Atheism, Evidence and the God-of-the-Gaps

[Esquilax]

If atheists say that atheism does not claim "There is no God," only that some people lack a belief in God, then atheism can't be true at all. A belief can only be true (in a non-trivial sense) when it makes a claim about the world and not just about someone's state of mind. Saying "I lack a belief in God" no more informs us about reality than saying "I lack a belief in aliens" informs us about the facts related to extraterrestrial life.

Where is the actual objection in this line? It's true, atheism is a belief claim. We know that. It's baked into how we identify ourselves, generally, since we have the "gnostic/agnostic" prefix to describe the knowledge component of the claim.

I think the issue is that we're not as willing to overstate our case as Horn's brand of christian is; it's like he's taking our acceptance of atheism as a belief as some sort of weakness. "They're not willing to say they know?!" Frank Turek likes to pull this same crap, asserting that if atheism is merely a lack of belief in god, then it doesn't prove that god doesn't exist.

Yeah, we know. Aside from being another shifting of the burden of proof, I don't think there's an atheist alive who wouldn't accept that and then point out all the other reasons why they don't believe in god. It's not like we just stop at the declaration of belief; that's the theists' job.