WLC: "You can't prove the negative"

[Deesse23]

Noticed his evasion? Root cause is his dishonesty.
Bel does not like others to throw around their ideas unchallenged. Quod licet Bel non licet bovi.

IRL I do not talk about religion with strangers and have also never heard a believer huff and say you cannot prove god doesn't exist. But it is a commonly reported experience among AF membets. YMMV What I can say is that every time I hear the story told, "you cannot prove god exists" happens at the end of the debate. And to me, it sounds like an exasperated theist wanting to be left alone by an incessent preachy athiest, as in "Guy, you don't know everything and have to be right all the time."

I have no problem with entertaining ideas. I have no issue with other people entertaining other ideas. I have no issue with entertaining ideas together with people. Its not necessary to prove something in order to properly entertain ideas ("do philosophy"). Many of those ideas have a possibility to turn out to be true, and many actually turned out to be true.

Now, everyone is entitled to have a different standard as to what does it require until he accepts some idea as being true*. That being a given, noone is entitled to prescribe what everyone else should have as a standard, ok? Bel can have his standards, and i have mine. We are both free to choose.
But when our epistemology is (for the sake of argument) is exactly the same, but i have an additional requirement, and that requirement is observation/proof/evidence, not just mere thought and conjecture, then i happen to have a higher standard, a factually higher standard, its not a matter of opinion.
Ans thats where i am starting to have problems with (people) like Bel. He is projecting his own smug arrogance (your mileage may vary) onto others and accuses them of elitarianism, of trying to shut down conversation by asking for evidence, when its clear that Bel wants to have his own ideas (and epistemology) be taken as least on par, if not being superior to anyone else.

Sorry, but higher standard is higher standard. Not my fault Bel chooses to stick to lower standards (aka puts less effort in trying to learn what is true and what not). Hell, if he wasnt so smugly full of himself, i (any maybe others) wouldnt try to pull him back down to (common) ground by asking for evidence. I could be completely happy with discussing and entertaining whatever idea is his favourite pet. Aquinas, metaphysics. Fascinating stuff. For some reason however, its not sufficient to him for his ideas to be treated equal, he seems to have a need to come out superior. But sorry, not with lower standards than everyone else.

He can throw around any idea around here if he wants. But asking them to be taken as being true while making less effort to investigate (compared to others´) if they actually are true, and that in such a thinly veiled condescending manner, sorry, that doesnt fly, at least for me.

* no big sideshow please about what "true" means. Lets stick to the good old "What comports with reality as we all experience and observe it commonly/together", for sake of simplicity.