(May 22, 2015 at 1:38 pm)Stimbo Wrote: No, you keep missing it. The default position on anything is scepticism, of which atheism is a specialised subset dealing with one subject. Scepticism is the position of responding, "ok - convince me" to claims. It's the reason a law court is geared to the prosecution having to provide the evidence for the charges, not the defense to disprove them; with the jury or magistrates playing the rôle of sceptic waiting to be convinced.
True, but skepticism is nothing but a starting point in the quest for knowledge; not the goal. The unstated assumption of the assertion "atheism is (or ought to be) the default position" certainly sounds like skepticism on its face, but in practice it gets turned (by some atheists) into dogma. This particular assertion doesn't become more than an assertion simply by adding to it the assertion that the theist hasn't yet supplied any evidence for his theism.
