: : Furthermore how can there be evidence for the non-existance of God. The basis of the whole argument is that there is NO EVIDENCE. I must start at a place that all me agree with, such as reason and logic, and then through argument draw a picture of and prove a beliefe.: Really? Well athieism surely has some grounding such as darwinism etc. which has to be proven, if it is an empty criticism of christianity it isnt a belief it's a heresy.
Et tu Brute? Once again, Darwinian theory has no bearing on the existence or non existence of a god or gods. It is a naturalistic explanation, true, and thus requires no "supernatural" forces for its explanations, but that has nothing to do with the question of whether or not those supernatural forces exist. The analogy is this, I can play the piano without using a hammer-goal acco mplished, tool not used. That acomplishment (me playing the piano) does not demonstrate, nor can it logically be assumed to demonstrate, the existence or non-existence of hammers. The fact that descent with modification, heritable variation, environmental diversity, and pressure from selective forces are, together, entirely capale of explaining the diversity of life simply has no bearing on the existence of an omnipotent deity that can "fake" these phenomena.
I have to disagree, strongly, with Ryan on his central point however. Atheism, like religion, relies on acceptance of the validity of phenomena for which there is no evidence. As my old mentor used to repeat, incessantly, "Absence of evidence is NOT evidence of absence." Atheism is the belief that a lack of evidence in support of the existence of god is sufficient evidence for the non-existence of god. In this, the athiests are no more and no less logical than the devout. A lack of evidence can not be used to either support or refute a proposition except in very rare cases, and then only with a considerable amount of "bridging" argument. Agnosticism (the belief that there is insufficient evidence to decide this question at this time) is left as the only logically viable system of belief. Sometimes "I don't know" is the correct answer.
The fact that agnosticism is the only logical position in regards to this question is not particularly relevant either, since neither religion nor atheism ultimately rely on logic for their support. Belief in the untestable is not supportable by logical argument, and thus neither the religious, nor the atheistic can possibly use logic as their primary operating principle. There is no evidence either for or against, so the question must remain indeterminate. As Bohr once said, "in addition to yes and no, the universe contains a 'maybe'" (at least I think that was Bohr, it might have been Heisenberg or Schroedinger...I don't know...but it's at least a testable proposition, heh heh...)
-Floyd
