'Splain this one Atheists...

[Seth]

Seth is getting owned big time. Lulz.

That depends on the power of your intellect. If you think I'm getting owned, your intellect isn't up to snuff.

Badly.

The problem is your intellect isn't good enough to know it.

No, the problem is that YOUR intellect isn't up to the task of determining anybody's intellectual capacity. You just think it is. It's a common proletarian misconception.

[Brian Peacock]

The whole point is, that as an Atheist, the best you can rationally say about a theistic god-claim is "I don't know" or "I don't believe." You cannot rationally say "I don't believe your god-claim because it is unsupported by objective rational evidence and therefore God does not exist" because this is not logically or rationally true.

The whole point is, that as an nominal group member, the best you can rationally say about a claim that Obama has a two-foot dong is "I don't know" or "I don't believe." You cannot rationally say "I don't believe your Obama dong-claim because it is unsupported by objective rational evidence and therefore Obama does not have a two-foot dong" because this is not logically or rationally true.

Why is the latter quote ridiculous and the former acceptable?

Both are logical fallacies, if you're referring to the quote I made in which you substituted Obama and his dong for God. It is logically and rationally true that all I can say about Obama's dong is "I don't know" or "I don't believe" because I have no objective evidence at all about the size of his dong. To say "therefore Obama does not have a two foot dong" based upon the lack of evidence about his dong size is a failure of reasoning and logic.

Aye, thankyfully we're all in happy ignorance about that, with only Mrs Obama and his physician in the position to settle the manner, epistemologically speaking as it were.

But as an example it does offer a challenge to the relevance to your commandments on atheism and your underlying premise: that we are not entitled, epistemologically speaking (at least, but probably politically, socially, and morally speaking as well), to proceed on the assumption that an unsupported proposition is not the case unless we can prove that it is not the case (at which point we wouldn't need to assume anything at all of course, the matter now being proven evidentially). This seems the ultimate end of your argument. But while this appears to acknowledge, or at least hint at, the epistemic vacuum bound within un-evidenced objective claims you have gone further to shift the burden from the claimant to the rejector through the application of a wholly arbitrary condition, a condition touted as a rational obligation which must be met out of logical necessity, to wit; the necessity for an evidenced dismissal of an un-evidenced claim.

Which is why I have been asking you directly, and to no effect I'll grant, what evidence could one possibly provide to disprove the existence of a thing for which there is no evidence? Or, more directly, if there is no evidence to support the existence of a claimed-for thing is it not irrational to require evidence as a condition for rejecting the claim?

Before you attempt hold forth on the supposedly important distinction to be made between 'dismissing' a claim and 'rebutting' or 'refuting' it I feel that I do need to re-iterate that we have been and are talking about an objective claim here, a claim to knowledge, a specific claim which proposes that the existence of a thing is a known/knowable fact, a given. We are not dealing with an ontological argument or a moral claim or challenge are we(?), and even while claims for the existence of the national deity of the Israelites are often justified on and in these terms what we are dealing with is the proposition as presented by theists, that a thing called God is an actual-factual extant entity (and with whatever dependent consequences only following thereafter). And even as there may be some scope for argument on the ontological or moral level, and indeed default disagreement between theists and atheists is not strictly obligatory here, the atheist is the one who dismisses (or rejects, if you like) the epistemic validity of the claim's proposition on the basis of some failure(s) in the claim's justification - and where 'epistemic validity' for any objective claim is determined in meeting a requirement for evidences (empircals, datasets, etc, not anecdotes) to form the major part of its justification.

What is logically and rationally true about the objective existence of God?

I don't know.

Do you think it is logically and rationally untrue to say that Zeus, Shiva, Ao Takawe, that-guy-with-the-head-of-a-dog-whatever-he's-called do not exist, or that Obama does not have a three-foot dong?

In the absence of any evidence showing that none of the above exist or that Obama even has a dong, it's a failure of reason and logic to claim that the former do not exist or that the latter does not have a three-foot dong. (Evidently he must be excited about something, because it was two feet before. This might explain why Michelle is such a bitch.)

Ouch!!

You continue to declare that no evidence for a claim obliges us to not dismiss it, just as you keep saying that dismissing an un-evidenced claim is a failure of logic and reasoning, but you make this case only on the back of the absence of evidence in the claim itself, which is something you do not appear to be taking into due account. It seems you personally wish to avoid all and any consideration of un-evidenced claims for a raft of mythical entities, and hold in abeyance all and any decisions and judgements thereon. This is fine as far as a personal position goes but it does rather leave us with unaddressed issues--particularly when you are essential proposing a normative epistemic practice--which is, why do the claims for the mythical entities mentioned along with Obama's increasingly impresses inside leg, not just get thrown out on their own terms - and where this is the case when and where, and under what conditions might actually be entitled to say that we can know anything about any-thing?

So, what you prefer for yourself is your own concern, my concern is that you seek to apply the condition to everybody else on the grounds that one must first be certain about what is actually the case before one can say whether a proposition actually reflects what is actually the case, or not. This bankrupts the anatomy of a claim for knowledge, making an un-evidenced proposition something (quite literally) unchallengeable/unassailable in the face of its own inability to support itself.

Claims stand or fall on the basis of their justification and it is neither reasonable, rational or logical to impose a condition of evidenced dismissal to un-evidenced claims or to necessarily withhold judgement when an objective claim (here a claim that proposes the existence of something-or-other is actually the case) does not even support itself (let alone support any further, dependent inferences, claims or assertions built upon it).

Moving on, I asked about what could be 'logically and rationally true' about God in light of your assertion that...

You cannot rationally say "I don't believe your god-claim because it is unsupported by objective rational evidence and therefore God does not exist" because this is not logically or rationally true.

http://www.rationalia.com/forum/viewtop ... 0#p1612548

...because the existence of God is the object of a truth statement, and because I am trying to get out of you exactly why any un-evidenced claim has to be or is, by your lights, automatically immunised against failure?

The thing is, the atheist doesn't really say that God does not exist - at least that is not what qualifies ordinary, everyday atheism. An atheist is only a person who does not accept the claims and assertions of theists et al. First comes the claim (for God), then comes a consideration or appraisal of the claim, and only then follows the determination or conclusion about the claim. The claim necessarily precedes all considerations - perhaps this subtlety is not apparent to you?

Now, if one finds this particular claim unconvincing, flawed, unjustified, unsupported, or whatever, then thou art "an atheist". No reciprocal claim-defeating counter-claim is needed, or even warranted, or generally given. Without evidential support one really has no 'rational and logical' basis to accept or allow the existence of this claimed-for thing called God, so even where atheists say that God does not exist it is generally not a bland declarations uttered without qualification or without context; the qualification being the reason for dismissing the claim (the failure of its justification) and the context being the realm of the claim itself.

If nobody was making a claim for God as that particular contingent entity upon which the whole of the Universe and everything in it was necessarily depended, then saying that the thing which was not being claimed for did not actually exist would be entirely 'rationally and logically' fallacious. It would, in fact, be plain bonkers.

Whether God actually exists, or not, is not really the issue, but whether we have reasonable (that is, rational and logical) grounds to proportion assent to the claim that it does. To determine if we do have such grounds we test the claims premises and, most importantly, challenge its justification. This is by-the-by - or for another discussion perhaps - but the point here is that if, after exposing the justifications for this type of objective claim to rational scrutiny, and finding it wanting, it is not only reasonable to say that the claim fails but to say that the existence of that which the claim proposes as an objective truth (the existence of God) is not true either; or the claim is false, if you like. While you maintain that we are not rationally obliged to maintain the burden of support on the claimant here I would simply ask how else are we ultimately going to determine if we have, at least sometimes, any justification to say we know 'this' about 'that'?

One dismisses a claim and refutes an argument.

"God does not exist" is a claim. "God does not exist because" is an argument. In both cases, absent some evidence supporting either the claim or the argument, both are rational and logical failures because they state a conclusion based on the absence of evidence, not upon an analysis of the evidence. Science, reason and logic require both evidence and analysis of a proposition before drawing valid conclusions and stating them either as a claim or as an argument.

"God does not exist." is a claim when it is presented as a claim or assertion, or otherwise divorced from the context of the matter at hand. But the matter at hand is important - and the matter at hand is the claimed-for objective existence of the national deity of an ancient tribe of nomadic goat botherers.

We don't have the time to examine every aspect of the justification presented for that claim (but if you think any particular justification warrants further or specific coverage please feel free to present it here), but this isn't really needed for this discussion, and besides justification for God-claims change with the wind era-to-era. All we need to acknowledge is that some case has been put forward and those who've found it wanting are now called atheists - and that a reciprocal claim is neither necessary, or is mostly ever put forward. Not only that, those who have dismissed the claim are not doing so arbitrarily - that is, without reasonable grounds (and let's not quibble over technicalities here, about what a 'rebuttal' or a 'refutation' really is and whether one, other, or both are a necessary obligation - again, if you have something that your think can't be or hasn't been effectively refuted or rebutted why not just point it out?). Let me reiterate the anatomy of a claim for knowledge.

First comes the claim, then the consideration thereof, then follows the decision thereon. If the claim cannot be said to be true it can be said to be false, under the logical principle that not-true = false, until or unless something else is brought to its justification.

If you want to take issue with atheism take issue with atheists response to a God-claim's justification, rather than declaring un-evidenced claims automatically immune from failure and dismissal. It's not like people just plump for one side of the fence over another is it(?), and we can see the lengths (or depths!) that people are prepared to go to in this area when we consider, or example, the work of people like Dr W. L. Craig put into justifying the necessary existence in all possible worlds of the national deity of the Israelites as envisaged by contemporary US evangelical Christian fundamentalism, along with the reams of material scrutinising his justification, challenging it on its own terms, and exposing its rational and logical weaknesses and flaws.

If an unsupported objective claim for the existence of Nyumghok can be dismissed on grounds that it fails to support itself, and we can therefore say that a 14-headed immortal serpent does not exist and did not ejaculate the Earth and stars into existence before creating the first man and first woman from its own testicles, then why can we not do the same for God? Or would you still maintain that as we have no evidence that Nyumghok does or does not exist then the best we can ever do is say "I don't believe you because there's no reason to but that doesn't mean that Nyumghok does not exist" and not "I don't believe. Your view of cosmology is wrong and therefore Nyumghok does not exist."

I've framed the following question several ways now, it would be interesting if you would actually address it: why ought we be obliged to avoid saying "God does not exist" in the same way, and indeed be chided for doing so, when it is reasonable, rational and logical to say in the face of an un-evidenced claim that there exists a magical teapot orbiting the Sun, that "There is no magical teapot orbiting the Sun"? If you could do that without changing the subject or shifting the burden of evidence onto those who do not proportion assent to the claim I'd be very grateful.

If you have an argument for the existence of God feel free to present it here and we'll see if it can be refuted, and on what grounds. If you insist that a claim must be refuted before it can be dismissed then you are equivocating.

You have it bass-ackwards. Yet again. I make no argument or claim for or against the existence or non-existence of God. My argument is that when you state a conclusion about the existence or non-existence of God in the absence of any evidence whatsoever pointing either towards or away from either proposition you are drawing a false conclusion and you are abandoning both reason and logic.

Your 'argument' is an assertion, at best. I was not drawing a conclusion about God but highlighting the anatomy of a claim. My remarks above should really be judged in the context of the post as a whole (and to that end I'd be grateful if afforded me the common courtesy of popping my name in the quote tag when you salami slice it - so at least those lurkers who you say you're really talking to are in no doubt about who's saying what and to whom. Cheers).

If you have have a claim for the existence of God we will do the reasonable and rational thing and ask you to provide some rational and relevant evidential support for it.

I am not and have never made such a claim.

As I said, I was characterising an approach to appraising claims and not making stand-alone declarations. Perhaps you over-medicated on your literal pills that day

If that evidence is not forthcoming, or if the evidence presented does not support its case, the claim will be dismissed.

Which you're free to do even if evidence is produced which supports the case. You may dismiss anything you like any time you like for any reason or no reason at all. However, just because you dismiss something doesn't mean it's a rational or logical act.

Ha! So we find ourselves, after examining the justifications of God-claims and finding them wanting on any of a number of grounds, whether empirical, rational, logical, historical, moral, or whatever, (and of course here we are concerned with specific details of specific aspects of any theistic justification, along with the reasons for taking issue with it and consequently withholding assent, but by-the-by) we are told that just because something appears to all intents and purposes to be rational and logical does not mean it actually is. I guess we can add pissing in the well to the growing list of felonious fallacies you'll employ in the furtherance of you point.

If you insist that we have no grounds on which to dismiss any such claim then must we say that any claim that Obama has a five-foot dong cannot be dismissed, or even must stand as a reasonable and rational possibility, until or unless rational and relevant evidence to the contrary is rolled out?

Once again you create a strawman argument by deliberately, and I must now assume mendaciously, conflating "dismiss" and "refute" or "rebut" in order to evade the consequences of making an irrational and illogical argument.

The issue is not whether there is a question as to the size of Obama's dong, the issue is when you say "Obama does not have a five-foot dong," which is a conclusion, but you have no evidence either for or against the proposition that he has such equipment. You may BELIEVE that Obama cannot have a five-foot dong, just as you may BELIEVE that God does not exist, but when you state either as a conclusion (rather than an opinion) based upon a logical syllogism such as "Because A, therefore B" without any supporting evidence that A logically and rationally leads to B, you are stating an irrational conclusion.

So, you're withholding judgement on the claim that Obama has a five-foot dong for why? To prove the point that we should withhold judgement on even the most ridiculous of unsupported objective claims? Good luck with that.


Possibly the World's biggest dong?


It appears then that your ad radicem defence for withholding assent or dissent to the proposition that Obama has a five-foot dong is your self-declared personal ignorance of his above-knee, below-navel measurements - "you have no evidence either for or against the proposition" and so you must withhold assent or dissent.

(Please don't salami slice - take it in context, or at least in paragraphs)

If one has such a self-declared ignorance in a given realm of discourse then perhaps it is best to absent oneself from declaring on a claim one way or the other, for or against - but nonetheless I'm pretty sure you have formed a conclusion on the matter of The President's Dong, privately as it were, and perhaps not merely a tentative or provisional one at that.

But is particular and personal ignorance on this specific matter, or on any other matter, the sole factor by which to justify either withholding or granting assent to such a extraordinary proposition?

In this instance, and presuming we are going to take the proposition seriously, at face value, and not simply dismiss it out of hand, it would be entirely reasonable to bring in certain other relevant factors, such as validly acquired and collated comparative statistics, examples from historical records, sound knowledge of relevant physiological and anatomical considerations, and so on, to inform our deliberations and drive our reasoning. In fact it seems to be a reasonable, rational and logical necessary to do so (because we are taking the proposition seriously, and) because in the absence of direct, ignorance-banishing empirical evidence such additional considerations would make a relevant contribution to an overall probabilistic conclusion.

There might be other relevant factors to account for also, such as what one might know or gather about the motivation for any given claim and the consequences (if any) of granting or withholding assent for those putting forward or dismissing this-or-that proposition. For example, we know that historically the, erm, natural endowments and reported proclivities of Black men have, among some quarters, been a topic of interest, speculation, misinformation, and exaggeration, for any of a number of competing social, political, historical, and personal reasons. In many of these instances claims to knowledge about the endowments and proclivities of Black men have formed part of broader generalisations which in turn have been brought to bear in justifying certain other social and political mores, actions, and treatments. I think it's safe to say that this has not taken place entirely on a one-way street (though I also think it's fair to accept that the traffic has predominantly headed in only one direction). Nonetheless, these factors might also be reasonably brought to the context of the proposition. Anyway...

In short though (or in long if you prefer!), we might, I suppose, admit that Obama's genitourinary endowments probably differ from the average - as indeed most members will and do. We may even grant that it's quite reasonable to embrace the possibility that he might diverge significantly from the norm - again, as might be the case in any given circumstance. But even as we seek to account for all the available and relevant factors at our disposal we must not lose sight of the goal; to ultimately determine if it is it reasonable to withhold or proportion assent to an objective claim that, if true, would mean Obama is cursed with an organ more than four and a half times beyond the documented largest and/or one that is roughly twelve times the fistful of the regular Joe.

Such an extraordinary claim would require some pretty conclusive evidence before any reasonable and rational person would even be tempted to proportion assent. In such circumstances it is reasonably, rationally and logically defensible not to simply withhold assent but to call such a claim complete and utter bollocks, balderdash, bogus, fail, etc. (By comparison, claims for God are extra-extra-extraordinary - just saying.)

Although the North Korean equivalent of the Guinness Book of World Records apparently cites Kim Jong Il as having a three-foot two-inch dong, I'm pretty sure Obama doesn't have one half as long again. Sure, we have no evidence that he doesn't even if we know what we know about cocks, but as we have no evidence at all one way or the other, and as the claim is an objective one (not to say plainly ridiculous), it's reasonable to not only withhold assent but to refuse to even countenance the possibility and dismiss it.

Now while I know you'll say this basically amounts to a reciprocal, counter-claim to the negative (though it doesn't), I would point out that it is merely a response to a particular type of claim within a particular context and domain of enquiry and that it is a conclusion justified within that context and with reference to that domain (basically, if you wish to counter the conclusion you must support the claim and not simply contradict the dismissal), and so I am more than happy to be counted among those who not only disbelieve the claim but maintain that it is cannot reasonably to taken to be the case - I guess that makes me an aDongist, or something.

But please don't forget that in the anatomy of an objective claim I outlined above the absence of evidence may render any conclusions provisional, for it is not rational or logical to foreclose on the possibility that some subsequent justification may overturn current conclusions. That said, I will now present my final determination on the matter of The Presidents Dong...

The claim is wrong: Obama does not have a five-foot dong, and if it comes to light that his member is even half that length then I'll be more than willing to blow it thrice daily for a year. And besides, I made it up. If you're not prepared to dismiss and deny patently ridiculous made-up bollocks and want to waste your time holding the door open for Obama's cock, or even God's, then be my guest.

[Animavore]

That might be the best forum post I've ever read in my life.

[Hermit]

That might be the best forum post I've ever read in my life.

Unfortunately, given the person the post is addressed to, it's like feeding strawberries to a pig. I'm saying that even though I actually disagree with the general drift of it. Regarding the claim that there exists a supernatural entity that created everything under the sun, so to speak, all we can say in the final analysis is: "I don't know." Not that it matters. If such an entity exists, it's a totally barren recognition. Without introducing and accepting extraneous assumptions nothing further than "there exists a supernatural entity that created everything under the sun" can be said. But that's not even a theist issue. It's about deism. Theism is about particular gods with particular attributes (jealous, capricious, just, merciful or whatever) and in so far as such a god is an interfering, meddling type who performs miracles, answers prayers and so forth, the argument takes place on an empirical level, and absence of evidence becomes - at least provisionally - evidence of absence. At least those are the grounds on which I call myself an atheist and an adeist: In the former case I simply withhold belief in the existence of things for which evidence is yet to be furnished. In the latter the existence or nonexistence of such a creator is of supreme indifference.

[pErvinalia]

Fucken cop that wall of text, Seth!!

[Brian Peacock]

That might be the best forum post I've ever read in my life.

Unfortunately, given the person the post is addressed to, it's like feeding strawberries to a pig. I'm saying that even though I actually disagree with the general drift of it. Regarding the claim that there exists a supernatural entity that created everything under the sun, so to speak, all we can say in the final analysis is: "I don't know." Not that it matters. If such an entity exists, it's a totally barren recognition. Without introducing and accepting extraneous assumptions nothing further than "there exists a supernatural entity that created everything under the sun" can be said. But that's not even a theist issue. It's about deism. Theism is about particular gods with particular attributes (jealous, capricious, just, merciful or whatever) and in so far as such a god is an interfering, meddling type who performs miracles, answers prayers and so forth, the argument takes place on an empirical level, and absence of evidence becomes - at least provisionally - evidence of absence. At least those are the grounds on which I call myself an atheist and an adeist: In the former case I simply withhold belief in the existence of things for which evidence is yet to be furnished. In the latter the existence or nonexistence of such a creator is of supreme indifference.

Good point, which I've expressed myself in this thread...

Now I don't know if some intentioning and creative entity brought the Universe into being and is responsible for the existence of everything found within it, but I am pretty sure that the mythical deity variously called YHWH, God, or Allah does not exist. This follows from rationally dismissing the claims for YHWH, God, and Allah on the basis of their own failure to support themselves.

http://www.rationalia.com/forum/viewtop ... 5#p1612431

I don't know if Zeus exists or not, but claims for Zeus are unsupportable, and it is wholly reasonable and rational to dismiss objective claims that fail to justify themselves.

http://www.rationalia.com/forum/viewtop ... 0#p1612073

...but we have to bear in mind that my brief outline of the application of scepticism in epistemology followed from from Seth saying there was no reasonable (rational or logical) grounds for atheists to express the view that the national deity of the ancient Israelites did not exist AND because of this then doing so warranted the stiff treatment he dishes out to atheist for the 'deeper purpose' of teaching them a lesson in rationality, logic, and humility, while tone policing their opinions and encouraging them to demonstrate some proper, socially lubricating level of respect for religiosity - like what he does.

By Seth's lights, when a theists claims that their deity exists and asks an atheist why they don't believe them atheists are not allowed to use the failure of the claim itself as a basis for not accepting it - if we do that then, again by Seth's lights, atheists automatically become the kind of religious zealot that marks them out as irrational, illogical purveyors of fallacy worthy of that aforementioned stiff treatment. Instead we are somehow obliged to provide some irrefutable objective evidence that the deity does not exist, but as it is impossible to evidentially support the non-existence of a claimed-for thing for which there is no evidence it seems atheists must limit themselves to a demure "I just don't believe" and leave it at that, or otherwise just keep quiet less they say something theists might find offensive or take as an attack upon them or their treasured beliefs - like what Seth does. Why this should apply in the domain of religious discourse but not, for example, in political discourse is not clear - but that's how Seth likes it so that what atheists should do, apparently.

[Brian Peacock]

[Seth]

Building another wall...wait for it...

[Brian Peacock]

I'll get my step ladder.


I like my step ladder.... I never really got on with my real ladder.

[DaveDodo007]

This thread is embarrassing, normally and amongst scientific people this thread would have been debunked long ago. Though the atheist 'community' the standards have been dropped. When it comes to ideologies such as feminist, SJWism, communism and socialism, then the preponderance of evidence is accepted. I would like to hear why this lowering of evidence is acceptable for one group and not for another (religious) group? Are so many of you atheists because it feels right? How can you call yourselves skeptics in your ideology whilst dismissing the same tactics of your opponents?

[Brian Peacock]

See what you've done now Seth. You've confused the poor dear.

[surreptitious57]

It has been well over a month now since Seth said he was going to reply to Brian. So I can only
come to the conclusion that he has not done so because he cannot come up with any counter
arguments to disprove the claims made. I hope if he reads this he is not provoked into doing
so to convey the impression he does have some. And well done Brian. Have some chocolate

[Seth]

It has been well over a month now since Seth said he was going to reply to Brian. So I can only
come to the conclusion that he has not done so because he cannot come up with any counter
arguments to disprove the claims made. I hope if he reads this he is not provoked into doing
so to convey the impression he does have some. And well done Brian. Have some chocolate

Yeah, slipped my mind. Oh well.

[Seth]

By popular request, a new wall of text...

Both are logical fallacies, if you're referring to the quote I made in which you substituted Obama and his dong for God. It is logically and rationally true that all I can say about Obama's dong is "I don't know" or "I don't believe" because I have no objective evidence at all about the size of his dong. To say "therefore Obama does not have a two foot dong" based upon the lack of evidence about his dong size is a failure of reasoning and logic.

Aye, thankyfully we're all in happy ignorance about that, with only Mrs Obama and his physician in the position to settle the manner, epistemologically speaking as it were.

But as an example it does offer a challenge to the relevance to your commandments on atheism and your underlying premise: that we are not entitled, epistemologically speaking (at least, but probably politically, socially, and morally speaking as well), to proceed on the assumption that an unsupported proposition is not the case unless we can prove that it is not the case (at which point we wouldn't need to assume anything at all of course, the matter now being proven evidentially). This seems the ultimate end of your argument. But while this appears to acknowledge, or at least hint at, the epistemic vacuum bound within un-evidenced objective claims you have gone further to shift the burden from the claimant to the rejector through the application of a wholly arbitrary condition, a condition touted as a rational obligation which must be met out of logical necessity, to wit; the necessity for an evidenced dismissal of an un-evidenced claim.

The flaw in your argument is that I do not say that you are not entitled to do just as you please or proceed based on any assumption you choose to use. What I do say is that it is irrational for you to do so under certain circumstances or using certain justifications. There is a distinction between proceeding on an unsupported assumption and making a truth-claim about something for which you have neither evidence of truth or evidence of falsity.

I've said repeatedly that rejecting an unsupported claim is not the same thing as making a positive statement about the falsity of the unsupported claim. You seem unwilling to acknowledge this important distinction.

Which is why I have been asking you directly, and to no effect I'll grant, what evidence could one possibly provide to disprove the existence of a thing for which there is no evidence? Or, more directly, if there is no evidence to support the existence of a claimed-for thing is it not irrational to require evidence as a condition for rejecting the claim?

Ibid.

"I reject your claim of the existence of God because it is unevidenced" is a rational statement. "God does not exist because there is no evidence that he does" is an irrational statement.

Before you attempt hold forth on the supposedly important distinction to be made between 'dismissing' a claim and 'rebutting' or 'refuting' it I feel that I do need to re-iterate that we have been and are talking about an objective claim here, a claim to knowledge, a specific claim which proposes that the existence of a thing is a known/knowable fact, a given.

No, in point of fact we are not. I have not made any claim that God exists, ever. All I have done is to logically analyze the proposition that God does not exist, which positive conclusion is based on nothing at all. There is no evidence that God does not exist. We all know that as a matter of logical fact. God is presumed not to exist by those who disbelieve in God because they have not been presented with, or are not aware of, or are unwilling to accept any evidence that convinces them that God does exist.

The status of their knowledge about God, God's existence, or the evidence supporting the existence of God is completely irrelevant to the fact of whether or not God exists. This should be obvious because no person's knowledge is perfect, and their ignorance does not change the physics of the universe. Just as Newton's ignorance of particle physics that are understood today did not mean that those sub-atomic particles did not exist, your ignorance of the physics of God does not mean God does not exist, and therefore any statement by anyone making the positive claim that "God does not exist" or "There are no Gods" is clearly an irrational statement that is a matter of religious belief unconnected to the physical facts of the universe(s).

We are not dealing with an ontological argument or a moral claim or challenge are we(?), and even while claims for the existence of the national deity of the Israelites are often justified on and in these terms what we are dealing with is the proposition as presented by theists, that a thing called God is an actual-factual extant entity (and with whatever dependent consequences only following thereafter).

That is what they claim. But their claim is irrelevant when considering the counter-claim that God does not exist.

And even as there may be some scope for argument on the ontological or moral level, and indeed default disagreement between theists and atheists is not strictly obligatory here, the atheist is the one who dismisses (or rejects, if you like) the epistemic validity of the claim's proposition on the basis of some failure(s) in the claim's justification - and where 'epistemic validity' for any objective claim is determined in meeting a requirement for evidences (empircals, datasets, etc, not anecdotes) to form the major part of its justification.

As I said, dismissing or rejecting such a claim is not an irrational action. Making a counter-claim of the actual-factual non-existence of God based on the lack of what you believe to be objective scientific evidence pointing towards the existence of God is an irrational claim.

You continue to declare that no evidence for a claim obliges us to not dismiss it, just as you keep saying that dismissing an un-evidenced claim is a failure of logic and reasoning, but you make this case only on the back of the absence of evidence in the claim itself, which is something you do not appear to be taking into due account.

This is simply not the case. You keep substituting "dismiss" for "make a counter-claim." The two are not equivalent, as I keep on pointing out. "Dismissing" an unevidenced claim is simply a matter of rejecting it, as in "I reject your claim". But when one says in response "God does not exist because your claim is unevidenced" this is not rejection, it's the making of an unwarranted and unsupported counter-claim of the non-existence of God that is supposedly supported by the fact that the original claim is itself unevidenced. But as we all should know by now, the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. It may merely be ignorance on your part. Or not. Therefore drawing a counter-conclusion as to the actual-factual existence of God based on zero evidence that God does not exist is an irrational claim.

It seems you personally wish to avoid all and any consideration of un-evidenced claims for a raft of mythical entities, and hold in abeyance all and any decisions and judgements thereon. This is fine as far as a personal position goes but it does rather leave us with unaddressed issues--particularly when you are essential proposing a normative epistemic practice--which is, why do the claims for the mythical entities mentioned along with Obama's increasingly impresses inside leg, not just get thrown out on their own terms - and where this is the case when and where, and under what conditions might actually be entitled to say that we can know anything about any-thing?

The point is that you can only claim knowledge about things which you have knowledge of. The absence of knowledge is not, if I may put it thusly, "anti-knowledge." In other words, your lack of knowledge about the length of Obama's member does not constitute evidence about the length of Obama's member. Nor would your claim of his having a three-foot long member, which is itself an irrational claim, being based only on your ignorance of the actual length of his member, lead to the rational conclusion that his member is not in fact three feet long. It could be that by happy accident you hit upon the actual truth of the matter and Obama does have a three-foot long member. But your claim is still not rational even if you happen to be correct purely by chance because your claim is not based on knowledge, but rather on ignorance and hypothesis.

Since you have (by your own admission) no knowledge about the existence of God, you cannot make a rational claim either in the affirmative or in the negative as to the existence of God.

So, what you prefer for yourself is your own concern, my concern is that you seek to apply the condition to everybody else on the grounds that one must first be certain about what is actually the case before one can say whether a proposition actually reflects what is actually the case, or not. This bankrupts the anatomy of a claim for knowledge, making an un-evidenced proposition something (quite literally) unchallengeable/unassailable in the face of its own inability to support itself.

Not in the least. An un-evidenced proposition may be dismissed as unevidenced whenever it is unevidenced. But that includes all unevidenced propositions, including the unevidenced proposition that God does not exist.

One can only claim that an un-evidenced proposition is factually incorrect if one has proper scientific evidence of the factual incorrectness of that proposition that demonstrates in a scientifically repeatable manner that something else is factually true.

Thus, a claim that there are an infinite number of universes with new ones being created at each decision point is an un-evidenced claim which one is free to reject or challenge

But, one cannot rationally claim that there is only one universe and that the "multiverse" theory is factually untrue unless one presents the countervailing evidence that rationally and scientifically proves that there is only one universe, not many.

In the interim both theories remain valid hypotheses and the only rational claim anyone can make against either of the hypotheses is "I don't know" because there is no evidence pointing to the truth of one hypothesis over the other...at this point in time.

Claims stand or fall on the basis of their justification and it is neither reasonable, rational or logical to impose a condition of evidenced dismissal to un-evidenced claims or to necessarily withhold judgement when an objective claim (here a claim that proposes the existence of something-or-other is actually the case) does not even support itself (let alone support any further, dependent inferences, claims or assertions built upon it).

Claims are just claims, and they stand or fall based on their factual truth or falsity, not on their "justification." If I claim that muons exist, that claim happens to be a factual truth and it is therefore a true and rational claim notwithstanding that I cannot pull a muon out of the aether and present it to you on a silver platter. Whether you accept that claim or reject it is based on YOUR knowledge and understanding of the actual-factual physical facts of the universe. You may be a particle physicist who has seen the scientific evidence of the existence of muons and so you know they do in fact exist and can therefore accept my claim as true knowledge even if I do not present the evidence to you myself. Or, you may be ignorant of particle physics and how one goes about detecting and quantifying a muon and you may reject my claim because I have not presented the requisite scientific evidence to convince you of the truth of my claim, but my claim would remain true nontheless, even though you are ignorant of the facts and choose to dismiss or reject the claim.

Ignorance is not proof of anything, and ignorance based on a lack of evidence is certainly not proof of a counter-claim that the thing claimed to be true is not true.

Moving on, I asked about what could be 'logically and rationally true' about God in light of your assertion that...

...because the existence of God is the object of a truth statement, and because I am trying to get out of you exactly why any un-evidenced claim has to be or is, by your lights, automatically immunised against failure?

I have never said, nor even suggested any such thing, therefore your question is non sequitur.

The thing is, the atheist doesn't really say that God does not exist - at least that is not what qualifies ordinary, everyday atheism.

I completely disagree and dismiss your claim as being unevidenced and therefore factually false...

An atheist is only a person who does not accept the claims and assertions of theists et al.

Would that this were even remotely true. It's not, as evidenced by the existence of this and other similar atheist fora, not to mention the various political and social activities of Atheists who seek to interfere with the free exercise of religion by others in the public square.

First comes the claim (for God), then comes a consideration or appraisal of the claim, and only then follows the determination or conclusion about the claim. The claim necessarily precedes all considerations - perhaps this subtlety is not apparent to you?

So what? One irrationality does not justify another.

Now, if one finds this particular claim unconvincing, flawed, unjustified, unsupported, or whatever, then thou art "an atheist".

Indeed.

No reciprocal claim-defeating counter-claim is needed, or even warranted, or generally given.

Indeed. My point exactly. No counter-claim is warranted, and any such counter-claim is an irrational claim.

Without evidential support one really has no 'rational and logical' basis to accept or allow the existence of this claimed-for thing called God,

And here is precisely where you go awry in your reasoning. While there may be no rational or logical basis to accept such a claim, there is also no rational or logical basis upon which to reject such a claim, much less assert a counter-claim of positive non-existence of God.

To decline to accept that an un-evidenced thing exists is something entirely different from claiming that the un-evidenced thing does not exist. See the muon argument above.

so even where atheists say that God does not exist it is generally not a bland declarations uttered without qualification or without context; the qualification being the reason for dismissing the claim (the failure of its justification) and the context being the realm of the claim itself.

And therein lies the irrational thought process. One can dismiss the claim that God exists without accepting the counter-claim that God does not exist. The rational person rejects an un-evidenced claim that God exists not by claiming the opposite, but by acknowledging the inherent ambiguity of un-evidenced claims and one's own lack of knowledge of the truth of the matter, either for or against the proposition, by saying "Your claim is un-evidenced and therefore I cannot agree that your claim is true, but on the other hand, I have no rational evidence that your claim is false and therefore my only rational response is that I don't know whether your claim is true or untrue."

If nobody was making a claim for God as that particular contingent entity upon which the whole of the Universe and everything in it was necessarily depended, then saying that the thing which was not being claimed for did not actually exist would be entirely 'rationally and logically' fallacious. It would, in fact, be plain bonkers.

Whether God actually exists, or not, is not really the issue, but whether we have reasonable (that is, rational and logical) grounds to proportion assent to the claim that it does.

Nonsense. You might as well say that whether quarks exist is not really the issue. Of course the existence of quarks is the issue. You are trying to substitute your desire for verifiable factual knowledge and understanding for the actual factual circumstances of the universe. Your ignorance of the truth is completely irrelevant to the actual facts of the universe. That should be obvious. Whether God, or quarks, or muons, or you, exist is indisputably a matter of pure scientific knowledge and understanding and nothing else.

Your understanding, or lack thereof, of those facts of the universe is of no importance whatsoever and in no way affects the truths of those facts.

To determine if we do have such grounds we test the claims premises and, most importantly, challenge its justification. This is by-the-by - or for another discussion perhaps - but the point here is that if, after exposing the justifications for this type of objective claim to rational scrutiny, and finding it wanting, it is not only reasonable to say that the claim fails but to say that the existence of that which the claim proposes as an objective truth (the existence of God) is not true either; or the claim is false, if you like. While you maintain that we are not rationally obliged to maintain the burden of support on the claimant here I would simply ask how else are we ultimately going to determine if we have, at least sometimes, any justification to say we know 'this' about 'that'?

The problem here is that you are claiming that ignorance of the facts, which is to say your personal lack of knowledge of what you consider to be the required objective proofs of the claim you are examining justifies making a counter-claim of, in this case, the non-existence of the thing claimed to exist.

If you had in fact subjected the claim to "rational scrutiny," which is to say some sort of rational scientific analysis that produces repeatable and verifiable results confirming your conclusions, then you might be justified in making the counter-claim of non-existence. But you haven't done so. All you have done is to say "I have seen no evidence for the existence of God." But that claim is merely an expression of ignorance, and a statement of fact about the depth of your knowledge and understanding. It is not an objective truth that because you have not seen such evidence that this means that the claim itself is untrue.

As to how we have justification to say we know "this" about "that", the answer is obvious: We investigate the claim and seek out evidence which either confirms it or shows it not to be true. Thus, gold is not silver, rocks are not birds, electrons are not neutrons, monkeys are not humans. But, in the absence of evidence that muons are not protons we cannot rationally conclude that muons are not protons, we can only hypothesize that they differ and then seek the evidence to prove this claim.

The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

We don't have the time to examine every aspect of the justification presented for that claim

Your lack of time or interest for the application of academic and scientific rigor is not a valid argument supporting your thesis I'm afraid.

All we need to acknowledge is that some case has been put forward and those who've found it wanting are now called atheists - and that a reciprocal claim is neither necessary, or is mostly ever put forward.

I completely disagree here. The reciprocal claim is very, very often put forward. It's the usual claim made in knee-jerk response to a claim that God exists and that is a matter of simple objective fact. Few and far between are the atheists who simply dismiss god-claims without comment or rebuttal, and I base that claim on my long, long, long association with atheists of every stripe and description, most of whom are more than a little radical and fundamental in their religious Atheist beliefs and claims.

Let me reiterate the anatomy of a claim for knowledge.

First comes the claim, then the consideration thereof, then follows the decision thereon.

A decision does not necessary reflect the truth.

If the claim cannot be said to be true it can be said to be false, under the logical principle that not-true = false, until or unless something else is brought to its justification.

This is simply fallacious reasoning. While the logical syllogism is correct, your application of it is most certainly not. It is not the case that "if the claim cannot be said to be true it can said to be false." This reasoning rests on the premise that "the claim cannot be said to be true," but the problem with your reasoning is that it also assumes that "cannot" is an inevitable and unassailable logical truth, which is most certainly not the actual case. In the case of our present argument the syllogism you propose goes like this:

P1 "It is claimed that God exists."
P2 "This claim cannot be said to be true."
C1 "Therefore, the claim is false."

This is a fallacious conclusion because P2 assumes that the claim cannot be said to be true merely because you, the proponent, claim not to have knowledge of the truth of the claim. However, the claim could be true and your ignorance of the facts could be the cause of your concluding that the claim "cannot be said to be true." The assumption that P2 is logically "not-true" and is therefore logically "false" is simply wrong.

The correct logical syllogism is:

P1 "It is claimed that God exists."
P2 "I am unaware of any objective scientific evidence of the existence of God."
C1 "Therefore, it is inconclusive as to whether God exists or not."

If you want to take issue with atheism take issue with atheists response to a God-claim's justification, rather than declaring un-evidenced claims automatically immune from failure and dismissal.

I'm not saying that unevidenced claims are immune from dismissal or even failure, I'm saying that failure cannot be claimed without objective evidence proving that failure and that a counter-claim of non-existence cannot be made as a rational rebuttal to the original claim without objective evidence proving the non-existence of the claimed thing.

It's not like people just plump for one side of the fence over another is it(?), and we can see the lengths (or depths!) that people are prepared to go to in this area when we consider, or example, the work of people like Dr W. L. Craig put into justifying the necessary existence in all possible worlds of the national deity of the Israelites as envisaged by contemporary US evangelical Christian fundamentalism, along with the reams of material scrutinising his justification, challenging it on its own terms, and exposing its rational and logical weaknesses and flaws.

The rationality of other claims is not at issue here. Their failures in reasoning are theirs, yours are yours. I'm discussing the failure in reasoning of atheists (and Atheists) who claim that God does not exist, nothing more.

If an unsupported objective claim for the existence of Nyumghok can be dismissed on grounds that it fails to support itself, and we can therefore say that a 14-headed immortal serpent does not exist and did not ejaculate the Earth and stars into existence before creating the first man and first woman from its own testicles, then why can we not do the same for God?

Because dismissing the unsupported claim is not the same thing as saying that the thing claimed does not exist. I wish you would come to understand this important distinction.

Or would you still maintain that as we have no evidence that Nyumghok does or does not exist then the best we can ever do is say "I don't believe you because there's no reason to but that doesn't mean that Nyumghok does not exist" and not "I don't believe. Your view of cosmology is wrong and therefore Nyumghok does not exist."

I absolutely maintain the former because the latter is irrational. Nymughok may well exist...in an alternate universe that came into being when Nyumghok was first thought of.

I've framed the following question several ways now, it would be interesting if you would actually address it: why ought we be obliged to avoid saying "God does not exist" in the same way, and indeed be chided for doing so, when it is reasonable, rational and logical to say in the face of an un-evidenced claim that there exists a magical teapot orbiting the Sun, that "There is no magical teapot orbiting the Sun"? If you could do that without changing the subject or shifting the burden of evidence onto those who do not proportion assent to the claim I'd be very grateful.

Because it's possible there is a magical teapot orbiting the Sun that appeared when whats-his-name thought of it. Neither of us knows that this is or is not the case, do we?

If you have have a claim for the existence of God we will do the reasonable and rational thing and ask you to provide some rational and relevant evidential support for it.

I am not and have never made such a claim.

As I said, I was characterising an approach to appraising claims and not making stand-alone declarations. Perhaps you over-medicated on your literal pills that day

No, I think you forgot to take your rationality pills.

Ha! So we find ourselves, after examining the justifications of God-claims and finding them wanting on any of a number of grounds, whether empirical, rational, logical, historical, moral, or whatever, (and of course here we are concerned with specific details of specific aspects of any theistic justification, along with the reasons for taking issue with it and consequently withholding assent, but by-the-by) we are told that just because something appears to all intents and purposes to be rational and logical does not mean it actually is.

This is absolutely the case in this case, and in many other cases. Just because you think you are thinking rationally doesn't mean you are, and it's my job to point it out when you make that mistake in reasoning.

[surreptitious57]

If it is your job to point out to others when they are not thinking rationally even though they think that they
are then less you have perfect reasoning capability yourself [ which you do not for no one does ] you can be
guilty of the exact same thing. So logically therefore it is the job of others to point out to you when you are
not thinking rationally too. If you refuse to acknowledge this either in principle or in practice you shall have
invalidated your own argument. Since you cannot expect of others what you do not equally apply to yourself