The Burden of Proof in Debates about the Existence of God
The shifting of the “burden of proof” of God’s existence entirely onto the theist is an unwise move on the part of the atheist. For the theist will welcome this development, because in so doing the atheist essentially refuses to use some of the most powerful arguments against the existence of God, such as the problem of evil, the problem of unbelief, and the problem of divine hiddenness. It is also disingenuous, because few atheists, I imagine, are atheists solely because they find the arguments in favor of God’s existence and concern for His creatures unpersuasive and take the default action of cutting off the seemingly unnecessary entities with Occam’s razor. They are atheists presumably because they are overwhelmed by the positive arguments in favor of atheism, such as the ones mentioned above.
Now it is certainly possible that I am wrong at least in the case of David Eller who calls himself a “natural atheist,” apparently implying that nothing in nature points towards God, and that’s why theism is a silly hypothesis. But even so, I suspect that he is exception to the rule.
Update. I think even the problem of evil, etc. can be used by a “negative” atheist, as well, in the sense of a spotted contradiction within the theist’s concept of God. An atheist need not prove anything; he can sit serenely and argue that the Christian God does not exist, e.g., because omniscience and omnipotence are incompatible, or because omnipotence is incoherent (can God make a stone… ?), or because the problem of evil contradicts our idea of God. In my view the coherence of theism can be successfully defended against all attacks, but it is true that the theist has to do the lion’s share of the work.