Is Lack of Belief the Best You Can Do?

[Thumpalumpacus]

I lack belief not because I credit humanity with extraordinary powers of reason, but simply because I see no evidence and I ain't built with faith.

"Seeing no evidence" means, you feel the rules of human reason are binding upon the topic, and those rules have not been complied with adequately.

No, it doesn't. It means that absent any support, I'm not obliged to lend credence to a claim that is otherwise ridiculous.

There are two assertions here:

1) human reason is the qualified authority

My brain's gotten me through fifty years on this rock without too much in the way of trouble. I'm good with that track record.

2) this authority does not allow the god proposal, due to a failure to meet the authority's evidence rules.

You've obviously mistaken me for a gnostic atheist, which I am not. I am an agnostic atheist. I do not claim that there is no god. There may well be. I simply do not believe in any I've read about, because if someone makes a claim that is true, that claim should leave support laying around reality -- it's kind of the way things work.

To go further, the odder or more fantastic the claim, the odder or more fantastic should be the evidence to hand.

These are not hard and fast rules, and they do not preclude using subjective judgement, either.

In order to arrive at "lack belief" in regards to gods, a person first has to have belief in the above assertions regarding human reason.

Wrong, for the stated reasons.