(February 9, 2014 at 2:10 pm)Sword of Christ Wrote:(February 9, 2014 at 1:00 pm)Esquilax Wrote: You believe there's a god, right? Do I believe you when you say there is? No, I don't.
If you don't have an alternative belief in Gods place you don't really have a reason to disagree with anyone.
Not at all. The middle position - no belief in [given claim] - really is the default one. If I assert that a person is guilty of something, or that I flipped a coin and it came up heads, you're not required to have an alternative belief in order not to accept that claim. We all know that it's a popular theist tactic to misrepresent what atheism actually is, but honestly this is such a basic thing to put right that it just comes across as comically desperate every time it comes up.
At the age of five, Skagra decided emphatically that God did not exist. This revelation tends to make most people in the universe who have it react in one of two ways - with relief or with despair. Only Skagra responded to it by thinking, 'Wait a second. That means there's a situation vacant.'