[Maursault]

Clearly, the absence of belief in God is the very same as believing God does not exist. Both phrases, in fact, mean the same thing. And with tomato tomato, we can dismiss a correction to one's adherence to an alternative standard.

[awb]

> Clearly, the absence of belief in God is the very same as believing God does not exist.

Not in my opinion.

You were born with an absence in the belief of an infinite number of things. Absence of belief is a default state.

Presumably you have a filter of what beliefs you choose to add to that default state you were born in.

Having a filter of: “Does it help me live a better life?” seems good to me. “Can anyone reproduce it?” seems like a decent filter too.

Basically an absence of belief is saying that the level of evidence presented to me has not surpassed the requirements of my filter. The burden is on others to improve the evidence.

Believing a negative is saying that I have all the evidence I need and I’ve come to a conclusion. The burden is on me to show that I’ve collected enough evidence.

That’s how I see them being different states.

[Maursault]

> Basically an absence of belief is saying that the level of evidence presented to me has not surpassed the requirements of my filter. The burden is on others to improve the evidence.

Again, the "absence of belief" is identical to "not believing:" "the evidence has not convinced you, so you do not believe it," is, in fact, a belief. Believing something is a belief, and not believing something is also a belief. Belief is not knowledge of truth, it is a gamble that something is true without seeing the dice. When you see the dice, you know.

[awb]

> Again, the "absence of belief" is identical to "not believing:" "the evidence has not convinced you, so you do not believe it,"

I really don’t think so.

Today you probably have an absence of belief in rainbow colored lions.

That’s different from trying to figure out if rainbow colored lions exist, evaluating claims and deciding to believe that they don’t exist.

Absence of belief = passive default

Belief = active decision making

When someone mentions the words “rainbow colored lions” or even makes a claim “I saw a rainbow colored lion”, I don’t feel a burden to evaluate their claim. I’m more evaluating the structure of their claim: they’ve provided no evidence.

So, I am choosing to believe that they’ve made an unfounded argument. I don’t suddenly feel the need to actively not believe in rainbow colored lions.