[JohnnyB]

Originally Posted by photon

How can the absence of believe be a faith based position. Atheism isn't the blind belief (faith) that there is no God, it's the default position taken by a rational person when there's no evidence.

My response to this would be the same as llama's.

There is no proof of the correctness of religious belief, nor is there proof of the correctness of atheistic belief. There is a subtle difference between not believing in something vs. believing not something. Also, I would not go so far as to say that atheism is a natural, rational default. Given that proof cannot be given either way, but there have been countless individual accounts of religious experience some might argue that the more rational default position (if one were forced to take a position) would be to accept some form of religious belief. Personally, seeing as we're not forced to take a position, I would say an admittance that you can't know either way and so refusing to either believe or refute (agnosticism) is a reasonable choice.

Anyways, atheism is faith based because it is a belief in a positive statement (there is no god) which cannot be supported by evidence.

But religion is based on faith, not evidence. By definition faith is belief without evidence in the authority of something; dogma. So religion isn't about critically challenging things.

I didn't say that religion was about critically challenging things. He did say that religion is about not challenging things critically. My point was that religion is not about avoiding challenging things critically, that a person may be religious and still challenge things critically without being in conflict with their faith and spiritual belief.

Atheism isn't belief there is no God, it's the default position with a lack of evidence.

Actually, atheism is the belief that there is no god.

EDIT: I don't mean to be rude or condescending on this. I just wanted to clarify, so that semantics aren't a problem in the debate.

The difference between a theist and an atheist is that a theist beliefs despite lack of evidence, where an atheist doesn't believe because of a lack of evidence. If a theist is presented with contrary evidence they usually don't change their mind, while a atheist should be fully willing to change their position if new evidence is presented.

That's just stereotyping. I'm sure there are many theists who would be willing to abandon their faith if it could be proven that their faith was misplaced, just as I'm sure there are many atheist who would be willing to change their minds in the face of proof. I would also think that there are many theists and atheists who would not be willing to change their opinions in the face of proof. Either way, it's not a big deal cause there isn't going to be any proof either way on the big questions of spirituality and religion vs. atheism.