Reasons to be cheerful - part 1

Many people are atheists not because they've reasoned things out like that, but because of the way they were brought up or educated, or because they have simply adopted the beliefs of the culture in which they grew up.

It's the same for many believers. So someone raised in Communist China is likely to have no belief in God, because they rarely if ever, meet a believer, and because the education system and pressure from the people they meet make being an atheist the natural thing to do.

Other people are atheists because they just feel that atheism is right. In the same way, many people of faith hold their beliefs because they just seem right to them.

Law of probabilities

It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone to believe anything upon insufficient evidence”W. K. Clifford (1879)

Many people are atheists because they think there is no evidence for God's existence - or at least no reliable evidence.

They argue that a person should only believe in things for which they have good evidence.

A philosopher might say that they start from the presumption of Atheism. They say that there is as much evidence for the existence of God (any particular god at all) as there is for the existence of unicorns.

And although they might be more polite about it, someone who follows a particular faith may have the same sort of opinion about the existence of the gods of other faiths.

Believers disagree with this in several ways:

People accept many other things as true without insisting on good evidence.
Good evidence may be difficult and complicated to understand and thus not appear to be good evidence.
Many of the "truths" at the cutting edge of science are based on "evidence" only by a complicated chain of reasoning.

Good evidence needn't provide certainty, it's sufficient for it to make something probable.

And the atheists reply:

But "people accept many things as true" without evidence on good, reliable authority, assuming that a trustworthy source has good evidence - but ultimately they require evidence.

Good evidence may be complicated - but scientists etc can understand it and are good authorities.

Theologians from the various religions are not such good authorities - disagreeing with each other even within the same religion.

Probability is OK if it is the best you can get, but the evidence does not even begin to make God probable.