The Basics
1. Atheism is not the claim that God does not exist. It is simply the lack of belief in God. God may or may not exist and the same goes for the Invisible Pink Unicorn, Flying Spaghetti Monster, Santa Claus, and all the other deities and mystical creatures that may or may not exist.
2. Agnosticism is not a valid position. We are all agnostics in that we ultimately do not know whether God exists or not. If you lack faith in God you are an atheist. And if you have faith in God you are a believer. There is no middle ground. You can’t have 1/2, 1/3, 1/4 and so on belief in God (unless you really are extremely indecisive).
3. Atheism is the default position. God is not something that is obviously known. If you can demonstrate that God can be known please do not hesitate in the comments.
4. Respect for your religion and religious beliefs is not a right. Religious beliefs are opinions the same with political, musical, artistic and other opinions. The fact that you believe in something strongly does not make it any less of an opinion and does not mean they should be respected.
5. Atheists would gladly stop ‘caring about your religion’ if religion stopped interfering with and intruding into all areas of life. Unfortunately, we do not have that handy explanation that believers do of not being able to withhold information that could save someone’s soul.
6. Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot are not evidence of atrocities committed in the name of atheism. You cannot do something in the name of not believing in something. Rather, they are evidence that blindly following anybody or anything can lead to atrocities (i.e. those who can make you believe in absurdities can make you commit atrocities).
7. It is not the safest bet to believe in God (Pascal’s Wager). There are thousands of gods that you could possibly choose from and infinitely more that could exist. Therefore, there are an infinite number of hells you could burn in. The probability that you pick the correct god and avoid all those hells is the same as any of the gods existing in the first place (about nil).
8. The fact that many religious people do good things is not evidence for the validity of a religion similar to how you say that bad things done by believers has nothing to do with religion. You can’t have it both ways. If confirming evidence is such then disconfirming evidence must be the exact opposite.
9. The stuff written in your holy books is not objective evidence. It’s just one huge circular argument.
10. God has nothing to do with morality. Morality is not based on commandments. God’s thumbs up or thumbs down does not make things moral or immoral. Morality is based on loyalty, honesty, promises and harm; very human things that we don’t need God to understand.
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