standard of evidence

[Doubting Thomas]

It's not just lack of evidence, but evidence to the contrary.

alright, you'll have to explain what the "evidence to the contrary" is.

Mainly the fact that most, if not all, gods were obviously invented by man's imagination. They couldn't all co-exist, so some of them had to be imaginary. If some gods are imaginary, then how do you prove that all gods, without evidence to show they exist, are not imaginary? Even Christians will admit that all other gods except Yahweh are imaginary, so what makes their own god so special as to actually exist?

Secondly, the bible is such a flawed work with so many impossible stories which could never have happened, and in fact we have evidence that they didn't happen (6-day creation 6,000 years ago, geological evidence showing no global flood ever happened, etc.) so the source document for God's existence is flawed. When Christians rely mainly on the bible to prove their god's existence, they're already at a disadvantage. So they try to explain away all the inconsistencies or pretend they don't exist.

Lastly, the idea of an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent god is impossible with the existence of evil in the world. If God is all-powerful, then he is not all-loving because he allows evil to exist. If he is all-loving, then he is not all-powerful because he can't eradicate evil. If he is all-loving and all-powerful, then he must not be all-knowing because evil exists without him being aware of it. However, it's impossible for a being to be all-powerful and not all-knowing.

Granted this is not definitive and conclusive evidence that this god of yours doesn't exist, but enough to convince me that there are major flaws with the Judeo-Christian god idea. There could be some magical properties which exist which make all these fatal flaws non-fatal, but the more you have to invoke magic to prove something, the less real it becomes.

And again, why are you not committing a fallacy by not believing in Zeus?

because Christianity has much more explanatory power than Greek mythology, and accepting Christianity as a belief means I can't accept Greek mythology as well because the two are not compatible. i'm not committing the fallacy because lack of evidence isn't my reason for believing they are false.

Ah, so I see you're invoking special pleading to worm your way out of it. Forget that you believe in God for a moment. Why don't you believe that Zeus or even the Flying Spaghetti Monster exist? Why don't you believe in the Tooth Fairy? You know as well as I do that you don't think there's any evidence for their existence, but when we atheists believe this, you're accusing us of committing a fallacy.