter of "you are wrong/stupid/brainwashed/clueless/liars...". While there are exceptions, this is the prevailing attitude here. In my opinion, your mild " 1. I do not know of sufficient evidence to justify belief in God. 2. Therefore I do not believe in God. " does not justify the animosity, so rather than just think that many of you just lack character, I reasoned that many of you believe with near certainty that you are right and I am wrong.

Nope

The animosity is a result of the poor character of the theists who come here(there are of course exceptions) and the quality of there arguments

As for your reasoning it flawed

Interesting, so your opinion is that it is okay for someone to disrespect all Christians because of a subset of them and bad arguments warrant abusive language. So...you think it is just a lack of character.

[Neo-Scholastic]

Neither mathematics nor logic makes existential claims. When metaphysical claims are also existential claims they are therefore relevant to the universe and nature and therefore scientific and therefore should be testable and falsifiable....Fair enough if the claim is that God exists in such a way that he doesn't affect the natural universe at all.

It depends on whether you consider mathematics and logic merely descriptive or in some way prescriptive. You are making a metaphysical claim. What empirical evidence do you have to support your claim that mathematics and logic do not positively impose limits on natural world and/or inform what is possible?

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Excuse me for inferring from the usual level of animosity on this site against anyone who believes in God that it is not a matter of "you are wrong/stupid/brainwashed/clueless/liars...". While there are exceptions, this is the prevailing attitude here. In my opinion, your mild " 1. I do not know of sufficient evidence to justify belief in God. 2. Therefore I do not believe in God. " does not justify the animosity, so rather than just think that many of you just lack character, I reasoned that many of you believe with near certainty that you are right and I am wrong.

Spot on, brother.

[Asmodee]

Perhaps none of you have noticed my signature line in which the evidence for the existence of God has been plainly stated. Evidence means that which is evident. Evidence is data about the world used to support a conclusion. You may disagree with the conclusion I accept as a valid interpretation of the data. I understand and welcome that disagreement. I believe that people can apply reason to simple observations (things clearly and plainly evident) about the world and draw conclusions about an important issue, namely whether there is a Divine aspect to reality.

I carefully stated proposition 2 as "The proposition that god(s) exist is not true," as opposed to "The proposition that god(s) exist is false." That allows one to take the 'I don't know' position which would be a kind of state of innocence of someone has not had a chance to consider the possibility of God(s) existence. Many of you are not in any such state of innocence and haven't been for quite a long time. Those of you how say "no evidence" have taken a stance with respect to the proposition: There is no evidence for god(s).

I just read your signature (I'm assuming that's what you mean by "signature line") for the first time.  You are confusing "evidence" with "argument".  Your signature is an "argument" for the existence of God, not "evidence" for its existence.  If you change out "God" for "An intelligent, living universe", that's all it takes to make it "evidence" for a living, intelligent universe.  That makes it an argument, not evidence.

You are also claiming something is "observably evident" simply because you believe it to be so, but that does not make it so.  Most of the evidence for evolution is not "observably evident" to the average person not educated to understand the data, in no small part due to the fact that most of the "evidence" cannot be seen in a hundred lifetimes of observation, much less one.  If you watched a rock in a cave your entire life it would be "observably evident" that rocks never change or move, but it wouldn't be true.  And, in fact, your definition of "evidence" is just plain wrong as it uses the word "evidence" to define "evident".  And, in fact, evidence is not just that which we can observe for ourselves, but the "available body of facts or information" in its entirety.  By limiting "evidence" only to that which is observable you actually cut out most of the facts.

But the biggest problem with the whole thing is substituting "evidence" where you should be using "argument".  Clearly it isn't so "evident" if any two people looking at it have a high chance of reaching different conclusions.  What that means is that it is not "evident" at all, you're simply claiming it is.

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Gotta agree with Steve here.  "God does not exist" is an assertion, which requires evidence of its own to support it - not simply a lack of evidence for the contrary.  The null hypothesis in this situation is rejecting both the assertion "God exists" and the assertion "God does not exist."  This, simply, is (weak) atheism, which is what I hold to.

While "God does not exist" may be an assertion it is still unreasonable to ask for evidence to support it for the simply matter that things which don't exist are not there to leave behind any evidence that they don't exist.  That's why claims of non-existence get kind of sticky.  Yes, technically it is an assertion, but you can not both ask for evidence something does not exist while also choosing not to except lack of evidence of existence.  Lack of evidence for existing is actually the only evidence even possible for a claim like the existence of a given deity.  Hell, even if you built a time machine and went back through all of history and proved, point by point, that every miraculous account in the Bible was false you would still only be presenting "lack of evidence" that the miracles happened because you couldn't bring video of an event not happening.

Actually, I can sum up what you're asking in a single, ridiculous sentence.  "I'm not gay and I have a picture of me not being gay to prove it!"  Figure out what's wrong with that statement and you'll figure out what's wrong with asking for evidence for non-existence other than lack of evidence of existence.

[RoadRunner79]

Speaking of unsupported claims, this is one. There is certainly nothing you could reasonably have gathered from this forum to justify you thinking that this is 'what an atheist usually inductively reasons'. The usual reasoning, as you will have encountered repeatedly here is 1. I do not know of sufficient evidence to justify belief in God. 2. Therefore I do not believe in God.

Excuse me for inferring from the usual level of animosity on this site against anyone who believes in God that it is not a matter of "you are wrong/stupid/brainwashed/clueless/liars...". While there are exceptions, this is the prevailing attitude here. In my opinion, your mild " 1. I do not know of sufficient evidence to justify belief in God. 2. Therefore I do not believe in God. " does not justify the animosity, so rather than just think that many of you just lack character, I reasoned that many of you believe with near certainty that you are right and I am wrong.

At times psuedo skepticism seems more apparent.   I often look at how someone handles evidence, how they handle similar evidence in other areas, and how they support their claims.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudoskepticism

Truzzi attributed the following characteristics to pseudoskeptics:

Denying, when only doubt has been established
Double standards in the application of criticism
The tendency to discredit rather than investigate
Presenting insufficient evidence or proof
Assuming criticism requires no burden of proof
Making unsubstantiated counter-claims
Counter-claims based on plausibility rather than empirical evidence
Suggesting that unconvincing evidence provides grounds for completely dismissing a claim

He characterized "true" skepticism as:

Acceptance of doubt when neither assertion nor denial has been established
No burden of proof to take an agnostic position
Agreement that the corpus of established knowledge must be based on what is proved, but recognising its incompleteness
Even-handedness in requirement for proofs, whatever their implication
Accepting that a failure of a proof in itself proves nothing
Continuing examination of the results of experiments even when flaws are found

Skepticism isn't saying anything one way or the other.

[Asmodee]

Before I quote, I cut out just the part I am responding to.  Not cherry picking, not censoring, just quoting the only part I am responding to.  I've been accused a couple of times of doing this or that unfairly, so I wanted to get that out of the way first this time.

...
With respect to the idea that only falsifiable claims can be considered knowledge, that was certainly not a position Karl Popper would have accepted. Presenting "falsifiablity" as some kind of test is a red herring. I would refer you to this more comprehensive article on the subject which you can find at:...

You are confusing "scientific" with "knowledge", maybe?  Scientific theories must be falsifiable, not knowledge.  And it is not a red herring in science, it is a mechanism that makes science work so well.  Alasdair used the word "falsifiable" likely because many "proofs" of the existence of someone's favored deity claim to be scientific and therefore subject to scientific standards.
Now, if you misunderstood that to mean that all knowledge had to be falsifiable, that is understandable, but likely (I can't speak for Alasdair) not what was being said.  If you are saying that falsifiability in science is somehow wrong, there is plenty of evidence to show that science works just fine with that requirement in place and, in fact, there are some very good reasons for that requirement as it weeds out "guesses".  If you are saying that it's scientifically invalid then likely you are claiming that because, while it works just fine for all of science, it prevents your pet beliefs from being taken seriously as science, that is special pleading.  Looking at what the two of you wrote, though, I think it was a simple miscommunication.

[FatAndFaithless]

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Gotta agree with Steve here.  "God does not exist" is an assertion, which requires evidence of its own to support it - not simply a lack of evidence for the contrary.  The null hypothesis in this situation is rejecting both the assertion "God exists" and the assertion "God does not exist."  This, simply, is (weak) atheism, which is what I hold to.

While "God does not exist" may be an assertion it is still unreasonable to ask for evidence to support it for the simply matter that things which don't exist are not there to leave behind any evidence that they don't exist.  That's why claims of non-existence get kind of sticky.  Yes, technically it is an assertion, but you can not both ask for evidence something does not exist while also choosing not to except lack of evidence of existence.  Lack of evidence for existing is actually the only evidence even possible for a claim like the existence of a given deity.  Hell, even if you built a time machine and went back through all of history and proved, point by point, that every miraculous account in the Bible was false you would still only be presenting "lack of evidence" that the miracles happened because you couldn't bring video of an event not happening.

Actually, I can sum up what you're asking in a single, ridiculous sentence.  "I'm not gay and I have a picture of me not being gay to prove it!"  Figure out what's wrong with that statement and you'll figure out what's wrong with asking for evidence for non-existence other than lack of evidence of existence.

Yeah, proving something's non-existence is a difficult, ill-defined, and often impossible process.

That's why I wouldn't defend the assertion "God does not exist."  That was my whole point.  It's an assertion in support of which no evidence can be adduced - I might personally lean towards that being true, but in any real discussion I wouldn't use that as my starting point because I know I wouldn't be able to justify it in any satisfactory manner.

[Asmodee]

Skepticism isn't saying anything one way or the other.

That's not entirely true, by common usage.  Visit any UFO forum where the crazies haven't driven them off and you'll find the crazies on one side and the "skeptics" on the other.  While the skeptics generally do speak in "skeptical" terms, the crazies generally think of them as "the enemy", making up names for them such as "septic skeptic".  While the skeptic viewpoint may be one of simple doubt, how they are viewed by people with absolute beliefs is often one of opposition.

[Whateverist]

A little while ago I was debating about the term "God doesn't exist" and someone said that one says it because it's easier, instead of saying something completely unneeded like, "Due to complete lack of evidence, a god concept should be thought of as highly improbable and therefore should be exist. That got me thinking. Would the "claim" "God doesn't exist" be thought of as more of a conclusion that God doesn't exist, i.e. "Due to lack of evidence, one can safely conclude that a theistic God shouldn't exist," which would be shortened to, "God doesn't exist"? Thanks in advance.

I've never thought it proper to formulate propositions concerning poorly defined things.  So I have no need to make a stand regarding a god's existence.

[Amarok]

Nope

The animosity is a result of the poor character of the theists who come here(there are of course exceptions) and the quality of there arguments

As for your reasoning it flawed

Interesting, so your opinion is that it is okay for someone to disrespect all Christians because of a subset of them and bad arguments warrant abusive language. So...you think it is just a lack of character.

Nope but if your going to come here push silly irrational nonsense expect negative results if you don't like that tough it changes nothing about whether I legitimately lack belief in god

And no I didn't say theism is a lack of character I said theists who come here  who lack character get flamed

Lastly I said nothing about Christians in general