Nature's Laws

[Freedom4me]

F4M, if you are truly willing to learn about subjects you're struggling to understand, will you do us a big favour and watch this short video, as a sort of primer?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8nYTJf6...KFWKjtMhTe

After that you might want to work throught the rest of the series.

Thanks, Stimbo.  I watched the video, but I probably need to watch it again.  The guy has a cool British accent and he seems to know chemistry.  I don't. For now, I'll just say thanks.

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I'm going to put the old sweet jar analogy to use here.
Imagine a jar full of sweets like the ones you get at the fair where you have to count how many sweets are in the jar and the closesnt number wins.
Now, the number of sweets in the jar is either even or odd, those are the only two possiblities.
My friend tells me the number of sweets in the jar is even.
I tell him I don't believe him. There is no possible way for him to have counted all the sweets, so there is no way he could know whether the number is even or odd. That is all the justification I need to not believe his claim. And my disbelief in his claim, does not mean that I think the opposite is true, that the number is odd.
The reason I am an atheist is because theistic claims have not been met with appropriate evidence.  And that's all the justification needed. That's why atheism is the default position. Because this is how every other claim should be approached. If you don't, then you are put in the absurd position of believing every claim you hear until it is proved false.

This might seem like a minor point but in your example of the jar of sweets, if the number is quite large (let's say over 300) then it is probably safe to assume that you are justified in assuming that he couldn't have counted all of them, therefore there is no way he could know whether the number is even or odd.  But the unstated assumption you are making about atheism vs theism is that there simply isn't any evidence around us that would rationally support theism, and thus atheism is the default position.  But that claim is itself, just another assertion.