Reply #77: Two points.

[Deep13]

That point of view does not depend on definitive knowledge that there is no god. If theists accept their gods on faith, then they cannot very well object to atheists' lack of belief based on the same. Anyway, how ever sure atheists are that there is not god, it is clear that believers have absolutely no reason to think there is one. That which is asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. And since believers are basing their world view on nothing, it can be accurately characterized as a lie. What if I said that I will give you $10 million next week after I win the lottery. Can you prove that I won't win it? Still, I have no reason to think I will, so that promise is a lie.

Second, we do know for a fact that there are no gods, even if it is only circumstantially. We know enough about human thinking to know how and why people are prone to invent godly explanations for things. We know that god had no part in developing life on earth and that its initial inception does not require a divine explanation. A universe created by gods ought to have divine fingerprints (so to speak) everywhere. Instead everything we have ever discovered and explained has a natural explanation. Everything that was once attributed to divine causes is now known to have natural explanations: medicine and disease, weather, governmental authority, human feelings and relations. WE are at a point where the only way god can be real is if we define him into irrelevancy. Sure, I can't absolutely rule out some supernatural being who does nothing but silently watch, but such a being is not a god.