When Atheists Can't Think Episode 1: No Evidence for God?

[Delicate]

I have to ask you to stop and think more carefully.

Read the question:

People can see no evidence of God because they have competently examined the evidence and found it lacking, or they are simply incompetent and incapable of seeing the evidence. Which are you?

"Where is the evidence?" is not one of the answers. The answers are one of the following:
a) I've examined the evidence and found it lacking, or
b) I'm incompetent and incapable of seeing the evidence.

Those are the only two possibilities that can explain why someone sees a lack of evidence. 

So once again: Which is it?


Pretty sure noone's talking about the existence of the terms.


You're good at repeating slogans. Too bad you don't understand them.

It's been about 50 years since justified true belief was refuted. For my struggle (and those of contemporary epistemologists) you can thank Edmund Gettier.

But to keep the discussion on track, the bottom line is: Your belief+knowledge account of your view about the existence of God refutes atheism itself. 

Here's why:

1) The JTB account entails that if a belief is justified and true, it is knowledge.
2) Your belief (atheism) is not knowledge (agnosticism)
3) Therefore your belief (atheism) is not both justified and true. (modus tollens)

Taking (3) as a premise in a second argument, we get the following:
1) If a conjunction is false, one or both of the conjuncts are false.
2) The conjunction "The belief (atheism) is true and justified" is false.
3) Therefore, either atheism is unjustified, or atheism is false, or atheism is both unjustified and false.

Read the second conclusion again. You're logically committed to the view that atheism is either false, or unjustified, or it's false AND unjustified.

Someone who knows a bit of formal logic can verify the structure of my argument here.

Thanks for playing. Now tell me about your justified true belief.

I can see one fault here, atheism is a lack of a belief rather than a belief. I'm surprised you overlooked this since you say atheists are always telling you this.

It might be the case that you're constantly being told the same arguments by atheists because you're constantly ignoring the arguments resulting in them being repeatedly explained.

Atheists say things. Deepak Chopra says things. Politicians say things. Lawyers say things. Salesmen say things.

Who is to believe without evidence?