If you ever ask an atheist to prove their claim that God doesn’t exist, chances are you’ll hear some truly atrocious responses. Below you’ll find some of the worst atheist arguments.
You can’t prove a negative!
This may be the most common response. Somehow many atheists have come to the conclusion that it’s not possible to prove negative claims. That begs the question as to why they would frequently make them! At any rate, this claim is clearly false as any competent logician will tell you.
There is no flat Earth.
This is a negative claim that can be easily proven true. Also, any positive claim can be negated. e.g. Prove God doesn’t not exist.
The burden of proof is on the person making the claim! You prove God exists!
This argument is just bizarre but it’s surprising how many times it is used. Somehow many atheists believe that the person claiming that God doesn’t exist is not making a claim. Also, they are admonishing you for daring to request justification for that claim. To top it off they shift the burden of proof onto you. Unbelievable.
Prove Zeus doesn’t exist!
This is another odd one. Instead of justifying their claim that God is imaginary, they try to shift the burden of proof onto you for a different claim.
That God doesn’t exist is the null hypothesis!
Atheists sometimes attempt to ague that because “God doesn’t exist” is the null hypothesis to the claim that “God exists”, they do not have to prove their claim. The null hypothesis is the claim that there is no difference between groups or no relationship between variables. So for every claim you are trying to support, there will an alternate “opposite” claim that you must reject. If you find a relationship between your variables, you have disproven the null hypothesis.
If you claim that God exists, the null hypothesis is that God doesn’t exist. But if you claim God doesn’t exist, the null hypothesis is that God does exist. Simply because a claim has a null hypothesis does not mean that the null hypothesis claim by itself doesn’t require support. When you make any claim, you have a burden of proof to support that claim.
Which God?
When asked to prove an atheist’s claim that God doesn’t exist they might bark “which God?”. That’s like saying “which Supreme Being?”. A being can only be supreme if there is only one such being.
Atheism is about belief! Agnosticism is about Knowledge!
This claim is made when stating that a weak atheist is the same as an agnostic. It is false because knowledge is justified true belief, so both positions involve belief. Also, when Thomas Huxley coined the term agnosticism he specifically meant it to refer to a lack of belief and a lack of knowledge of God.
Are you also agnostic about fairies!
Here the atheist is attempting to argue that it’s rational to believe that things that cannot be justified do not exist. This however involves committing the appeal to ignorance logical fallacy. That is, fairies don’t exist because they haven’t been proven to exist. The rational position on the existence of fairies is in fact one of agnosticism.
Atheism is just the lack of belief in God!
This is the so called lacktheist argument. Agnostics both lack a belief in God and lack a belief that there is no God. Atheists however, do not lack a belief that there is no God. In other words, atheists actually believe there is no God. Atheists obviously cannot in any way support this claim so they falsely claim that atheism merely involves a lack of belief.