Why atheism is irrational

[Vincenzo Vinny G.]

I'm surprised I need to spell it out for so many of you.

All the points I raise suggest atheism is more about irrationality and/or emotion than reason. Cumulatively, all these points just raise the probabilities higher and higher. Combined with the lack of any good arguments or scientific evidence in support of atheism, one can conclude with a high degree of confidence that most atheism is irrational.

There's a reason for that: Your conclusions are illogical.

You are stating that, essentially, the default stance must actually be theism; that to NOT believe is irrational, because the burden of proof must rest on the atheists, and not the people making the claim that god exists.

Except this is not the case. Atheists are a wide and diverse breed but I think it's fairly safe to generalize that the main point of atheism is "not having belief in a god." As in, lacking the belief.

Children, it should be worth pointing out, are not born into this world as believers, and funny thing, children raised without any sort of religious or theistic influences tend to never believe in the theistic claims.

Theism is the stance making the claim. Not atheism. You claim god. I ask for proof of this god. I am given nothing. Ergo I have no reason to believe in god.

What's so difficult about this to understand? I mean, shit, you then go on to state that because other people claim to experience experiences of the godly, that therefore it's true. RIGHT, because, you know, people who are already believers wouldn't have a bias for that, of course.

Eyewitness testimony is the absolute worst form of trying to provide a basis for a case. There is a reason eye-witness testimony is far from enough to actually convict someone in a court of law; because peoples' stories change all the time. Two people see the same thing and yet remember it differently.

Ditto with people claiming these experiences. Pressed for details, they suddenly come up hilariously short.

I mean if you're really that gullible that you instantly believe people just because they make the same claims when, previously, they already shared the same beliefs, then man, you're just lost to the deep, dark realms of non-logic, and there's not a single thing any of us can do to pull you out of it, no matter how many lights we shine down into that hole.

Actually it's your claim that is illogical. There is no such thing as a default stance, and I can go into depth explaining why but this will derail the discussion. Suffice to say, the whole notion is nonsensical. Even if there is a position, it would have to start from zero evidence for any position, and thus be essentially agnosticism.

Once you reject the faulty "default position" argument, you rationally arrive at the position that all positions bear their respective burden to defend their claims rationally.

Aside from that, my position on burden of proofs are clear. As far as an obligation to explain or defend a position, everybody has an obligation to defend theirs, be they theist, atheist, agnostic, whatever. I've developed my view in this thread. Feel free to refute at your leisure.