A New Way for the Atheist Barfly

Atheists who insist that theists have some burden of proof on them (and say nothing more) remind me of the aging barfly who spackles on the make-up and sits on her stool all night, surveying the men present and, in her mind, expecting each of them to compete and prove themselves to see which one is worthy to take her to bed that night (as if they haven’t all already done so).
A desperate theist who hasn’t had any stimulation in a long while may fall into this trap, and throw all their best arguments, all their cleverest pick up lines at the atheist, so the atheist can toss her hair and proclaim “Sorry honey, I’m still not persuaded,” thus convincing herself she’s still ‘got it’. A more self-confident theist who gets a lot of intellectual action will see this sad trap for what it is- the atheist floozy can always shrug and say “I fail to be persuaded” no matter how good the argument is.
In a healthy, exciting intellectual relationship, both sides have an equal burden of proof regardless of their stance. First, they must both prove that they are worth talking to. Second, the burden of proof lies on whomever wants to change the other person’s mind. Hey, floozy atheist, in your secret heart of hearts, do you want to convince Christians they are wrong? If so, you have to get up off that stool and shake what you got once in a while. Sadly, this means opening yourself up to rejection as the theists have had to do for quite some time now. But hey, this is the 21st Century, and a modern girl like you shouldn’t be afraid of a little risk.

EDIT: This was a response to the Who’s God’s BOSS thread, but halfway through I realized it had a little more of it’s own. If it’s more appropriate for Mundane Babble, feel free to toss it over there.

I say theists have a burden of proof because its theists who force their beliefs down the throats of atheists, not the other way around. Correct me if I’m wrong, but don’t theists have an obligation to enlighten their brothers.

Imagine this:
A pack of deer go about their lives, get born, mate, die, and so forth.
A group of deers go out of sync with this and think they have a purpose, a IT that loves them, ways to worship IT, behaviour changes as a result of IT, because IT’s will has been passed to IT’s subjects, and so forth. Where does the burden of proof lay there. The deer going about their lives, doing what they instinctively do, or the theist group of deers.
Mankind is atheistic instinctively.

Now replace the word deer with people.
I would have used the word People, but there are alot of dogmas you have to get past before making your point when it comes to people.

The burden of proof is on the affirmer.

If “an atheist” is defined as “a person who’s sure there’s no god” then they have a certain burden too, but if, like me, your position is “I don’t know if there’s a god, but I think there probably isn’t, so I live my life accordingly” then there’s no burden.

It’s worth stating also that the atheist universe is much easier to accept that the theist one, so the latter needs more justification.

Duder

 Certainly, if my GOAL is to force something down your throat, I have a burden of proof to convince you to let me.  It doesn't matter if I'm an atheist or a theist. Do theists tend to have a greater tendency to preach than atheists? Yes. What I'm addressing here is the atheist who sits back and says "Ok, all you theists have an obligation to convince me, and as long as I can say I'm not convinced with a straight face, I WIN!" No, you don't win, and the theist is under no special obligation to convince you, unless they want you convinced- the truth of a position is not dependant on one arbitrary person's ability to persuade another arbitrary person. 

Then how come there are so damnably few of you, and always has been, since man has kept written records? To answer your question about the deer:
If a deer who believes in IT approaches a crowd of atheist deer, proclaiming “I have found the way, give up your petty instincts and follow me!” then the burden of proof is upon him.
If an atheist deer who denies the existence of IT approaches a crowd of believer deer proclaiming, “These silly superstitions are irrational, give them up and return to your natural instincts!” then the burden of proof is on him.
Think of the alternative- if you barged into some religious forum, and started a thread saying “Atheism is true and Theism is false”, wouldn’t you have a burden of proof to persuade people of your point?

Atheism says there is no god, how does one go about
proving a negative. For example, how does one go
about proving unicorns don’t exist, or the abominable
snowman doesn’t exist. You can’t prove a negative.
Thus the one who is trying to prove a positive exist,
GOD EXIST, has the burden of proof. It would be easier
to prove god existed then to prove he doesn’t exist.

Kropotkin

I see the world as my forum of atheism and the rest are the people coming in and proclaiming “we know the truth.” therefore the burden is on you.

You said that people are not instinctively Atheist, and this where we dissage. You said:

That doesn’t refute the idea that people are Atheist at default . It is possible for the majority to have it wrong. After all the vast majority out there is not all Einsteins. If everybody was born atheist, then turned to theism in light of all the facts, then the world would have alot less theists, in my opinion at least. What happends is most people are born theists and go through life only defending it, without heaving really chosen it as their religion in the first place. But all this is beside the point. The point is who has the burden of proof, not who has got it right Atheist or theists(even though most philosophers, at least those I know of, are Atheists).

And as for:

think the crusades. Has there been any other act of man, that degraded itself more? (we went from the brilliance ancient greeks which we apply to todays living, to the ignorance of the middle ages)

Hello F(r)iends,

Very good! =D> I agree Uccisore but would hedge it by claiming that the burden of proof shifts depending on the goals of the conversation. This is the reason that I prefer to have theists prove to me that atheism is wrong (it is easier to work from that angle). But surely you won’t prevent a few barbs and pot shots from me every once in a while… Otherwise I wouldn’t be a floozy, right?

-Thirst

The burden of proof lies in the lap of anyone who makes an affirmative claim, such that the proposition “God exists” and its linguistic extensions adhere to such a rule. The burden of proof does not rely on whether someone is the aggressor in an argument – only the quality of the claim: affirmative (positive claims don’t exist in linguistic logic) or negative. There are many apologists on both sides of the theological debate, who do not know how to identify an affirmative claim.

An affirmative claim is any statement that is either true or false, and has either no negative words or an even number of negative words in its content. Most often, people identify affirmative and negative claims based on the way they sound (or seem to read). This method is often faulty and leads to misrepresentation of the burden of proof, as is evident when we have people referring to “forcing ideas down others’ throats”.

However, and stepping off my pseudo-intellectual tangent, because the religious position rests on the primary axiom that “God (of some type or kind) exists”, an affirmative claim, the burden of proof will always be on the theists’ shoulders, irrespective of who is forcing the issue.

Thirst:

Yes, that's precisely the point, it IS easier to work from that angle. That's why I've made the analogy I did. The atheist wants to be the hot-chick in the bar who's free to set her standards as high as she wants, because there will never be a shortage of guys presenting themselves.  She is the thing desired, the theist is doing the desiring. 
 But this isn't reality. I'm not knocking on doors here. The fact is, if the chick (atheist) even shows up at the bar in the first place, that means they want it just as bad as I do. The 'burden of proof' angle assumes that theists are more desperate for conversation than the atheist is.  [i]Sometimes they are. [/i] But if you're only talking with theists who are desperate enough for stimulation that they are willing to try to 'prove it to you', you aren't getting the most sophisticated types. It's been my observation that the more sophisticated theists aren't desperate or even interested in 'proving themselves' to a skeptical stranger, they have finer points to work over.

Faulty_Reasoning:

  To your mind, what does this burden of proof govern? If an atheist and a theist are talking, it seems like you're saying the theist always has the burden of proof. If that's so, then what must the theist do to meet it? What are they guilty of if they don't?
  My problem is this- according to traditional thought, if the burden of proof is met, the skeptic must assent to the belief.  This means there is no wiggle-room. If the theist meets the burden of proof, the atheist must accept theism. With only two people in the conversation, this is effectively reversable- if the atheist has not yet accepted theism, the theist must not have met the burdern of proof.  Only an unbiased third party (or perhaps the Easter bunny, while we're at it) could judge one from the other. 
  Clearly this 'burden of proof' rule is not an axiom of logic. So what kind of rule is it? Is it a logical fallacy for an atheist to try to prove the theist wrong or irrational? I don't see how, and they certainly try to do it often enough. If it's not an axiom of a regulation of fallacy, what's left? All I can see is that it's a rule of convention, and [i]convention[/i] can certainly be challenged. 
   The usual reasoning goes like this- we cannot prove a negative. It is impossible to demonstrate definitively that there is no God. Moreover, the default position when confronted with a new supposed entity is to doubt it's existence until the existence is demonstrated. Two points here:
  Firstly, if it is impossible that to demonstrate that there is no God, then doesn't obligate the theist to anything. If anything, it means that atheists should stop making this unsupportable claim. 
  Secondly, people are not confronted with entities in debates, they are confronted with [i]positions[/i].  If I was raised in the right circumstances, the [i]position[/i] that God doesn't exist may be just as novel to me as the concept of God is novel to someone else. I maintain that the person proposing the new [i]position[/i] is the one with the burden of proof, and greater minds than me certainly seem to agree.  Bishop Berkeley, when he proposed that matter did not exist, didn't rest on his laurels, confident he was right simply because his position was negative.  His position [i]was [/i]negative, but it was something more than that- it was [i]novel. [/i] Because his position was novel, and because his intended audience was not naturally inclined to believe it, he had to argue for it.

Theism is “the new position”. Atheism is the absence of theism, the default state of a human. You don’t have to look farther than our next of kin, the apes, to see my point. Apes aren’t theists.

Yes, and they also aren’t human. There’s no coherency in what you’ve said here.

The point I was trying to make is this.

People are ever evolving animals. Prior to this stage of evolution we werent theists. Thats what the ape reference was for. And since this concept is new, I believe that the burden of proof lies on theists.

(Is that coherent now, or should I elaborate more?)

Your points are well taken, however, the burden of proof is indeed an axiom of logic – more precisely, it’s a matter of legality (or a legal rule). The burden of proof is not necessarily relevant to normative discourses in theology. However, people – most notably apologists - often refer to the concept when in a dialectic, and it therefore becomes relevant to an issue. The burden of proof of God’s existence is a double-edged sword, for, it is logically fallacious to make an affirmative claim about God, and it is logically fallacious to make a negative proposition about God - irrespective of what evidence is used to support either type of claim.

However, if it is the case that someone wishes to make an affirmative claim about God, then it is that person’s obligation to make their case. Again, the burden of proof lies in the affirmative claimant’s lap, irrespective of who has pressed the issue at hand. Now, I’m not eliminating exceptions to the rule, for exceptions for every rule exist. However, it would be up to the participants of the discourse to come to some form of agreement over who the burden of proof lies on if they do wish to deviate from the norm of the rule.

Hello F(r)iends,

Yes. But I would argue that the sophisticated atheists is less desperate than the sophisticated theist. Atheists are the women in that the hottest women will be less desperate than the hottest guys… Sadly, it is also the reason that good looking women often date ugly guys and good looking guys date ugly women: The sophisticates are too cool to try and then everyone gets desperate.

-Thirst

faulty reasoning:

I'd need this explained to me. Why is this 'legal rule' in place? How does it serve the interest of getting to the truth of things? If someone breaks this rule, are they merely being impolite, or are they guilty of something more relevant than that? I'm admitting that I don't understand the nature of this sort of 'legal rule', so if I what I say from this point on is irrelevant or uninformed, I apologize. 

The problem I keep coming back to his the following scenario:

Atheist: There is no God.

Theist: …

 At this point, the theist has done nothing.  Is the theist obligated [i]already [/i] to prove himself to this stranger, simply because he was close enough to hear the atheist? It couldn't be- this makes all theists Crusaders and all atheists magicians. All the atheist has done is made as as-yet unsupported statement, reason isn't sorcery- chanting this spell doesn't turn all the believers around him into unreasonable louts shirking their epistemic duties. 
  At this point, the atheist has [i]not[/i] provided a defeater for theism (an assertion without an argument is no defeater), so the theist's beliefs are not in question or at risk yet. The only things at risk are extra-logical things, like the theist's credibility to his peers, his pride in wanting to shoot down atheists, and so on. So, the theist's burden of proof [i]must[/i] begin at some point after they decide to participate in the discussion. This ties the burden to desire. The theist has a burden of proof [i]if he desires[/i] to defeat the Atheist's assertion. But of course, the atheist may be motived by similar desires. 

Now what if the Theist replies like so:

Theist: Oh? How do you know that?

Now what? Has the theist cheated? Does the atheist [i]really[/i] have no burden on him to answer the question, and back up his claim? Keep in mind the atheist cannot say "There is no God because you have not yet convinced me that there is."  This is of course a hideously poor argument, bordering on non-sequitor.

Uccisore: Faulty_Reasoning:
To your mind, what does this burden of proof govern? If an atheist and a theist are talking, it seems like you’re saying the theist always has the burden of proof. If that’s so, then what must the theist do to meet it? What are they guilty of if they don’t?

K: I would like to take a crack at these, if nobody minds.
The theist does have have the proof of burden for reasons
I have shown. About the guilt aspect, I don’t believe in guilt.
A theist is simple wrong, nothing more nothing less.
And quite frankly after listening to theist for 30 years,
I can tell you that they have no argument of any kind for
proof of god/deities.

UC: My problem is this- according to traditional thought, if the burden of proof is met, the skeptic must assent to the belief. This means there is no wiggle-room. If the theist meets the burden of proof, the atheist must accept theism. With only two people in the conversation, this is effectively reversable- if the atheist has not yet accepted theism, the theist must not have met the burdern of proof. Only an unbiased third party (or perhaps the Easter bunny, while we’re at it) could judge one from the other.

K: But there are clearly no arguments that successfully
defends the theist position. Not in over 2000 years of arguments
have the theist been able to defend their position. And in the end,
they returned to the position of “it is a matter of faith” as their final
defense. They have no where else to go.

UC: Clearly this ‘burden of proof’ rule is not an axiom of logic. So what kind of rule is it? Is it a logical fallacy for an atheist to try to prove the theist wrong or irrational? I don’t see how, and they certainly try to do it often enough. If it’s not an axiom of a regulation of fallacy, what’s left? All I can see is that it’s a rule of convention, and “convention” can certainly be challenged.

K: Umm, burden of proof is not a axiom of logic? The value of
logic is to provide guidelines, to eliminate possibilities to narrow
the choices down as it were. But this point of logic is pretty solid,
the burden of choice must exist with one who can prove the positive.

UC: The usual reasoning goes like this- we cannot prove a negative. It is impossible to demonstrate definitively that there is no God. Moreover, the default position when confronted with a new supposed entity is to doubt it’s existence until the existence is demonstrated. Two points here:
Firstly, if it is impossible that to demonstrate that there is no God, then doesn’t obligate the theist to anything. If anything, it means that atheists should stop making this unsupportable claim.

K: Unsupportable? It is not a claim, like god exist, it is simply
a real unarguable fact. You cannot prove the negative.
There is no way in the heaven or earth you can show me
unicorns have not existed. You simply can’t.

UC: Secondly, people are not confronted with entities in debates, they are confronted with positions. If I was raised in the right circumstances, the position that God doesn’t exist may be just as novel to me as the concept of God is novel to someone else. I maintain that the person proposing the new position is the one with the burden of proof, and greater minds than me certainly seem to agree. Bishop Berkeley, when he proposed that matter did not exist, didn’t rest on his laurels, confident he was right simply because his position was negative. His position was negative, but it was something more than that- it was novel. Because his position was novel, and because his intended audience was not naturally inclined to believe it, he had to argue for it."

K: The bishop is one of the great philosophers of all time,
I would hardly assume or expect anyone around to compete
with the kind bishop. And pray tell, how many people would consider
these arguments “novel”. Outside of some 15 years old, not many.

Kropotkin

Atheist: there is no god.

theist: prove your point

Atheist: Even objects billions of years old leave evidence
of some kind of their existence. usually in terms of sunlight or
x-rays or something. We have evidence of the universe close
to within seconds of its beginning. Matter leaves evidence.
We have evidence of dinosaurs, bones, eggs, footprints.
We know how they lived, we know what they ate, we even
(maybe) know what color they were and what sounds they
made. And yet dinosaurs died out 65 million years ago.

So where is the evidence of god? What footprints has he left?

K: Of, course you get the old usual tired arguments of existence
is proof, (nope, it is not) and the bible, and so on. But none of
this is evidence which can be examine, looked at, measured,
weighed. It cannot be examined in any way, shape or form.
And so on. It is a lost cause for the theist.

Kropotkin

Duder: and anyone else who wants to field this:
If you believe that the burden of proof lies on theists exclusively, universally, and absolutely, then you would have to believe that
Every theist on Earth is obligated to immediately write YOU a letter, personally explaining all the reasons they believe in God. If you don’t give them approval, they have to immediately renounce God and stop going to Church. Since you have no obligations, you don’t have to respond to or even read these letters, and if the theist gets no reply, they have to assume they have failed to live up to their burden.

 Now, I'm going to assume you don't believe [i]that[/i], because that is stupid. So, you must believe that only [i]particular [/i]theists, in [i]particular[/i] situations have this burdern, and that if they fail to live up to it, there are [i]particular[/i] consequences. 
So then tell me: Who, When, and What if I don't?

Kropotkin:

 But you have to see a logical breakdown here.  I am not [i]wrong[/i] about theism just because I fail to convince some arbitrary guy that I'm right. What if that guy is crazy, or stubborn?  For that matter, I am not [i]wrong[/i] in my theism, necessarily, even if I refuse to engage the arbitrary atheist at all. I could greet his questions with silence or show-tunes, and it doesn't mean my beliefs in God are false, it simply means I wasn't interested in talking about them at the moment. It must be something else. 

The quality of the defense is tied to the quality of the attack:

Atheist: All ducks have four wheels, Socrates was a duck, therefore God doesn’t exist.
Theist: Ducks don’t have wheels.

That is a successful defense of theism, against an exceedingly poor argument. My question to you is, are there any good attacks on theism that are so successful that they have never been defended against? I can’t think of any.

If anywhere, at any time, an atheist has been convinced to change sides based on the arguments of a theist, that is an example of a theist defending their position. I’m sure you would have to agree with me that this has happened many times, so what you say above seems obviously false.

Again, if this is true, it is as good a reason as any that atheists should stop proclaiming God doesn’t exist- they have no way to prove it. What, are theists obligated to present their case out of charity? If you delibrately take a position on something that we both know you can never prove, is that my fault?

 Which arguments do you mean? What I'm saying is, the burdern of proof falls on whoever is providing a new position to an skeptical audience. Whether that position is phrased positively or negatively, makes no matter. 
 Also, consider that over the course of a debate, atheists and theists will often switch off as to which one is making the positive vs. negative claims. The atheist may make a positive claim about certai claims of science, or may claim that certain pagan religions are the primary influences of Christianity, and so on. Such things are positive claims, the claimant has an interest in supporting them (the 'burden of proof' as you put it). So even if positive claimants always have this burden, it's simply impossible to draw that line between theist/atheist.

I have four quick points.

Uccisore - This is an apt analogy, a nifty bit of writing. In the main, I agree. Not with your strictly logical point, which is either trivial or incorrect, depending the specific formulation of the statements in question, but with your description of something that is philosophically and sociologically more important - motive.

Faulty - The atheist’s claim can be formulated as “I am correct in being an atheist”. You are just playing with words.

Thirst - that is the best avatar I have seen on this site.

Peter - the abominable snowman does exist.

faust