SoG,

You clearly don't understand the concept of the burden of proof. 

It is theists who still have it all to prove. Atheism, in its stronger form, is simply the rejection of religious claims as unsupported by the evidence; in its weaker form, it is merely a lack of belief (i.e. someone who doesn't know what they believe, doesn't care, or has never even heard of the concept of a God). Atheism has nothing to prove or disprove.

Contrary to what you think, too, agnosticism is not a fence-sitting position. Agnosticism and gnosticism go to what you know, while theism and atheism go to what you believe.

So it's unfortunate, given what I've said above, that you feel you can stand on high and claim to be a "thinking man". Thinking only works when you have the basics right, and thinking man would at least understand what the 'burden of  proof' was and to whom it applied. 

onthebeach,

‘Evasive” in my reply, really? Is that the best you can do; that is, make up stuff?

And what a silly phrase, “burn Christians”. I assume you mean rubbish them but use the term burn for effect as you really don’t have a case. I ‘burn’ Christianity and all the other religions and not the adherents. That you take it personally is really your problem.

If I have to continue explaining and restating what I have written, I'm afraid we will part company. But, for your dull benefit. Christianity is the dominant religion in Australia as others have pointed out.

Why you quote the Human Rights Commission is a mystery to me. Do you feel persecuted because you cannot defend your ‘faith’ from the naughty atheists? Are you that insecure in the beliefs you hold? How sad.

I think you should take notice of the harm your ‘beliefs’ are doing in Australia let alone the harm ‘beliefs’ in general are doing to the planet and its people. Take off the blinkers would be a very good idea.

Don’t look now, but everyone has the right to be offended. You do not have a special right not to be. You only think you have.

David

sonofgloin,

You need to do a bit more reading and I mean that in the best way possible. I have said this before but I’ll repeat it. One can be agnostic philosophically about all kinds of ideas. The normal examples are fairies, other gods, monsters and entities etc. But practically speaking, normal thinking people are not agnostic about those classes but consider they do not exist.

Without going into the arguments against the idea of a god as the supreme head of the universe, people who have studied the evidence arrive at the conclusion such a being does not exist most probably.

When I say most probably, that denotes a far bigger chance of a god not existing than a plane I'm in would crash. We all use the highest probability of outcome with nearly everything we do. We do this with our own experience or trust in the experience of others, say, the engineers who built the plane.

Therefore, to jump to the conclusion that a god cannot be known to exist or not is special pleading. (If you don’t know about this, look it up) Our culture primes us to think this way.

Atheists cannot conclusively disprove the existence of any of the gods but they can see the damage done by those who believe without evidence a particular one does exist. Adherents of gods are blind to the damage. Such is human nature.

David

David

May I suggest that atheism is an alternate (my sixth) model of god – the null model?

These models are
1. Monarchical- A king and his Kingdom
2. Deistic- A clockmaker and a clock
3. Dialogic – one person and another person and
4. Agent – an agent and his actions (or a self and his body)
5. The social model of process philosophy/theology, in which God’s relation to the world is thought of as analogous to the relation between an individual and a community.
6. The null model of God - no God.

This argument could of course lead to your foundation having a basis for claiming tax deductibility (unless the foundation has already claimed such).

By the way; Thomas Huxley who invented/coined the word Agnostic in 1869 said
“Agnosticism, in fact, is not a creed, but a method, the essence of which lies in the rigorous application of a single principle...Positively the principle may be expressed: In matters of the intellect, follow your reason as far as it will take you, without regard to any other consideration. And negatively: In matters of the intellect do not pretend that conclusions are certain which are not demonstrated or demonstrable.”

'Atheists cannot conclusively disprove the existence of any of the gods but they can see the damage done by those who believe without evidence a particular one does exist. Adherents of gods are blind to the damage. Such is human nature. '

Unfortunately also totally blinded to the fruit of their own godless dogmas (ie suicide, immorality, perversion etc etc).

I think the phrase 'burn Christians', as a perjorative for persecuting them is also a curious one, as I think it may be a reference to the Christian tradition of burning witches.

I think the traditional methods of persecuting Christians is by crucifixion, stoning or throwing them into stadiums to be ripped apart by lions or other starving wild animals for entertainment.

The thing is that Christianity is built on persecution, they need to feel persecuted one way or another, otherwise they tend to lose faith. Weird aint it?