(Link + Hat tip to Mrs. Christina!)

So hopefully we Christian parents can be allowed to teach our children the spiritual truth of The Bible. What about churches and Sunday schools? Will atheists also force the closure of these?

John, the only people who are trying to ban any kind of free speech on religious matters are theists, not atheists. This includes many of your fellow Christians, who in several countries are currently doing their utmost to outlaw any criticism of Christianity by resurrecting ancient anti-blasphemy laws.

For all that you criticize Richard Dawkins, you clearly haven't read him for yourself. In The God Delusion, he states clearly that he is not advocating the outlawing of religion; in fact, he advocates teaching comparative religion to children. The book is written not as a political action program, but as an exercise in consciousness-raising: waking people up to the wrongness of labeling children as if they were members of religions they are too young to join of their own free will, or traumatizing children by teaching them dogmas about Hell and other wicked, brutal religious beliefs.

So hopefully we Christian parents can be allowed to teach our children the spiritual truth of The Bible. What about churches and Sunday schools? Will atheists also force the closure of these?

Sorry, but the atheist world is a bit scary. Who knows what else will be banned.

This is an area where we need to take great care to ensure that we don't let people brainwash their kids while also ensuring that we don't restrict their freedom of speech too much.

We'd probably be better off emphasising the positive side of it in terms of children having the right to the best information we have (which also means a right not to go to a faith school or have religious home schooling).

I wouldn't go all the way to banning parents from teaching about their religion (I don't think it's necessary to get rid of religion to do that, besides, our victory would be much more legitimate if it happened without coercion) although I certainly would ban parents from punishing their children for not being religious (or being of a religion the parents disapprove of).

John:

Also, a fly in your ointment may well be the subject of a local, or nonlocal universe. All the latest scientific evidence points to nonlocality.

I can't see what locality has to do with anything discussed so far.

But why then would we assume non-existence in favor of suspended judgment on any given matter, or are assumptions of non-existence and suspense of judgment more or less equivalent?

"Suspended judgment" is exactly the phrase I was looking for. I found the concept also in Ebon Musings' article Naturalism in Science:

To show why this is false, a distinction must be drawn between methodological naturalism and metaphysical naturalism. The former is what science employs: the belief that natural events have natural causes and that there are physical laws which we can discover and understand. The latter is the belief that there is nothing beyond those natural causes and physical laws, in other words, that the supernatural does not exist. This is a personal belief that some scientists hold, but that science in general does not require. Science must assume that all events it can observe and study are natural in origin, but it does not claim that the supernatural does not exist; nor does it claim that it does exist. That is simply not a topic which it can speak to, and to make a statement either way would be beyond the bounds of science.

(Emphasis mine.) Also, I have to back-track on my statement that the supernatural can be disproven. I meant that specific supernatural claims can be disproven.

Ultimately, however, the supernatural's existence or nonexistence cannot be supported by evidence or proven by reason.

(This is for refuting "outrageous" atheist claim #1) But where is the proof or reasoning behind this statement? I quote Mark Vuletic's article Is Atheism Logical?:

1. One can prove with certainty that an entity does not exist if (a) the concept of that entity is incoherent, or (b) the existence of that entity is logically incompatible with obviously present states of affairs.

2. One can be rationally justified in claiming that an entity does not exist without being certain that it does not exist. This justification comes from (a) the improbability that that entity exists given various states of affairs, and/or (b) the principle of parsimony coupled with a lack of evidence for the existence of that entity.

Incidentally, how does Barton get away with saying "... it is almost certain that there are things that exist that are beyond any of our philosophies"? Doesn't that break her own epistemic rules set out in her essay? Anyway, the next "outrageous claims" are virtually nonexistent opinions. The supposed atheist extremist who believes these are obviously misguided scoffers, and fortunately are in a virtually undetectable minority of actual atheists. (Note: The IMAH was generalizing religion to the known organized religions of today, where religious authorities decide what children should believe and tell people that they are to follow the arbitrary whim of an imaginary deity for nothing more than obedience and submission.)

Lastly, to some of the above atheist commentators, I have to disagree. (This means I also disagree with Vuletic's 2b.) Both statements "God exists" and "God does not exist" require minimal evidence and reason before they can be reasonably claimed. Before that, we can use the principle of parsimony to act and think as if the unverifiable and unfalsifiable does not exist until otherwise shown wrong. However, the actual truth or falsehood of the two statements are not affected by our use of epistemic tools such as Occam's Razor, they are merely worked around to the best of our ability.

Anyway, I consider both of my statements that you listed to be relatively similar; both are arguing for the burden of proof being on the positive claim (the second one just states where belief should lie until proof is provided).

My understanding is that the burden of proof is placed on the positive claimant because it is easier to prove the existence of something that exists than it is to disprove the existence of something that does not. I can easily prove that my cat exists: he's right there, staring up at you, hoping you'll give him tuna. (A solipsist might argue that I can't truly prove that he exists, but by and large most people will accept my cat's existence.

On the other hand, I can scour the universe for a billion years without finding the Higgs boson, but that doesn't mean that there isn't one. Unless I can prove the logical or physical impossibility of the boson, you can keep arguing that I just haven't been using a sufficiently perfect particle accelerator.

So, why assume non-existence of the Higgs boson (or God) without evidence*? Largely to avoid insanity. Claims of existence are made constantly and are often contradictory. If we assume existence instead of non-existence we risk insanity. I simply can't accept the idea that I ought to believe every claim of existence, especially if there is not even an attempt to provide evidence (many atheists break out the Flying Spaghetti Monster or Invisible Pink Unicorn here, but I accept that most theists have a more transcendent God).

*Note: there may excellent evidence for the Higgs boson that I don't know about. Physics is not my area of expertise.

Actually, we have a predetermined standard for who has the burden of proof: The burden of proof is placed on the person who makes the positive claim.

Leum,

This is a positive claim in itself, and by your standard, would require proof. I tend to agree with it for the most part, but I was wondering if you (or anyone) had support for it outside our legal system.

In the absence of evidence supporting an ontological* question, we must assume non-existence.

Another positive claim. I am not disputing it, but if you could support it, I would be much obliged.

Formally, ontology is the study of Being, which may be distinct from existence, since existence is generally thought of as contingent upon something necessary in itself, but I think your usage is fine given your context. You would never have to worry about it unless you were engaging in philosophy and needed to keep the two separate.

Within this formal definition, it can be incorrect to say that God exists; it would be more accurate to say that he has he power of being. That's why sometimes the term "self-existent" is utilized. But, given the common usage of the phrase "God exists", no one virtually ever objects. The terms have died the deaths of overusage.

Ontology is often a pursuit of non-metaphysical or non-supernatural Being. For example, Heideggerean ontology posits being underlying the existing universe without reference to standard theological concepts of God. If I understand it correctly, not being a physicist, string theory, etc., is not far from being an ontological pursuit as it seeks the basic "being" of subatomic particles. If energy were determined to be the basic being of the universe, ontology would still push forward. After all, what is energy? What is its being? That is a fine ontological question. Someone feel free to correct me if warranted.

Of course, there are many disproofs of gods out there, and most of them make very compelling cases that the majority of gods envisioned by Xians are, in fact, not logically possible.

As for child abuse and theistic indoctrination, it is a fine line, but your comment that, "The atheist world is a bit scary," is a bit out of line. There's nothing wrong with asking whether it is OK to indoctrinate children with falsehoods and unproven conjectures presented as facts. It's a discussion we should be having, yet some theists act as if their children are their property to be programmed as they see fit. If anything is scary, it's parents like this that will teach their children inaccuracies and falsehoods about the world we live in simply to make sure that they believe in the right things. This can be damaging to the child and it is something that we need to think about and discuss. If you find it scary to care about children and their mental well being as well as their development, then that, to me, is a scary thought.

I guess this is true for your world view. Not mine.

So, knowledge is not dependent on what you believe? Thank you for more relativism, which I find to be highly ironic coming from a Xian.

The Summa for instance comes from revelation. It specifically talks of man, and government, and the like...fasinating stuff

And, what knowledge does it actually give us and how did revelation give us this knowledge?

I copied this from a link in your comment.

"So we should no more allow parents to teach their children to believe, for example, in the literal truth of the Bible"

So hopefully we Christian parents can be allowed to teach our children the spiritual truth of The Bible. What about churches and Sunday schools? Will atheists also force the closure of these?

Sorry, but the atheist world is a bit scary. Who knows what else will be banned.

I was at a middle school recently. A teacher had placed several posters with a picture of a polar bear, captioned with "global warming causing extinction of polar bears." I know that Canada is still issuing hunting permits for polar bears, so my limited critical thinking ability had alarm bells sound off. It seems more like government schools are places to program certain assumptions into the young mind. Anyway, I digress.

Also, a fly in your ointment may well be the subject of a local, or nonlocal universe. All the latest scientific evidence points to nonlocality.