Veritas48

This is a Christian apologist on youtube who tries to make some logical sense and seems to actually understand a lot of the arguments made against believing in god.

In this video, and the other in the series of videos, however, he seems to be doing something kinda sneaky.


He began the project trying to remove what he calls "negative atheists" from the debate. These are people who do not affirm the non-existence of god, but are nonetheless not convinced of the existence of god. In removing them, he eliminates the burden of justifying belief in god, and then focuses on taking on the "positive atheists" who affirm the non-existence of god. Positive atheists are a much softer target because they onus proof can be turned on them, and they have the very difficult task of proving a negative.

I think he's doing away with negative atheists a little too easily. Because they are not stating a position about the existence of god, he says, negative atheism is "not justified" because it is a "non-view". The first problem I have with this statement is the notion that you have to justify a non-view. If you must abandon non-views because you can't justify them, then nobody could ever be on the fence about anything. A person, when given a proposition, must either affirm or deny it according to this view. Nobody is ever justified in saying they are not convinced one way or another. I think this is pretty clearly problematic. As a negative atheist, this means that I either have to adopt positive atheism, a position that I think is impossible to prove, or I must accept the arguments and evidence for theism that I do not find convincing. This seems to me to be clearly unreasonable.

Now I can understand why he wants to do this. When engaging in what is ostensibly a debate about the existence of god, from his point of view what it looks like the negative atheist is doing is simply throwing up his hands and saying "well, I'm not convinced, therefore I win". This is understandably frustrating.

In order to avoid this, both the negative atheist and the theist have to realize that what is really being debated is not the existence of god, but rather the question of what constitutes legitimate grounds for being convinced there is a god. This is a subject that perhaps has not gotten the attention it deserves.

A popular epistemological stance of negative atheists is naturalism. Epistemological naturalists are convinced of things observable and measurable in nature and, because they are not able to grasp anything about entities outside of nature, (that is, supernatural things) they can have no belief one way or the other regarding the existence or nature of those things. And I think what Veritas expects of the negative atheist is an explanation of why things outside of that which is observable and measurable in nature are unworthy of belief. Or at least why, if we can have no knowledge of the supernatural, as the the naturalist believes, we should go through life under the assumption that there is nothing there. As I believe he pointed out, negative atheists, while not being convinced one way or another, most often operate under the assumption that there is no god.

Now I can't speak for all negative atheists, but the reason why I personally limit my beliefs to that which is observable in nature is largely pragmatic. When I try to apply beliefs that I can test to practical circumstances, they have a pretty good track record of giving me reliable results. When I try to apply beliefs that I have not tested, or have no way to test, the results are most often quite unreliable. Now there are plenty of beliefs I hold that I can't test, of course, but they're also beliefs in which I hold little stake because I have no way to practically apply them. I don't know for sure that Socrates existed, but I operate under the assumption that he did because I've been given some evidence and not much, if anything about the way I live my life would change if I were to find out that this belief were false. The existence of god has corollary consequences, especially if the Abrahamic god really exists. These consequences, are, however, untestable, as is the this god's existence. And if Christians want me to believe in something that has practical consequences, those consequences must be demonstrable. Because there are many propositions that are non-demonstrable, many of which are contradictory, not all of them can be adopted. How are we to decide which propositions are the correct ones if the only means of judging correctness that has shown to be reliable, that of observation and experimentation, cannot establish their truth?