Why atheism always has a burden of proof

[Esquilax]

As for your view on the rationality of quantum mechanics, I think you're confusing ontology with epistemology. Something can objectively be rational, even while people with varying levels of knowledge, expertise and evidence of it can perceive it to be irrational. This irrationality is not actual of the object, it is actual of the subject's perception of the object. So I don't think it makes sense to say "Quantum Mechanics became rational in the sixth grade", rather "Quantum Mechanics was always rational. But I was only convinced of it's rationality in the sixth grade."

That's fair enough. I guess I was referring to the idea that, on a personal level, one can only be rationally justified in accepting a claim upon being given evidence. The claim itself would always have been correct or incorrect, I agree, and rational in that it conforms most closely to reality, but a person accepting it without evidence cannot be rational in the action of accepting it.

As far as my reasoning, it simply goes from implicitly positive claims such as "The burden of proof hasn't been met" to "The positive claim "the burden of proof is unmet" entails a burden of proof to prove that statement true." Is that a disagreeable conclusion?

I'd disagree, in that one can keep spooling that out again and again: "The positive claim "the positive claim 'the burden of proof is unmet; entails a burden of proof to prove that statement true" entails a similar burden of proof to prove that statement true." and so on, and so on. At what point do we stop retracting the burden of proof one step at a time, and start shouldering it?

But there's also this dichotomy of existential claims versus subjective ones. The claim of god is an existential claim with a definite yes or no answer, with a definite burden of proof. Meanwhile, "the burden of proof is unmet," is, as we've established, at least a little bit subjective in terms of what we'd accept as evidence for it. Obviously christians believe the burden has been met, atheists don't, but the criteria one would use for that is fuzzy. I think there's an implicit tag to that: "The burden of proof is unmet, from my point of view."

And from there, we encounter the question of what standards are sufficient to label that burden met or unmet.