Haha, with the misconceptions you already have I'm sure you think you try to. :P

Again, no. You are playing games with semantics. Positively affirming "there is definitely no X" is not the equivalent to making no claim at all, nor is it equivalent to saying "please show me evidence to support your claim that X exists."

God's knowledge of counterfactuals does not remove our free choice to be disobedient.

We were pushed into it, deliberately manipulated into it. Thus it's not free will.

What's that suppose to mean?

Thank you for the link. My comment was actually an aside, and not a reference to your previous discussion with someone about dominion over the earth. I'm a little girl who believes that one day a handsome man will marry me and I'll live happily ever after. I spend my life growing up expecting this man to one day appear. Is that not wishful thinking? Is that not a belief? What if I believe my parents are perfect, when of course they aren't? What if I attribute problems around the home to fairies, so I adjust my behaviour to make these fairies happy and thus minimize their mischief. Wouldn't that be a belief?

In any case, I think this line of discussion won't bear fruit as I think you're talking about beliefs coming from a vacuum, which I'm not saying myself. Theism and atheism deal with belief. Theists have it, atheists don't. Theism asserts something, atheism doesn't agree with that assertion. Atheism is not asserting anything itself. Atheism LACKS belief, and thus is not a belief itself (that gods don't exist). Why do you say your god is good?

Why do you say showing love = obedience? If your god loves you, does he show obedience to you? Perhaps it's been the examples you've used, but I've gotten the sense that you've been using evidence in a much broader sense. I agree that evidence serves as grounds for belief, but it has to be actual grounds and not mere possibility.

I remember the example you used earlier about the large universe being evidence for aliens, paraphrasing another poster. As someone responded, the large universe only increased the chances for aliens but didn't serve as evidence in and of itself.

Perhaps I use evidence with the assumption that it's credible evidence being talked about, and not just any thing at all. I don't consider Star Wars as evidence that Vader is real, because it's not credible, for example. Perhaps you believe the same way, I don't know. I've just been... confused... by your usage of it. Perhaps it's nothing. Which is not the same as saying the views came from absolutely nothing, just that they don't have credible evidence behind them (in his opinion). You had posted to someone that you felt Pimp was asserting beliefs came from a vacuum, which is simply not what he meant.

However, I'm somewhat uncomfortable speaking for someone else, and since Pimp has declined to answer I won't speak in his stead. I simply wanted to interject where I thought misunderstanding may have lain, since it was clear to me that what you seemed to think he said, wasn't the case at all.

So God, knowing that we would disobey a command, shouldn't have given us any commands in the first place? God's after obedience, and it's our choice whether to obey.

It takes away free will, and also makes him an asshole. Because he knew exactly to the finest detail what would happen if he put the tree there. Instead of just not having it at all. But manipulates adam and eve into eating from it and then punishes all humans for it. That is asshole-ish, immoral and takes away any free will.

This would only be true if the words "active" and "passive" have the same meaning, but they don't.

Theism and atheism aren't about truth, they're about beliefs. People believe all sorts of things which are false. Truth and belief are separate things.

Etymology of words is interesting but not always useful. Words change meaning and usage over time, not to mention culture and even geography. Do you consider atheist to still exclusively be an insult? Do you consider atheist to still only apply to the xian god? Words change.

I'm sorry you think I'm trying to dodge a position I don't hold.

Not in this context. Theists believe in the existence of a higher power (of some sort). Atheists believe the opposite: in the nonexistence of a higher power (of some sort). Just like morality is the existence of morals (whether good or bad), and amorality is the lack thereof. Each is the antithesis of the other, by definition.

You have a relative who is sweet and kind. They are accused of murder. Do you believe they did it? Do you assert for a fact that it's impossible they could have done it? Or do you lack belief they did it, while acknowledging, however unlikely, that they MIGHT have done it?

Believing in the non-existence? I don't think atheists run around and actively disbelieve things or actively believe in the non-existence of things.

I mean, you might not believe in the existence of jikinikis but that isn't the same as believing in their non-existence, is it? You just don't have "belief" towards them. It's not there.

Atheism is that lack of a belief and not the belief in a non-existence.


[i]Edit: Typos! Typos!
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I believe that they might have murdered; my belief in this is not lacking. Without further definitive proof either way, I would make no further assertion.
If you are amoral, how many morals can you have before you are no longer amoral?

By the same token, if you are an atheist how much divinity can you believe in before you are no longer an atheist?

You can disagree until you are blue in the face, this is what these words mean. An 'a-' before a word means "the total absence thereof". If one has zero belief in something, then they implicitly disbelieve it.