Wow. A lot of absolute shit to deal with here.
The notion of religion cannot be detarmined on 'logistics', as i have previously stressed that because religion is so old, and nobody knows everything
As I pointed out to you, religion does not predate culture. Culture predates organised religion by some 25,000 years.
Seriously? Im gonna go ahead and assume ur a complete athiest who ironically has had no education of any religious traditions and say - This nameless god may not be some dude in a white robe with a flowing white beard - but there is something in all of us which does materialise the message of his followers - go ahead and witness the thousands of acts of kindness and tell me what you think then, oh wait, pardon me - you are not omnipotent, so i guess you are left with whatever arrogance and discrimination your feeble mind can muster
What about the thousands of acts of cruelty? What about those that suffer excruciatingly at the hands of the religious? What about those homosexuals who are marginalised to this day because of religion? Are they to suffer so that people can have their invisible friend to comfort them?
dude did u even read my comment? Athiets (or at least you) seem to want theists to have some kind of burdon.. why - im not going into that.
There are thousands of people around the world who can say religion has enriched their lives - they sleep at night, you seem to have an issue with that
There are thousands of people who have been discriminated against, persecuted, tortured, executed and painfully marginalised because of religion too. Good people will do good things without religion and bad people will do bad things without religion, but it takes religion to make good people do bad things.
Now that his absolute tripe is out of the way, onto the semi-serious arguments.
If I claimed that Zeus did not exist, then it would be reasonable to expect that I would have some evidence or proof that he does not exist.
My post was regarding Karl Marx claiming the onus was on religious people to prove his existence.
This is entirely true, but by making the absolute claim that God does not exist, it is expected that he would atleast have some evidence of this. Otherwise, he probably shouldn't make such a claim, or atleast admit he is taking an unprovable stance. The greater onus is still on the religious people, but there is also one on those who claim that God does not exist.
I'm not taking a moral high road on the subject of whether or not God exists. I would assume that noone wins as noone is able to prove either claim. Although you could claim as the greater onus is on religious people, we lose. The point would still remain though that noone has proven their claim.
Do you, or do you not, believe that unicorns exist? Do you, or do you not, believe that there is a flying spaghetti monster that is awaiting the perfect time to strike in vengeance for his pasta-made brethren? See where the line goes here? They're just as plausible and there is just as much proof for such things as there is for some sort of God.
So what logic dictates is that you evaluate each statement on the evidence for its claims and reject those that don't stand up. This is how science functions, ideologically. Atheism is a reaction to a belief. It is the rejection of a claim for which there is no evidence.
This idea that rejecting that God exists based on the fact that there is absolutely no evidence that he does is somehow logically false is just a ridiculous splitting of hairs by the religious to make their beliefs seem somehow less absurd and childish. If you hold the rest of the world to that standard, then almost all scientific knowledge can be ruled invalid.
Theists set such a bar because it is the only bar through which they are able to weave and duck to make their beliefs somehow different to Santa Clause or other gods that
they themselves reject. Nonetheless, the fact remains that it is altogether rational to state that something does not exist if there is no evidence to suggest that it does.