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Demosthenes

mjordan2nd said:

Would you consider it absurd to deny the existence of Thor? How about Zeus? Poseidon, Hera, Minerva, Rah, or any of the millions of other Gods that I can not possibly cover here? Would you consider animism absurd? Your answer to most of these is probably yes. As it should be. Why? Because any form of theism is making a positive claim. And the onus lies with the claimant when asked to prove his claim. If he cannot, then the claim should be dismissed by a thinking person.

You're confusing two different things into the same thought. Yes, I would consider it absurd to deny the existance of Thor, Zues, Poseidon, etc. I would consider it equally absurd to claim that they exist. I think it is completely absurd for someone to claim that something exists when they have no proof that it exists. Just the same, I think it's equally absurd to claim that something doesn't exist when you cannot prove that it doesn't exist.

Mj said:

People are often confused by what atheism is. Atheism is not a positive claim, it is the rejection of a positive claim that is postulated by some, and inculcated to most of the rest. And as I said before, the burden of proof lies with the claimant, not the skeptic. I know I've posted this analogy before, but the theism scenario's absurdity is summarized by Bertrand Russel's teapot analogy:

I agree completely with Mr. Russel. I do not think it is absurd to doubt the existence of something which cannot be proven to exist. I do think it is absurd to claim it to be true that something does not exist based solely on the fact that it cannot be proven to exist. For instance, there is no way for us to prove that aliens exist or don't exist. I do not think it's absurd for someone to doubt aliens exist, because that's the logical path to take if there is no evidence for something. However, I do think it would be absurd for someone to claim that aliens do NOT exist, without evidence to back up their claim.

Mj said:

Now, if you still don't see why, I think this argument should be broken down mathematically. Theism essentially is an explanation for the existence of life, the cosmos, and everything inside it. But theism is only one of a billion different explanations that can be conjectured. In fact, it's one in an infinite, however I will stick with a billion for mathematical simplicity. One of these billion explanations must be correct. However, we can only lean towards one over the others when one has evidence, otherwise they should all have an equal weight in our consideration. Well, lets assume that this is the case. Lets assume that they all have equal weight (in reality they don't...science is evermore piling on the evidence, and ontological arguments make the God hypothesis unlikely to start with). Then what the theist is doing is claiming that his 1/1,000,000,000 is absolutely the correct one. The atheist is saying, no, it is one of the other 999,999,999/1,000,000,000.

I think you're over complicating the discussion, as I'm simply basing the idea that either a supreme being exists or doesn't exist. Two possibilities, only one can be right, and both have equal amounts of evidence(none.)