Can someone explain to me why Atheism is still considered a legitimate intellectual position?

Can someone explain to me why Atheism is still considered a legitimate intellectual position?
It makes no sense. This board treats pic-related as a thinker on the level of Aristotle or Dr.Johnson for a "philosophy" of literally nothing.

Nietzsche was right universal literacy was a huge mistake.

I know this is a bait thread, but how does atheism make no sense?

>christcucks on this board are actually molested into thinking this way

>but how does atheism make no sense
it is not my job to disprove atheism. Its your's to prove it.

I'm not even an atheist. I'm not arrogant enough to make assumptions things which are clearly outside of the human range of apprehension. Now I know for sure this is bait. Sage.

on the off chance you're not baiting..

atheism has no content - what is there to prove? the burden of proof is on you, my friend.

there's no word for people who don't believe in palm reading, astrology or alchemy. because disbelief of something without any evidence isn't a position you choose, it's the default before you even think about the issue.

Atheism is a positive assertion that God doesn't exist, friend, not merely a passive non-position. Stating "I believe God doesn't exist" (or "I believe unicorns don't exist") is still making an assertion, and whenever you make an assertion, the burden of proof falls upon you.

The default position before you think about any issues isn't that x does or does not exist, but rather that you have no position. You would have absolutely no opinion either way, similar to how I have no opinion about the existence of people I have never heard of. Once I encounter evidence either way, then I must make an assertion.

>the burden of proof is on you, my friend.
no it isn't. This goes against all other rational reactions to phenomena that humans have.

e.g. if we play golf and I hit 18 hole-in-ones, you are justified in requiring me to prove that those were legitimate. I cannot say "well there is no evidence that this was illegitimate, so you must produce proof that I cheated somehow". Nobody would accept this as a valid statement.

The only people trying to make you take this one-trick pony idiot seriously on here are his fellow jews.

>This board treats pic-related as a thinker on the level of Aristotle or Dr.Johnson for a "philosophy" of literally nothing.

You're part of the majority. Veeky Forums despises Sam Harris and makes threads mocking him just about everyday. Aside from me there seem to be only a couple other users here who defend him. This board is dominated by anti-Semitic Peterson-worshiping Christians.

>This board treats pic-related as a thinker on the level of Aristotle
what fucking board are you reading, he gets dumped on constantly

Harris's stupidity isn't his atheism, it's his understanding of the societal effects of religion and moral realism.

Hurrr

Any competent atheist would just lay a metaphysical framework for reality that didn't include the provision "and there's a god". Then, they'd point to the model and say, "look, there's no god in that account of reality".

For you to respond, you'd need to show that the model is not an accurate account of reality, and presumably argue why an accurate model would require your particular god's presence.

I am not an atheist, mind you, but any theological discussion like this should begin with an account of reality.

>Atheism is a positive assertion that God doesn't exist
Only gnostic atheism is. You aren't prepared to discuss these things, in all honesty

>It makes no sense.

it makes sense because god isnt real

>This board treats pic-related as a thinker on the level of Aristotle or Dr.Johnson

no one here treats harris that way because harris is a autistic moron

Good, then we have the mountains of scientific evidence to back our assertions up.

Far more than you have, bitch.

>it makes sense because god isnt real

Ok then, prove it

*responded to wrong person, I meant to respond to the person who's requesting that atheists assert some affirmative position about proving a negative.

Prove that unicorns aren't real.

>Atheism is a positive assertion that God doesn't exist
False. It's a spectrum, within which a certain amount would definitively say there is no god. The position itself however is disbelief in the positive assertion of a God. You say god exists, and I say I'm not convinced.

Why doge my question?

How does it feel to know that if the Bible had mentioned a horse with a horn on its head, there would literally be countless people willing to argue in all seriousness that unicorns exist.

You can't prove that something doesn't exist.

Through metaphysics you can.

But you explicitly said God isn't real, I asked you to prove it and you couldn't. Why were you lying?

My mistake, that post wasn't me.

>legitimate intellectual position
Makes about as much sense as believing in God. Who cares, you can't use logic beyond a certain point, it isn't what defines an intellectual.
>this board treats pic-related as a thinker on the level of Aristotle
That's because they haven't progressed beyond the mental state of a 16 year old.

god is irrelevant

>Ok then, prove it
define god and lets do it

i take Russel's Teapot as a basic epistemic principle. No intellectually sound atheists take a stance as strong as you're defining atheism.
I don't believe in the jeudeo-christian god because the biblical account of creation contradicts the evidence we have.
And non-existence isn't like other negative positions. If you say Fred went to the market and I say he didn't. I can prove that he didn't with evidence that he was somewhere else. You can prove that something exists by evidence of its existence, but there's no example of evidence of something's non-existence.

Not according to the majority of the world population
The God that Christians worship

>I don't believe in the jeudeo-christian god because the biblical account of creation contradicts the evidence we have.

That's a pretty weak argument, that in itself does not prove God does not exist, only that the creation account in Genesis is false. There's a a large number of Christians that don't even believe that.

Confirmed bait for pretending not to understand the etymology and actual meaning of atheism, which is common knowledge among moderately well-educated first-worlders (memes aside, most of Veeky Forums's userbase can unironically be described in this way), and also for pretending not to be aware of the conventional positive/negative rhetoric around this (and other general, legal-ese argumentation), the existence or non-existence of god.

Babies, infants are literally atheists.

>The God that Christians worship
that's just embarrassing

Because it's an affirmation of something not existing.

I don't go around saying "There is no such thing as aliens", because even if that was a negative statement, the burden of proof would be on me. Absolutely denying the existence of aliens, for example, is stupid, no matter of how little proof of aliens there is.

Science is based on peer review, study, research, and method.
Saying "There is a god" as a scientific opinion, is just as every bit absurd as saying "There is no god".
Scientists don't care about what they don't have evidence for; they care about what they do have evidence for.