Why Must Atheism Be a Belief In Itself?

[BigV]

If I walk up to ten people and ask who Jesus I'm a good eight or more will recognize the name. Even the founders of the United States knew who he was. They mentioned him in the constitution.

Ask these same people about Zeus. I think they'll know him as well.

 

[thomas_t]

Hi Muichi,

extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and [certain atheists/agnostic people, added mine] are not making a certain claim

The question is which position you're leaning towards. To me, "there is a God" sounds as extraordinary as "there is none, creation developped by itself!"
However, when an atheist neither tends towards believing there is a God, nor towards believeing there is none... then he is truely non-believing in this regard.
Christians should accept that. Especially those that hurl out the insult "fool" to any atheist they meet. Even if they do so by citing a Bible verse about those who say there is no God, which also can be insulting.
No Christian, in my opinion, should say they know the hearts of atheist people by insinuating they all do believe something.
From my experience, attacking non-believers sometimes is a common occurence within the Christian community. Sadly.
Maybe not in this thread... but surely somewhere else.

Thomas

 

[Dave Ellis]

If I walk up to ten people and ask who Jesus I'm a good eight or more will recognize the name. Even the founders of the United States knew who he was. They mentioned him in the constitution.

Jesus doesn't appear in the constitution, and many of the people who wrote it didn't think he was divine and were rather hostile towards Christianity.

 

[GrowingSmaller]

No, Nihilist Virus observes correctly that the burden of proof is on the claimant to support, not the person who's skeptical of the claims, but isn't making any positive assertion themselves

If you believe religion is rational, it's on you to support that rather than those who are not convinced and are pointing out the flaws in arguments to try and support religion being rational.

Is scepticism thought to be a rational, or a preferable position? If yes, then that itself is a claim.

 

[muichimotsu]

Is scepticism thought to be a rational, or a preferable position? If yes, then that itself is a claim.

That can be demonstrated, but that's not the same thing as a metaphysical claim, it's an epistemological principle of justification for knowledge claims in general