Argument # 29:  “Atheists don’t hold the belief that God doesn’t exist.  An Atheist is one who is without a belief in God, or lacks a belief in him.  Therefore the burden of proof for God is on the theist, not the atheist.”

 

Atheists like to remind others of this argument because they feel that people have a misconception about their position.  They emphasize that their position is not that they believe that “God doesn’t exist”, only that they don’t believe in God.  Using semantics, they point out that definition of Atheism is to be without belief in God because the “A” in “A - theism” means “without” and “theism” meeeeans “belief in God”.  However, this makes little difference either way because their core philosophy toward God is still the same.  The reason why they emphasize this strongly, I believe, is to put themselves in a less attackable position.  This way they can demand the burden of proof on the theist, who believes in God, while claiming that since they don’t “believe” in God, they don’t have to defend that belief.  It’s a political semantic ploy, I think.  This is why most Atheists prefer the term “I don't believe in God” to “God doesn't exist”.  You see, they can’t really prove that God doesn’t exist because you can’t prove a negative.  Regardless of either definition, the Atheist obviously believes deep down that there isn't a God or deity anywhere anyway, which is prevalent in their attempts to debunk and refute every single argument for the existence of God.  Therefore this trivial debate about the technical definition of the word “Atheism” seems pointless in substance.

For some critiques of Atheist arguments, see these links:

 

"How to respond to a Supercilious Atheist":  http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/01/how_to_respond_to_a_supercilio.html

"The Irrational Atheists", has a free ebook you can download:  http://www.irrationalatheist.com

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