On reddit I’ve been going back and forth with a user, presumably Christian. It hasn’t been particularly fruitful yet. But this discussion cuts to the core of an issue I see from believers a lot: who is making the claim that must be defended?
For some reason, many believers feel that not believing in a god is just as much of a claim that believing in a god is making.
But this just isn’t accurate at all. I used my favorite mythical creature in response: unicorns.
If I were to claim that unicorns exist, would you expect the burden of proof to be on me or on the “non-believers”?
But that apparently wasn’t clear enough of an example. And I admit, it’s not exactly the same: we know what we mean by “unicorns”.
Going back to my Defining Atheism post, without a clear definition of what God is, it’s impossible to debate the subject. So the true analogy would be:
If I were to claim that Zoodles exist, would you say that you were making a claim that Zoodles don’t exist?
Without a clear definition of Zoodles, we can see that there’s absolutely no debate to be had, because we don’t know what Zoodles are. Substitute God in that sentence, and we still don’t have enough information to debate.
And here’s the crux of it: since atheists are claiming not to believe in any gods, they aren’t claiming anything until someone offers a specific god to deny. And I finally caught him on his logic:
Theists believe in God — meaning that they reject all claims that God doesn’t exist.
To which I replied:
But they aren’t. Are you saying you believe Zeus exists? Odin? Thor? If you are, then you’re not rejecting all claims that gods don’t exist. Rather, you’re claiming that your one definition of God is the one that’s correct.
And I think that expresses the point quite well. The Christian or Muslim is making a specific claim: that his god is the one true god, and that all of the other gods are false. We atheists just take it one step further.
