What Is The Positive Evidence For Atheism?

Not proof in the empirical sense but evidence which should be taken into account as to his credibility. You say you don't discount it but you haven't given me any criteria for a divine revelation that you would accept. I can't remember now if you consider yourself agnostic or atheist. If you are Atheist then it would seem to me you would consider divine revelation impossible. But I don't believe that there is complete lack of evidence. I've indicated sevreral things that I consider non-empirical evidence. You just don't accept it as evidence.

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Everybody is entitled to my opinion.

We have been given wisdom and reason. I believe that God intended us to use it. I think that you have to look at their legacy. I think we have to consider what they say as compared to what we observe.When you look at the teachings of the Buddah I tend to think that he was given divine revelation. As for Moon he may well have had divine revelation initially but I would suggest that he got off track as he went along. I have my doubts about Joseph Smith.

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Everybody is entitled to my opinion.

There's no such thing as "proof in the empirical sense". You should know that by now. Why should non-empirical "evidence" be taken into account? If somebody rang your doorbell and claimed to be Napoleon, what crieria would you need to accept his word? Since he's standing right in front of you, he's already one up on God, isn't he? If you believe axle grease is ice cream, that doesn't make it so.Hint: evidence has to be evident.

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“Faith moves mountains, but only knowledge moves them to the right place” -- Joseph Goebbels

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We have been given wisdom and reason. I believe that God intended us to use it. I think that you have to look at their legacy. I think we have to consider what they say as compared to what we observe.

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When you look at the teachings of the Buddah I tend to think that he was given divine revelation. As for Moon he may well have had divine revelation initially but I would suggest that he got off track as he went along. I have my doubts about Joseph Smith.

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So, we are to assume that you are correct in your judgements?Why should we do that?(You do realize that the Buddha founded a religion that does not ascribe to the idea of there being a God, don't you?)Edited by nator, : No reason given.

Why not? We have consciousness. That is a fact. Why? Just because the conclusion can't be tested empirically doesn't mean that you can't form opinions about it. So when you say that you believe divine revelation is possible you limit it to revelation that is physical. Do you believe that if God exists that He could plant thoughts into people's heads. The fact that the universe exists is pretty evident but we interpret that evudence differently.

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Everybody is entitled to my opinion.

Absolutely not, just as I'm not obliged to assume that you are correct in yours. We are to make up our own minds. I have no illusions that I am going to convert any of you to my way of thinking. I just see this as a discussion about how we view life and the reasons for it. Actually, the fact that we have a curiosity about these things at all is an indication that there is a god. Yes I do. But he also taught that we are to love our enemies, care for the poor etc. That is what I believe was revealed to him.

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Everybody is entitled to my opinion.

The OP is wanting positive evidence of atheism. I think what he is basically saying is that atheists smuggle in agnostic concepts only to call it atheism.Atheism has to have some positive evidence of God's non-existence in order to justify itself, whereas agnosticism simply needs to have the question of God's existence or non-existence questioned.But can there be such a thing as "positive" evidence for something in the negative? More simply, as Jar noted, can you give positive evidence for the non-existence of the Tooth Fairy?If the answer is no, then how can one be an atheist with horns? Isn't that just a version of agnosticism, but calling it something else?

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“This life’s dim windows of the soul, distorts the heavens from pole to pole, and goads you to believe a lie, when you see with and not through the eye.” -William Blake

Atheist and agnostic are not mutually exclusive positions, you can be both. You can both concede that one cannot know if god exists, and also not believe that he does. I can't know that the FSM doesn't exist, but I am not an FSM believer (bellowed be his name).I've never met or read about an atheist who was not agnostic about the existence of God. So yes, atheism is most commonly (perhaps exclusively - though harking to the baby argument, it is possible that an atheist exist who isn't agnostic due to ignorance) a particular form of agnosticism (where the person doesn't hold a belief in the existence of god). Theism is sometimes coupled with agnosticism - as is often the case for so called 'sophisticated theists'. There are still some gnostic theists - people that claim they do know that god exists and thus they believe in god. This is a position often criticised by atheists, though agnostic theism is also criticized for its special pleading for an entity called god when the same rules apply to fairies.

But the premise doesn't follow, nor would it be coherent to occupy both positions, since both positions are the sum of their parts. To assert atheism is to positively affirm that there is no God, as a-theos in the Greek, literally means "no gods."The conundrum about this is that in order to make positive declarations about a negate assumes omnipotence.Then to state that one can espouse agnostic sentiments simultaneously is only begging the question. One stance asserts that there is no God, while the other stance declares that no one could know either way with any sort of veracity.Surely this makes perfect sense since agnosticism and atheism are two different meanings. Why the distinguishing terms if they are really just analogous or compatible? It needn't be coupled with anything though, I'm sure you would agree. Agnosticism is simply declaring that one has yet to have come to a decision or it means that a decision can never really be made in the first place.You can't be an agnostic theist or an atheist agnostic in my estimation. You can be an agnostic leaning in either direction more favorably than the other, but I don't see how anyone could occupy both at the same time.

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“This life’s dim windows of the soul, distorts the heavens from pole to pole, and goads you to believe a lie, when you see with and not through the eye.” -William Blake

So basically you don't see any difference between knowledge and belief ?You can't understand why anyone could provisionally hold to a belief that is not strongly grounded enough to be called knowledge ? Like, say, an opinion on who's going to win a football game, or which horse will win a race, or which of two candidates for political office would be best in the job.

To be an atheist one has to simply not believe that a certain type of proposition is true. One does not need to assert 'There is no god' one merely needs to answer "no" to "Do you believe in a god or gods?". And even stating "There is no God" is rarely without caveats, it is said with the same degree of conviction as "There are no fairies", "There is no Santa" and "There is no FSM". Atheism means 'without theism" not "There are no gods". I am not a theist (a person who believes in god/s) therefore I am an atheist. Not at all, its a convenience of the English language. One can go around disclaiming every statement like "I think there is as a high a degree of probability that no god exists as the probability that no fairy exists -which I judge to be very high", but what's the point in engaging in such clumsiness? Actually, when you ask an atheist more deeply you learn that the flow goes something like this:"I do not believe God exists."
"Prove it"
"I cannot know for sure that God doesn't exist, I can't prove it, I just see no reason to actually believe the entity exists."Thus they simultaneously don't believe in God, think he does not exist, but also accept that one cannot falsify the unfalsifiable. For someone keen on Greek origins you are quick to ignore them when convenient. A-gnosis means 'without knowledge' and is used to describe a position that certain things cannot be known for certainty. It isn't about making decisions, it's about the extent of human knowledge regarding certain things (in our context: god's existence). I concede that we cannot know if god exists, but without any reason to actually think he does, I won't. "I believe God exists, but I realize that one cannot know if God exists for certainty - my belief requires a leap of faith on that issue"and"I don't believe god exists. I realize one cannot know that god doesn't exist but I think making leaps of faith is unwise."It's easy enough to hold both positions simultaneously. See?Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

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No - I don't believe a cosmic Jewish zombie can make me live forever if I eat his flesh and telepathically tell him that I accept him as my master, so he can then remove an evil force from my soul that is present in all of humanity because a dirt/rib woman was convinced by a talking snake to eat from a magical tree about 6,000 years ago just after the universe was created. Why should I?

What's non-empirical about consciousness? Just because you can form an opinion doesn't mean it has any value. What other way do we have to test the value of opinions besides empirically? What other kind of revelation is there? Is every unsupported opinion a "divine revelation"? He might or might not be able to. The question is: How do we know that a thought in our head came from God? You're making the same argument as Baretta: that anything you pull out of your ass is an equivalent "interpretation". I tried to explain to him/her that some interpretations are right and some are wrong. The right ones are - guess what - the ones that can be supported empirically.

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“Faith moves mountains, but only knowledge moves them to the right place” -- Joseph Goebbels

Hardly. Anybody who's ever gone to the store for milk has come to a positive conclusion about a "negate".Concluding from the evidence that things are absent is something all human beings do, all the time. Why is it so unusual, in your view, to apply such common-sense reasoning to gods?

Yes, I do. But I hardly see the relevance in the current topic. There is no "knowledge" that one could acquire to prove the non-existence of God. Its every bit as much about belief as it is for the theist at the end of the day.Sure, there are logical arguments on both sides that attempt to corroborate the general claim. But at the end of the day, it really does boil down to faith-- on both sides. I see the underlying principles of the universe to contain clues about God. In that way, it supports and helps drive my beliefs. But its still a belief.Atheism is a belief, only it asserts itself as though it could answer the question about the existence of God in absolute terms. It cannot do that. That will never happen for obvious reasons. Agnosticism seems to be the better of options.

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“This life’s dim windows of the soul, distorts the heavens from pole to pole, and goads you to believe a lie, when you see with and not through the eye.” -William Blake

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Yes, I do. But I hardly see the relevance in the current topic. There is no "knowledge" that one could acquire to prove the non-existence of God. Its every bit as much about belief as it is for the theist at the end of the day.

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That's exactly WHY it is relevant. It is entirely possible to beleive that there is no God while conceding that it is not possible to know that there is no God. Because of the distinction between knowledge and belief.

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Atheism is a belief, only it asserts itself as though it could answer the question about the existence of God in absolute terms. It cannot do that

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The simple answer to that is "no it doesn't". You really ought to try to get out of this habit of inventing your own "facts".