Reasons for belief

[Esquilax]

Beliefe in a lack of belief makes sense because you believe your lack of belief is reasonable. But this is a non-important point anyway. Boru, it seems to me, that if atheism is held because of no evidence than in that moment they loose that debate they would in order to stay consistent, convert to theism.

The trouble with debating theists is that religion lends itself very well to ad hoc excuse making. If someone's position holds that there's magic, and a special magic man that can do anything, then that position is already unhinged from everything we understand about reality and also consistent with pretty much any claim you care to make with it. It's very easy to make things up to dodge around opposing arguments when your position doesn't have to match the real world and also doesn't have any reasonable limits to it.

For example, you asked earlier what we thought a designed universe would look like, and my immediate answer is that for one, there wouldn't be any natural disasters and two, the human body wouldn't have so many easily fixed, meaningless problems with it. There's a christian apologetic for that, the claim that all those imperfections entered the world when sin did, and that they aren't the fault of god. Which leads me to ask: how do they know that? And how does that work?

Oh, you believe it because an old book says it if you interpret it a certain way? And it works because magic? Yes, I know that's consistent with this other idea you believe, that magic is real and can do anything, but where's your evidence that it happened? Oh, you just believe it because it's consistent with other things you already believe with no evidence... great...

Religion is made to reinforce its own beliefs and wriggle out of any objection with confabulation and rhetorical sleight of hand. Any theist sufficiently invested in their religion can't really lose a debate if they're already happy just believing on faith; it's when you begin to care about evidence that their arguments tend to lose their luster.