Yeah, if you consider everything except possibly math a belief, then atheism is a belief.In a more useful definition of 'prove' you can prove that many things exist in the world with as much certainty as you can prove that the world itself exists.
A positive claim of existence requires evidence, otherwise you're just making things up. Atheists don't think there is enough evidence to prove that god exists or even to make it relatively likely that (s)he exists.
If there is no evidence to think something exists, the default position should be that it doesn't. This is not a belief system, it's one of the basic mechanisms for rational thought.
The agnostics are the ones that either think there is inconclusive evidence, or they refuse to apply to god the same mechanisms of thought the apply to everything else. The atheists just say god does not exists.
(A positive claim of existence requires evidence, otherwise you're just making things up. Atheists don't think there is enough evidence to prove that god exists or even to make it relatively likely that (s)he exists.
If there is no evidence to think something exists, the default position should be that it doesn't. This is not a belief system, it's one of the basic mechanisms for rational thought.
The agnostics are the ones that either think there is inconclusive evidence, or they refuse to apply to god the same mechanisms of thought the apply to everything else. The atheists just say god does not exists.
but the hedgehog can never be buggered at all foreskin of the apocalypse,
Fri 22 Feb 2008, 13:37,
archived)