Take note, Atheists: If you claim to know that God does not exist then you need to be able to prove it.

@hartfire

Those are fine reasons to question what we believe about the god of Abraham and i agree that god is not necessary for morality but none of that demonstrates that the god doesn't exist.

You find unconvincing the evidence and arguments for god which is perfectly reasonable and you have given good reasons for it.
It's only if you were to go beyond that and claim to know that god doesn't exist that you would bear a burden of proof.

@Pikachu I don't understand your reasoning.
There are so many concepts of god around the world - pantheist, polytheist, deist, mystical and esoteric.
Most believers think theirs is the real and only god.
In the case of the polytheists, they tend to welcome every new god into their pantheon of gods - and some would say all of them are part of the one great god, a sort of all pervading consciousness.
Logic would suggest that it would be unlikely that all versions could be true.

If I assert that there is no such thing as aliens from outer space (even if it is very likely that there are) - why would the burden of proof be on me? It's an unprovable proposition - at least with the technologies we have now. One could spend an entire lifetime studying the radio feedback from ever bigger radio telescopes, and still never get a definitive answer because the universe is so vast that we could never scan the whole of it.

I'd say it's not fair to demand proof of something that cannot be proven.

The whole point of faith in religion is that it is something that relies on faith alone.

@hartfire


Because you're making a claim of knowledge. Whether or not you can prove it to anyone else's satisfaction is irrelevant .


I'd say it's fair to demand proof of anyone who claims to know something if they expect you to accept that claim as true.

@Pikachu Interesting.
Some of this turns on semantics.

If someone said, "there's no such thing as aliens,"
even though it is phrased like a statement of fact,
I would interpret it as a statement of opinion.

I would start by asking, "what brings you to that view?"

Did they faint during a bike ride, and get picked up and revived inside the assistance truck?
Believe it or not, this is the most common sauce from which people believe they have experienced being abducted by aliens (according to research by the American Skeptics Association).

Do they have a sibling who's an astronomer on duty at a radio telescope? Has the sibling reported strange phenomena? Has the info been misinterpreted or exaggerated? or was the sibling joking?

If the claim comes from a science journal, what's the name, the study and what do the peer reviews say?
And so on.

We can examine the source of evidence for validity in all sorts of ways.

But ideas that are based on belief alone often cannot be proven.
Sometimes they are purely tenets of religious faith.

Other times they might be the products of imagination - waiting only to be created by the artist or inventor.
We humans have invented much by imagining what does not exist and then working out how to create it.

In some people's world views, the idea pre-exists and all materiality emanates from thought. To me, that's crazy, but the Platonists still have many adherents.

When we lack sufficient knowledge and can't obtain it, we often have to put our faith in a best guess probability in order to decide a course of action. The correct guess gets the best results - but we may have to test that many times before trusting it as fact or knowledge - and even then we might not understand it. We trust in gravity - yet how much do we really know about what it is (not the definition, but the means by which it works - why does it work as it does)?

@hartfire


I would start by asking "How do you know" and if they explained that they actually just believe that then that's different. But if they stick to their guns and say they know then they'd better be able to prove it

Personal experience and personal revelation are simply insufficient to prove something to another person most of the time and if that's all you've really got then you're going to have a hard time meeting the burden of proof...but that doesn't mean the burden goes away. Not if you want to claim a knowledge position and have someone else accept it as true.

@hartfire
Supposedly the reason for this suffering is he is wanting to test people's patience to see if they really are faithful. It would be like beating your spouse on the regular just to see if they really love you or not.

But yeah if he already knows the outcome of everything then he already knows who will end up in hell so what is the point of testing people? It would be like testing if a man on crutches can run a seven minute mile.

@Punches Exactly, and that could stand as a perfect example of cruelty and evil.
Whether it's done on purpose or not, deliberately causing suffering when it is entirely unnecessary is one way to define evil.

@hartfire if you know your history GOD did create Satan but free will allowed Satan to become the devil and evil

@pdockal That doesn't change the premises of my argument.
Being omniscient, God already knew what would happen before creating Satan. He has to wear the responsibility for his actions.

@hartfire
But he didn't create evil and that was my point countering your point

@pdockal I can see how you see it that way.

If I were to create a cyborg with independent consciousness, a will of its own and the capacity to change itself - but knew that it would inevitably develop a capacity and preference for evil (deliberately causing unnecessary suffering for innocent sentient beings), and if I knew that that was the inevitable outcome for this creation, then I would be directly responsible for creating that cyborg and hence also responsible for its choices and character.

@hartfire
You are clueless when it comes to GOD
the whole point of his creations is FREE WILL
look at Adam and eve
Cain and able
Etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc
We aren't cyborgs
We are created in HIS image
Etc etc etc etc etc