On Wed, 25 Apr 2018 15:55:26 +0100, Martin Brown
wrote:

On 25/04/2018 11:58, Gary Harnagel wrote:
On Tuesday, April 24, 2018 at 10:25:45 PM UTC-6, Chris L Peterson wrote:

On Tue, 24 Apr 2018 18:35:39 -0700 (PDT), Gary Harnagel
wrote:

I base my beliefs on evidence.

You have NO evidence for atheism.

Atheism isn't a belief.

Of COURSE it is.

It is a claim that the precise number of deities in the universe is
known to be exactly Zero.

It is seldom that. I don't actually know any atheists who make that
claim, and I certainly don't. It almost always means a lack of belief
in deities, not a claim that there are none. Atheism makes no claims
at all.

I don't know that there are zero deities in the Universe. What I know
is that there is zero evidence for any, and there is nothing we
observe that is better explained by a deity than by other mechanisms,
so I quite rationally lack any belief in them. If evidence shows up,
I'll re-evaluate my beliefs.

I can assert that _specific_ gods, such as the Abrahamic one, don't
exist, given internal logical inconsistencies or clear evidence of the
way they were invented from earlier gods. I can't think of a way to
disprove a deistic creator that doesn't interfere with the Universe.
But since there's no reason to assume one, I don't.