I Am An Atheist

Should someone believe in magical entities, they can challenge your disbelief in them.

Also, and this is vital, the religious people don't realise they're making unsupported claims. From their point of view, religion not only obviously true, but is substantiated.

its possible for theists to debate

its possible to debate a "belief"
lack of evidence does not infer a debate is valueless

I don't have disbelief in magical entities... no more than I have belief in them.

After all:

1. there's no proof that gods exist
2. there's no proof that gods don't exist
3. there's no compelling necessity to postulate the existence of gods, and the postulation explains nothing (it tries to merely explain everything away)
4. therefore I have no gods

No beliefs, or disbeliefs, needed 😀

The truth claims of religions do indeed require substantiation (claims made without offering evidence can be dismissed without offering reasons), and it's always amusing to see how theists try to offer support for those claims.

It's easier (and quite reasonable) to simply drop their claims into the rubbish bin of history

@newjaninev2: all very reasonable as an argument...

however this does not infer debate is valueless

@newjaninev2: you're confusing evidence with debating

they are not the same thing

@newjaninev2: The thing is, when there is no evidence for something or against something, you assume that it doesn't exist. You don't [i]need[/i] evidence against something until you have evidence for something. (Basically, the proof that gods don't exist IS that there is no proof they do).

Also, there is no so-called "null state" with belief. You either believe or don't believe, there's no way, with anything, that you can both not believe and [i]not [/i]not believe at the same time.

One could debate the underlying reality of a Harry Potter novel (i.e. the truth claims it makes), but that would be completely unproductive, as not even the author pretends that there is any underlying reality.

With belief, there needs to be something that one either believes or does not believe. What I'm suggesting is that if one doesn't make an unnecessary postulation in the first place, then that 'something' doesn't even arise (and we can all get on with our breakfasts, or playing tennis, or whatever we would otherwise do, without suffering any sort of loss)

@newjaninev2: That would be lovely, however, since the question of whether or not a god exists happens to be one that has arisen over the past few millenia, we kind of can't just ignore it. Especially since it can shape morality and therefore govornment policy, which affects us.

What I'm suggesting is that, in fact, we [i]can[/i] ignore the question... and that we suffer no loss from doing so.
In short... why does the question even arise?

Religion is neither the source, nor the arbiter, of morality.

In any case, why would we form a morality around the uninformed ramblings of a bunch of Bronze-Age Middle-Eastern goat herders, or the equally uninformed ramblings of a Middle-Eastern paedophilic warlord?
These things actually obstruct and obfuscate the morality debate we [i]should[/i] be having.

"Religion is neither the source, nor the arbiter, of morality."

What you mean to say is that it shouldn't be. Unfortunately, for many people, it is.

What I meant to say was what I said. Religion is neither the source, nor the arbiter, of morality.
The religious take the stance that their claims are about morality, but they fail to first define morality (except as 'morality is whatever this book says it is').

It's perhaps time for the rest of us to require those people to justify their stance.

What do their books have to do with morality?

It might be more helpful to make a start on actually defining morality.
I would suggest 'fostering the greatest possible level of well-being for all organisms capable of otherwise suffering' (well, it's a start 😀)

From a purely philosophical point of view, your points make perfect sense. From a realistic point of view, that's not how the world works, 70% of the world believes the Bible defines morality. That means that what people use as morality to make decisions that affect us isn't something we can ignore.

Oh, we shouldn't ignore it... but we should definitely challenge it at every turn.
In that regard, I'm always bemused as to why religions feel that they should get an automatic 'free pass' when it comes to the truth claims that they make.
Faith is a prime example. Faith is merely pretending to know something that you do not in fact know. For some reason, such pretence is extolled as being some sort of virtue!
That's especially so when a politician says 'I believe in A and B and C'. Our response should be... 'those things are unsupported, defy reason, and influence the decisions you make. Your confidence in those things is based on pretence. Therefore how can we trust you?' Why would we trust you?

Yup. Totally agree.

@RoboChloe: That was a truly magnificent (for lack of a better word) discussion you two shared earlier. SW (like EP) has it's share of problems (ala trolls), but it does allow for the facilitation of concepts and ideas such as those you both presented.