grateful,

Default positions don't change. If you use reasoning to arrive at a different position, then it's no longer a default position. You don't get to invent your own default position, and your suggestion that you do contradicts your claim that you arrived at your current position using reasoning.

Just what field exactly is it that you're in? Because it's starting to sound less and less like a legitimate field in anything. I certainty wouldn't want to trust any of the conclusions that those working in your field arrive at.

<<...two atheists have responded but neither has committed to [an] acceptable probability for falsely rejecting the null hypothesis...>>

If one cannot find a reason to reject the null hypothesis, then one stays at the null hypothesis. They don’t assume that it is, therefore, false.

<<...at least two atheists are not prepared to furnish us with a criteria for rejection of the notion that existence is a pure accident and has no purpose behind it.>>

If you could explain to me which part of the Switching of the Burden of Proof fallacy you don't understand, then I will happily clarify it for you, but there is nothing within atheism to necessitate the positions you've pinned to atheism here.

<<Excuse me! the first sentence [i.e. scientists don’t accept claims until they’ve been disproved] is non-sense...>>

How so? Do you know of an instance since the Enlightenment in which a scientist accepted a claim and waited until it was disproved before they rejected it?

<<The second presumes that it is is rational to disbelieve.>>

Yes, rejecting a claim until it has been supported by evidence is the rational position to take. You've not contradicted this.

<<To have disbelief as the default position would require:>>

No, as I pointed out earlier (http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=18201#323665), there is nothing within atheism to necessitate either of those positions you've mentioned.

In many cases, 'God' is simply a placeholder for those lacking the courage or intellectual honesty to say, "I don't know." Given the false dilemmas you insert into atheism, this is appears to be the case for you too.

Sorry, grateful. In response to:

“...two atheists have responded but neither has committed to [an] acceptable probability for falsely rejecting the null hypothesis...”

I should have actually said:

“If one cannot determine the probability (I presume you’re referring to the p-value, even if you don’t seem to realise that yourself) of falsely rejecting the null hypothesis, then they don’t reject it.”

Forgive me, but the first of your last two posts was very disjointed and made little sense. Note, for example, the contradiction in these two statements:

- “So how can you wonder why I take beleif as the default position.”

- “For in asking this question, I am assuming disbelief as the default position and indeed asking for evidence of god.”

Regarding the first statement there. No-one has “wondered why [you] take belief as the default position“ for two reasons: firstly, until now, you’ve never said that it was your default position; secondly, it cannot, by definition, be a default position.

<<This is an example of a belief based on faith (that there is no god) not rationality.>>

You are only referring to strong, explicit atheism here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atheism#/media/File:AtheismImplicitExplicit3.svg).

Either way, faith is belief without evidence or in the face evidence to the contrary, so there would need to be reliable evidence for a god before the explicit claim that there is no god could be considered to be faith-based, and so far, you have not provided any reliable evidence.

On another note, if you are suggesting that atheists’ inability to determine a p-value for rejecting the null hypothesis means that your belief in a god is therefore justified, then you are committing the Argument from Ignorance fallacy, and pretending that your belief in a god can be a default position doesn’t get you around that.

Equivocation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equivocation)
The Appeal to Authority (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority)
The Ad hominem (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem)
The Courtier’s Reply (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Courtier%27s_Reply)
The Shifting of the Burden of Proof (http://wiki.ironchariots.org/index.php?title=Shifting_the_burden_of_proof)
The Argument from Ignorance (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_ignorance)

That’s six fallacies in one discussion, grateful! If you cannot defend your religious beliefs without committing fallacy after fallacy, then perhaps you need to re-assess them?

AJ, you said,
"If a god does exist, then it would know what it would take to convince me of its existence." In response Grateful said that it was reasonable for God to not reveal himself directly, as he wants people to freely choose him without compulsion. For if God is revealed too directly, then it would lead to something like a forced command, which takes away the freedom to chose, or moral responsibility. So, God may have reason not to reveal himself too directly.

Yet I believe that there is evidence for God's existence present and sufficient to leave the rational person with no reasonable doubt of his existence. Perhaps the problem lies in people not being sufficiently rational.

Concerning the onus or 'burden of proof', which you correctly say falls upon the person making the claim, I would say that good arguments have been made for God's existence, but nothing resembling the perfect mathematical type proof of which David F speaks. David says that theorems about the behaviour of matter can never be proven with certainty. For example, could any of us prove that the sun exists, even at midday on a cloudless day?

One could argue passionately about the penetrating glare of the golden orb, the effects of heat radiation, and light refracting within the atmosphere. But I fear the reaction of the sceptics, who return indoors, or under the shade of a tree, and pronounce, 'Sun? I don't see it. You prove it to me.'

So an ultimate proof for God's existence will never be found. Yet I think this case of the sun is analogous to the positive arguments for the existence of God. It also renders somewhat meaningless the insistence from atheists or sceptics that they do not have the onus of proof. For to bother discussing who has the burden of proof regarding the existence of the sun is to realise we were addressing things from the wrong angle.

Jayb and Rhian,
I've followed some of the things you've said recently with interest relating to what you claim to 'know' and the nature of 'knowing' itself.

"Geologists HAVE LONG KNOWN that the Mediterranean became isolated from the world's oceans around 5.6 MILLION years ago."
"Scientists also LARGELY AGREE that the Mediterranean basin was refilled when the movements of Earth's crustal plates caused the ground around the Gibraltar Strait to subside, ... But exactly how the waters cut their way through and how long it took them to do so WASN'T KNOWN."
"The Flooding of the Black Sea HAPPENED ABOUT 9000BC. ... The Flooding was from the Mediterranean through the Gap at Istanbul. The area was weakened by weeks of rain then a Major Earthquake hit the area causing the gap & emptied the Mediterranean into the Black Sea."
"The other big event THAT HAPPENED AROUND 9000BC was the English Channel Event. Although, that would have only taken a few hours APPARENTLY."
"WHAT IS CLEAR ... is that a flood of the magnitude described in Genesis could NEVER have happened."
"Whether 9,000BCE or 4,000BCE, NO ONE could have built an ark as described in Genesis."

I'm wondering how you KNOW some of these things with the certainty that you claim, especially the dates. How much is theory, how much conjecture? Was anyone recording these events so we can have some kind of reliable testimony as to their timing?

And how do you KNOW for certain what ancient people could and couldn't do? We know ancient people were capable of building the colossal pyramids, which have stood intact for millennia. But you also KNOW that ancient people couldn't build a square box out of wood designed to float for a year?

Please compare what you know to be true with what others (such as Tas Walker, below) also believe to have come to know, and the confidence in your methods for having arrived at your truth.

Summarised from an article by geologist, Tas Walker:
"The landscapes of Central Australia provide a dramatic picture of the reality of Noah’s Flood. Once we can envisage how that global catastrophe unfolded on the earth, and understand something of its enormous magnitude, and what to look for, we can see the evidence everywhere. The big issue that throws people off the trail is the million-year dates that are quoted for the different geological features. However, none came with a label attached stating the date it was formed. All such dates have been invented by people who didn't see it form, and are simply stating their personal beliefs about what happened.

1. Granites:
They point to rapid crustal movements generating a large magma volume, rapid magma transport through fissures, and rapid magma accumulation in plutons.
2. Sediments:
a. They cover a large geographical area, pointing to enormous watery catastrophe.
b. Strata have a uniform size over a large geographic area, pointing to huge watery catastrophe.
c. Straight contacts between strata indicate minimal time elapsed between deposition of one layer and the next.
d. Thick strata point to abundant water over the area—a large-scale watery catastrophe.
e. Thick strata also point to abundant sediment supply—rapid erosion and transport.
f. Large cross beds in strata indicate water currents were reasonably deep.
g. Recumbent cross beds in strata point to highly energetic, strong water flow.
3. Hard sandstone:
Quartz cement (silica) in sediment point to high mineral content in water due to the effects of Flood processes.
4. Water-transported boulder deposits point to high energy water flows.
5. Landscape eroded with flat planation surfaces point to erosion when whole continent was covered by water.
6. Water gaps through ranges point to Flood run-off and erosion as the receding waters reduced in their level as they drained the continent.
7. Small amounts of debris at the base of steep cliffs and gorges indicate the erosion occurred relatively recently.
8. Eroded material taken out of the area point to the power and volume of water that flowed over the area as the floodwaters receded."

Dan.

Yes, I also pointed out that if Hell is a consequence of not believing in this god, then it’s not enough to say that that god doesn’t want to compel people to believe in it. It's just downright bizarre to spruik the supposed moral virtue of a god who wouldn’t dream of imposing itself on us, if one also believes that this god will send people to Hell if they don’t believe in it.

Anyway, if you believe that “there is evidence for God's existence present and sufficient to leave the rational person with no reasonable doubt of his existence”, then by all means, please share it. After all, if you’re right, then there are souls at stake here. We would also be testing your proposition that it is perhaps people who are not sufficiently rational. I’d seriously doubt it, though. For if that were the case, then otherwise-rational theists wouldn’t need to compartmentalise their religious beliefs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compartmentalization_(psychology)).

I’ve heard many arguments over the years. I even presented some of them myself as a Christian, but none of them are convincing to anyone who doesn’t already believe, so I’m interested in what you may have to offer. Nothing has to be proven with absolute certainty. Given the extraordinary nature and gravity of the claims, however, the evidence would need to be extraordinary. And reliable, for that matter. Personal revelation, for example, is not reliable.

Your ‘sun’ analogy assumes that reliable evidence has in fact been provided to sceptics on occasions, but that they refuse to see it. I’ve never witnessed that before. But hey, what better time to test that than now?

<<For to bother discussing who has the burden of proof regarding the existence of the sun is to realise we were addressing things from the wrong angle.>>

The burden of proof isn’t an angle to approach the question of the existence of a god. It is a logical starting point so as to avoid counter-productive discussion and fallacious reasoning. It is no more meaningless on the question of God than it is in a court of law.