[user104658]

Originally Posted by kirklancaster

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"You're quoting a definition of legal proof not philosophical proof."

I am using the same legal parlance that Kyle used in my response to his post - which was a response to my earlier post. Kyle wrote: "The burden of proof is not on the non religious to prove God exists but nice try."

"You cannot set out to prove non-existence, it's logically impossible. The burden of proof lies on whoever seeks to claim existence."

I really don't understand why you have quoted me and posted TS - because you're merely agreeing with me.

No, you're saying that the burden of proof always lies with the person making an assertation; that for someone saying "god does not exist" the burden of proof is on them to prove that. Which in philosophical / logical terms, is incorrect. You can't disprove existence and therefore the burden lies on the person claiming existence, always. Non-existence does not require proof, as by definition, non-existence requires an absence of proof.

It's a pointless argument though that only really serves as a distraction, people should stick to "near absolute" terms rather than absolute, if they want to be completely accurate. For example, I would say that I personally don't believe in a christian God or the god / gods of any other organised religion. It seems very, very unlikely that with infinite possibility, one of those humanistic Gods exists. I'd be confident in saying that the possibility is maybe something like a trillionth of 1%, but infinite being infinite, anything is possible. But I'd require proof of existence to consider it in any way likely or even outside the realms of fantasy.

This is completely different to the burden of proof in the legal system, where one would be seeking to prove or disprove truths and either stance has the possibility of proof, e.g. alibi ("Bobby stole my car" / "No I didn't, couldn't have, because I was at Jimmy's house!")