Comments on: Why not be against Satan?

By: Haily

Haily — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 04:44:33 +0000

“I agree that anyone who claims that God does or does not exist has the burden of proof. However, I make neither claim, so the burden of proof is not on me. My claim is that I have seen no compelling evidence that deities exists.”

-original post

This appears to me to be wrong. Here on your website, you clearly imply that you claim there is no god. Your first responsibility, from this page: http://www.iamanatheist.com/rights.html

is listed as:

“1. Have no gods.”

This may imply that the responsibility is simply “do not worship any gods”, but first:

“2. Don’t worship stuff.” seems to suggest that that’s a separate responsibility, and second:

“Why are you mad at God?

“Because he’s supposed to be all good but he doesn’t even have the common decency to exist.”"

This is from the FAQ page (in fact that entire page is more against “does god exist” than “should we worship god”). It appears to imply that your belief is that god strictly does not exist.

Much as I appreciate humour… trying to maintain a discussion on the basis of a website that appears confused as to its own stand on the very simple question of whether god does or does not exist seems to me to be doomed to ruin, and at best to foster lots of miscommunication that the topic does not need. It also makes the owner’s arguments unclear and suspect.

I think the main website itself could use with a good scrubbing as to what position exactly it should depict.

I am agnostic, by the way, if that’s relevant here.

By: Melissa

Melissa — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 07:07:13 +0000

As Caitlin said above, there is no way to disprove something that can’t be proven. And I KNOW there is no “god.” I’m not “more than half convinced there is no god.” I am totally and completely convinced. People thousands of years ago made up the idea of god. It’s an imaginary friend that supposedly gives people hope. Religion is also a greeaaaat way to keep people in line and tell them what to do. Religion disguises itself as something wonderful, but really all it does is cause wars and hate crimes.

The only reason atheism exists is because theism exists. If there were no theism, there would just be NOTHING. There would be no need to be atheist. Life would be great.

By: Caitlin

Caitlin — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 01:35:28 +0000

Bertrand Russell demonstrated with the Celestial Teapot that the burden of proof is on the one making the claim. Just because theism has existed for thousands of years, doesn’t mean that the skeptic is the one that has to prove the non-existence. Besides, I’m not sure how one would go about disproving something that has never been proven…

By: Emanuel

Emanuel — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 00:48:07 +0000

You mention that the default position is atheistic, but that isn’t true. As a consequence of having social awareness humans are born with a default belief in supernatural powers (I read this in either a scientific american article or a times article). Most people begin by believing in religion and when they learn to question their beliefs they cast off their religion and become atheistic, but usually not the other way around.

By: Dave

Dave — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 00:21:57 +0000

Hi, thanks for this blog. I really enjoy your work. I’m a nonbeliever, but I do think that atheists and theists alike should act graciously and should get to understand each other better. I like the example that you set.

By “what is stance and why,” I think she wants to know what your stance is on the statement, “Man is fallen,” and wants to know why you hold that stance. She might need to clarify her position first. The statement in this form wrapped up in the Christian worldview (“Fallen? Fallen off of what?”) and needs to be unraveled and turned into a secular assertion before a non-Christian can expect to hold any stance on the statement at all.

Personally, I have a vague notion of what she means. My response is that humanity on the whole has been constantly improving (arguably, even through the Dark Ages of Europe, though slowly), and that there’s no evidence that the human race has ever reversed its fortunes. That probably doesn’t address her notion of the word “fallen,” but only she can make that clear to us.

She’s also offering you a chance to put forward a topic of your own, which is a generous and gracious offer. I hope this conversation continues.