Evidence for Athiesm

[Vertigo_One [Ops Mod]]

Where is the evidence for athiesm? Sometimes, religious people such as myself, find it fustrating that there is, for some reason, an attitude that to be rational and sensable, one must abandon religion. It really doesnt seem fair that as far as I can see, athiests don't need to hold their beliefs up to the same scrutiny. I would argue, as the article I will now present does, that athiesm and religious belief do not have an intelectual ranking. Rather, one may be perfectly intellegent, and believe.

“A wise man,” wrote Hume, “proportions his belief to the evidence.” This is a formulation of evidentialism – the view that a belief is rational or justified if and only if it is supported by one’s evidence. A more generalized version of evidentialism
covers beliefs with various degrees of confidence, as well as other
‘doxastic attitudes’ such as disbelief, doubt and suspension of judgment
(doxa is Greek for belief or opinion). It states that the
rational or justified attitude to adopt with respect to a claim or
proposition is the attitude that fits one’s evidence. Although
evidentialism is much harder to clarify and defend than it might seem,
there is no denying its prima facie reasonableness.

Evidentialism plays a key role in attacks against religious belief by the New Atheists, as it did for Hume. Belief in the existence of God or other divine realities is criticized on the ground that there is no
good evidence for it. Echoing Carl Sagan and Laplace before him, we are
told that “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence,” and we
are assured that there is nothing of the sort when it comes to the
divine. The upshot is that religious belief must be judged irrational,
epistemically unjustified, or intellectually illegitimate, and it should
be rejected. As Christopher Hitchens is fond of saying, “what can be
asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.”

But what of the New Atheists’ atheism – their belief that there is no god or other divine reality? According to evidentialism, that belief (with whatever degree of confidence it is held) also requires evidence in order to be rational. However, the New Atheists tend not to
worry much about providing evidence. Although they sometimes offer arguments – ‘the problem of evil’, Dawkins’ ‘Ultimate Boeing 747 gambit’ in The God Delusion,
and a few others – overall, those arguments play a minor role in their
attacks. Far more central is their repeated insistence that because
religious belief lacks evidence, it is irrational and so should be
abandoned.

The question I wish to ask is this: How can the New Atheists employ evidentialist principles to argue that religious belief is irrational if they are unwilling to apply those same principles to atheism? If the
New Atheists’ atheism is not evidence-based, as Hitchens implies in the
above quotation, doesn’t evidentialism entail that atheism is itself
irrational or epistemically unjustified? The answer is ‘Yes’; at least
if evidentialism is interpreted in the standard way. So it appears that
the New Atheists need some fix for evidentialism – a kind of
‘theoretical plug-in’ – which legitimizes their atheism in the absence
of evidence. They also seem to be aware of this, since they offer
several reasons why atheism requires no evidential support. I will
discuss five of the most commonly-offered reasons, and argue that none
of them succeed. At the end I will gesture toward what I believe is the
right way to view matters."

The full article is at the link below. Before you respond, the following headings are taken into account

1. Athiesm isn't a belief

2. You can't prove a negative

3. The burden of proof is on the believer

4. Ockham's razor

5. Absence of evidence is evidence of absecne

http://www.philosophynow.org/issue78/78antony.htm

I'm not expecting anyone to come to belief over this article, but I am expecting people to change their attitude towards religion. For people more interested in arguments for God, read here the following.

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2008/july/13.22.html

[Vertigo_One [Ops Mod]]

Except there IS evidence for theisem. See point five. It may not be the kind of evidence that scientitsts would use to prove gravity, but it is evidence. It certianly is more evidence than is available for there being no God.

[alytron]

Er, the evidence is that you can take things that have other explanations and give them a religion explanation?

[Alix Laya]

I didn't read the whole question description, but there is always the Summa Theologica, which discusses proving the existence of God using reasoning.

[Kenny]

Therefore, the criticisms are hypocritical, thus athiesm and theism must be seen as intellectual equals if they share the same intelectual traits.

Let's compromise. People who believe there is a god and people who believe there isn't one are equally intelligent, and people who know there is a god and people who know there isn't a god are equally retarded.

[Madeleine]

However, your argument seems to so far be that atheism is a ridiculous idea. Since you seem to be most interested in defending the possibility of being both intellectual and religious, perhaps you would want to do so in a blog post?

[Bryan Rosander, FL]

Can you explain yourself here? Should a muslim believe that Jesus is God?
Should Christians believe in the Greek gods?

[Alix Laya]

Actually, no, not at all.  If you believe in the God discussed in the New Testament, you believe in a god different from God as He is viewed in the Old Testament.  That's the example I'm most familiar with, but the major world religions all have a different view of who God is.

[Vertigo_One [Ops Mod]]

Explain how it is relevent. I'm not suggesting that you are intending to sensationalise, I just don't see how a discussion of comparative religion is relevent with regard to a discussion on the intelectual validity of religion as a whole.

[Vertigo_One [Ops Mod]]

I'm not suggesting that an athiest is incapable of intelectually defending themselves, but what I beleive is that it has become more and more the trend, with people such as Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens and others to basicly brand religious people as ignorant and that religion as a whole is intelectually undefendable. My point that I am trying to make here is that athiesm should be held up to the same rigours that it itself holds religions up to, and though it provides excuses for why it shouldn't be, those do not stand up to scrutiny (see the article).

[Steffen C]

It's possible to disprove many things, but the typical definition of God today makes it impossible to disprove. God is some nonphysical entity who doesn't interact with the world at all. How exactly are atheists supposed to disprove the existence of that? It's impossible, just because of the way God is defined. But just because you can't disprove something doesn't mean it exists. Atheists realize that there is really no support for the claim that God exists, so they don't believe that claim.
I think you are confusing "weak" atheism and "strong" atheism. Weak atheism is simply the lack of belief that God exists, according to the reasoning above. Strong atheists, though, have a positive belief that God does not exist. This belief is not really provable, as your article above says, but I think that in most cases, atheism refers to weak atheism.

[Vertigo_One [Ops Mod]]

Weak athiesm, by your defintion, does not make an attempt to contradict religion, nor does it claim to be intelectually superior, hence why it is not what I'm engaging with.

I'm not suggesting that because you cannot disprove God, he exists. I am suggesting that the same intelectual rigours that athiests apply to religion should be applied to themselves.

"Atheists realize that there is really no support for the claim that God exists, so they don't believe that claim."

Wrong. There is evidence. Just because you choose to not believe the conculusion that I and others draw from the evidence does not give you the right to say "there really is no support". As for the infernece in your post that the burden of proof is on the believer, see point three in the article.

[Steffen C]

I would like to see your evidence that God exists. I read the article you linked in the original post, and I found many logical flaws in the arguments. It's not that I choose not to believe the conclusion, it's that the conclusion is just not justified by the arguments.
Trust me, I've been through basically all the arguments for the existence of God before. I was raised Catholic and was a believer until the end of high school. To really understand what I'm saying, you have to open your mind to the possibility that God doesn't exist. If I ever saw some sort of concrete evidence that God existed I would definitely believe, but I have never seen any. That's why I am an atheist.