Lol yeah. “We live in a simulation created and observed by an unpaid intern” vs “we live in a test world where a supreme being keeps changing the rules and then will judge whether you get to live in his resort or the bad hostel once you die”
Atheism is a lack of belief. Basically we are not convinced there is a god. There is no burden of proof because we are not claiming there isnt a god, just that we are not convinced one does.
I...don't need to fight you. It's not about burden of proof; it's about the definition of the word. Atheism is—as we agree—merely a yes/no classification of the belief in a deity; it is not a belief system in itself. As such, someone can be an atheist while still having a religion, which is a belief system, one that may or may not involve a deity.
Burden of proof only applies if one is making a claim in an objective context, not when one is making a claim in a subjective context.
Also worth noting that the onus of proving a claim lies with whoever does claim a thing. It is always more difficult to prove a negative and nobody just assumes everything that hasn't been specifically debunked. Hilariously wrongheaded of them.
Easy, gods used to do devine interventions all the time. Didn't sacrifice to Neptunus before your sea journey? His mood storm sinks your ship. Didn't please Mars before your battle? You fight at bad weather and the enemy has surprise reinforcements.
Modern day gods? They left a secretary or something. Buhbuh you did something bad, I put you on the naughty list but I'm a weak noodle so your punishment will have to wait until after your death. When your soul which is not your body but has all senses asif it were because we antromorph everything, gets hurt.
If you can bomb a kids hospital without getting struck by lightning, there are no gods. There are millions of people praying for peace and the save return of their children in the ukraine war on both sides, nothing happens.
I claim that the presence of a god would be obvious if they took their job description seriously. Like a managers/auditors presence can be felt in the office without seeing him.
The default position is to believe something does not exist until proven otherwise. I cannot prove bigfoot doesn't exist, but I still believe it. The fact that I cannot prove it is irrelevant.
Your definition of atheism is not my experience with pretty much every atheist I've ever met. It's not absense of belief, but belief that God doesn't exist. There was never anything nuanced about the definition.
Now we can say absense of belief for the sake of discussion, but then it becomes an issue of semantics, as there is overlap with agnosticism. But it doesn't match my experience at all. Most atheists will call you names for suggesting anything but the idea that the laws of physics are a complete description of reality. Teenage edgelords mainly.
Atheists aren't claiming to have positive proof of the nonexistence of God.
The term means that someone has not seen convincing evidence for God's existence.
Likewise, I wouldn't say I'm agnostic about Russel's Teapot or any mythical idea because that terms tends to imply that you find the existence and nonexistence of the thing to be comparably likely.
Mhhh well this is a difficult question. Atheists believe there is no God. So there is no point in religion. From a Atheists point of view atheism is not a religion. From a neutral pov you may argue the believe in no God is a religion of its own.