No reason justifies disbelief.

[The Grand Nudger]

How do you know that things change, or that change is caused by something?  Both appear to be empirical claims.

[Belacqua]

To be fair, there are some people here who claim their lack of belief is not a reasoned result at all. It results from no reasons and is based on no knowledge or claims.

I wasn't programmed to believe as a child, so I never bothered with beliefs. Yes, that's not a reasoned position, but I don't have to defend it. If someone has real evidence for a god or gods, trot it out.

Do you believe in unicorns? If not, do you have reasons?

There are several good ones I can think of. 

~ I've never seen one. 
~ I've never heard a serious person claim they exist.
~ No fossil or skeletal remains. 
~ They don't appear in Medieval fact-based books like hunting manuals -- only books of legends, alongside clearly fictional creatures like the cynocephali. 

Those are good reasons, I think.

[The Grand Nudger]

They do appear in "fact based" hunting books, from serious people, actually.  That's where the myth as we know it is likely to have originated.  

A number of seals seemingly depicting unicorns have been found from the Indus Valley Civilisation. These have also been interpreted as representations of aurochs—a type of large wild cattle that formerly inhabited Europe, Asia and North Africa—or derivatives of aurochs, because the animal is always shown in profile, indicating there may have supposed to have been another horn, which is not seen.[5]
Unicorns are not found in Greek mythology, but rather in the accounts of natural history, for Greek writers of natural history were convinced of the reality of unicorns, which they believed lived in India, a distant and fabulous realm for them. The earliest description is from Ctesias, who in his book Indika ("On India") described them as wild asses, fleet of foot, having a horn a cubit and a half (700 mm, 28 inches) in length, and colored white, red and black.[6]

[/url]
Unicorn in [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apadana]Apadana, Shush, Iran

Ctesias got his information while living in Persia. Unicorns on a relief sculpture have been found at the ancient Persian capital of Persepolis in Iran.[7] Aristotle must be following Ctesias when he mentions two one-horned animals, the oryx (a kind of antelope) and the so-called "Indian ass".[8][9] Strabo says that in the Caucasus there were one-horned horses with stag-like heads.[10] Pliny the Elder mentions the oryx and an Indian ox(perhaps a rhinoceros) as one-horned beasts, as well as "a very fierce animal called the monoceros which has the head of the stag, the feet of the elephant, and the tail of the boar, while the rest of the body is like that of the horse; it makes a deep lowing noise, and has a single black horn, which projects from the middle of its forehead, two cubits [900 mm, 35 inches] in length."[11] In On the Nature of Animals (Περὶ Ζῴων Ἰδιότητος, De natura animalium), Aelian, quoting Ctesias, adds that India produces also a one-horned horse (iii. 41; iv. 52),[12][13] and says (xvi. 20)[14] that the monoceros (Greek: μονόκερως) was sometimes called cartazonos (Greek: καρτάζωνος), which may be a form of the Arabic karkadann, meaning "rhinoceros".
Cosmas Indicopleustes, a merchant of Alexandria who lived in the 6th century, made a voyage to India and subsequently wrote works on cosmography. He gives a description of a unicorn based on four brass figures in the palace of the King of Ethiopia. He states, from report, that "it is impossible to take this ferocious beast alive; and that all its strength lies in its horn. When it finds itself pursued and in danger of capture, it throws itself from a precipice, and turns so aptly in falling, that it receives all the shock upon the horn, and so escapes safe and sound".[15][16]
A one-horned animal (which may be just a bull in profile) is found on some seals from the Indus Valley Civilisation.[17] Seals with such a design are thought to be a mark of high social rank.[18]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicorn

Since your rejection of unicorns on those grounds was shown to be in error..wouldn't that categorically rule them out as "good reasons"? If, otoh, you insist that they remain good reasons, would being found in books full of myths and legends alongside clearly fictional creatures like dragons and sea serpents also be a "good reason" to reject gods?

[LadyForCamus]

[quote='LadyForCamus' pid='1893303' dateline='1553169893']
Logical arguments do not function as fact-gathering tools. They begin with assumptions that, if sound, will be fact-based, and yield conclusions from there.

For example, Aristotle's whole argument for a First Mover begins from two premises: 

1) things change, and 
2) change is caused by something. 

Those seemed self-evident to people for a long time. The rest of the argument pretty much goes from there, without the need for more premises. 

I understand that people now tend to think the second premise is not believable. Maybe so.

Even if I give you P2. for the sake of the argument, all it gets you to is a prime mover.  What does that tell us about a god?  Nothing.  It’s generic deism at best. It tells us something moved to create reality. It doesn’t describe what that thing is, or any of its attributes. Why does the prime mover necessarily have to be god? Where is the argument for that assertion? Further, a prime mover argument certainly doesn’t get you to the tri-omni, personal god of monotheism. I have acquired no information about any god thanks to this argument, so what good is it?

If you're talking about evidence, you're talking about science.

This is your metaphysical commitment. I guess it seems so self-evident to you that it needs no defending. I'm not going to argue with you about it.

Wrong.  I am offering you the opportunity to present a different metaphysical commitment; an alternative method to the scientific method for information and fact-gathering about a claim (“god exists.”), and defend its reliability and accuracy.

So far, you have done everything except that, lol.

[LadyForCamus]

How do you know that things change, or that change is caused by something?  Both appear to be empirical claims.

They always went to have their cake and eat it to, don’t they?

“You can’t use empiricism to discover anything about god. By the way, here are some good arguments for god that rely on premises that make assumptions about the observable universe!”

[The Grand Nudger]

IDK what's going on when Bel makes claims like that..in my experience they rely on a misunderstanding of empiricism...but aristotle, for his part, was opining and writing about a set of explicitly empirical things and attempting to explain natural phenomena when he formed that argument.  He was one of the earliest naturalists.  It's effectively certain that he'd have been (or wanted to be) a biologist or a physicist had he lived today.  That he'd use our improved tools.  Perhaps he wouldn't have thought that eels spontaneously generated out of mud...or any of the other equally hilarious things he dropped the ball on through no specific fault of his own.

He'd certainly be rolling over in his grave if he saw how poorly used his musings were by contemporary religion. The same goes for pretty much any philosopher of classical antiquity.

[Jehanne]

By the consensus of experts in any particular field of study.

That's reasonable. I assume that experts are experts because they have studied the field and don't make up their minds lightly. They have solid justifications for their conclusions. 

So for example, if all the experts in a given field (say, biology) apply the same standards they are likely to reach agreement. In biology, the standards would probably be the usual scientific ones: empirical evidence which is intersubjectively repeatable and quantifiable. 

Now suppose you wanted to apply the same standards to religious claims. Is this appropriate? Experts in the field of philosophy, particularly metaphysics, say it is not. Because since the time of Plato God has been conceived of and argued about as a non-material, even a noetic, thingy. These experts hold that God, if such a thing exists, is not detectable or researchable by scientific standards. And there are elaborate arguments to that effect. 

If someone (say, Mr. Wizard) wanted to argue that only scientific standards should apply to questions about God, he would find that the experts disagree with him. Then if he were serious about proving his point, he would have to show that his standards of judgment are the best ones. He would have to meet some burden of proof to show that the way he is judging is a good way.

Most philosophers are atheistic:

The PhilPapers Surveys

[Mister Agenda]

Meh, I guess not?

The boards aren't making sense using logic and sound reasoning, there's little to nothing here which interests you, and you have nothing to contribute personally beyond some comment that you have nothing to contribute.

Well yes, I rather not contribute to the rotting pile of insanity around here.

Complain, complain, complain....

[Rhondazvous]

Disbelief doesn't have to be justified.this is just another attempt to shift the burden of proof. That burden belongs to the side that claims to have positive proof of something. If you can't bear it don't shift it.

[Jehanne]

Disbelief doesn't have to be justified.this is just another attempt to shift the burden of proof. That burden belongs to the side that claims to have positive proof of something. If you can't bear it don't shift it.