On pulling teeth and asking AnAtheist for some evidence

In the thread to "An Atheist Pot, a Christian Kettle, and an ironic charge of blackness" I critiqued atheist inconsistencies. Who would have thought that the thread of the discussion would provide further evidence for these ironic consistencies?

In the thread I noted some of the evidence I had provided for Christian theism.

"I have discussed innumerable grounds for the existence of God in the last several months, everything from the information in DNA to Kevin's experiences."

AnAtheist.net was unimpressed, and so he replied:

"Yeah, too bad these evidences were all so problematic or weak. Maybe I was expecting too much."

I wondered, weak relative to whom? After all, a Berkeleyan idealist may find the evidence for an external world weak and a Rortian relativist will find the evidence for objective truth weak. No argument or evidence ever persuades everybody, but that does not mean people do not have good arguments or evidence for what they believe. Anyway, this much was clear: AnAtheist.net finds the evidence weak. Hmmm, not entirely surprising.

This raised a rather obvious question. How does AnAtheist.net support his atheism? So I asked:

"What evidences have you or the other atheist/skeptical visitors to this blog ever presented which were of persuasive force? I must have overlooked them."

AnAtheist.net replied:

"RD - Evidences for what?"

I thought the context would have made what I was asking clear. Regardless, I then expanded my point:

"Well, AAN, you call yourself an atheist. Whether or not you mean by that (1) there is no God; (2) there likely is no God; (2) I don't believe in a God, or anything else, you are making a claim that contradicts my claim that there is a God. I present evidence for my view of the world. And if you want to play with the big boys, then you present evidence for your view as well. I'm still waiting for a modicum of evidence."

Mind you, I think there is evidence that at first blush supports atheism, and there is certainly evidence against Christianity. (There are epistemic ambiguities,and part of intellectual maturity is recognizing them.) But it seems a bit inconsistent for AnAtheist.net to critique my apologetic reflections on Christian theism without offereing his own apologetic reflections on atheism.

AnAtheist.net replied:

"I don't believe in a god or god(s) because I am not convinced or persauded by the evidence offerred. That is a claim about what I *believe* for which I have provided sufficient evidence. Apparantly you are under the impression that if I am not convinced by your arguments for God's existence then I must come up with a rigorous philosophical disproof in order to be reasonable in my skepticism."

I didn't specify anywhere the demand for a "rigorous philosophical disproof" but surely it would be good of AnAtheist.net to supply some of that "sufficient evidence" for his atheism.

I then replied by probing AnAtheist.net further: what is the evidence he has and how strong does he believe it to be? To simplify the discussion I wrote:

"So I take it you would affirm ‘p' where p is ‘no god exists.'" And my question was, what is this sufficient evidence that AnAtheist.net has for p?"

Incredibly, Anatheist.net then replied as follows:

"Looks like we are not talking about the same p. The p for which I claimed to ‘have provided sufficient evidence' is p = ‘I don't believe in a god or gods.'"

Pardon me while I pick my jaw up off the floor. After all this effort asking AnAtheist.net to provide evidence for the claim that God does not exist, the best he can do is provide evidence for the claim that he does not believe in God. Is this a joke? I mean, who was disagreeing with the proposition that AnAtheist.net doesn't believe in God? Who needed evidence for that? I would take his own testimony as adequate evidence that he doesn't believe in God. The question at issue is why he doesn't believe!

Still undeterred, I pressed on, determined to find what evidence AnAtheist.net has for the non-existence of God:

"Okay, let's go with your p. Is it a rational epistemic state? If so then why?"

Here, finally, is what he said:

"I stopped believing in a god a decade ago because I had no compelling reasons to continue. Do I think that there are persausive arguments to be made about the non-existence of god? Sure. But for the purposes of these comments those do not particularly matter."

In other words, I have some arguments for atheism but I'm not going to share them even though you've repeatedly asked me to do so.

Okay AnAtheist.net, I give up.