If you want to say Hitler is dead you could logically symbolize it as “Some H is D”. Neither term is distributed. You’re not making a claim about all men named Hitler or all dead men. Just that this one specific man falls into the category of “dead”. To prove this you need only find the news report about Adolph Hitler blowing his brains out.

Now, what if you were to say “No Hitler is alive today.”? This is a universal negative, the same type of statement as “God does not exist” (No G is E; i.e.- No God is a thing that exists). Both terms are distributed. In order to prove that “No Hitler is alive today” (No H is A), you must have complete knowledge of both categories, people named Hitler and people that are alive today, so that you can compare those two sets and show that they do not overlap.

As to having no unjustified assumptions, that is a rather quaint and naive modernist claim. Every worldview contains what Van Til called presuppositions or, as Alvin Plantinga calls them, properly basic beliefs. I imagine you hold the assumptions of materialism and empiricism, and so would find it laughable for anyone to confess belief in something immaterial. But even as far back as Hume it was realized that materialism could not be self-sustaining, because there are no arguments from materialism that can guarantee the uniformity of nature or the reliability of our sense perceptions. These are two assumptions, both of which, I would say, are warranted, but neither of which can be proven by inductive scientific reasoning for the simple reason that they are the basis of scientific reasoning. I would say that the first is true because of divine Providence and the second is true because God is good.

If it has new arguements please fill me in, but I have probably heard them before. Transendent, moral, miracles, free will- you name it I can refute it! It would be cocky except for the fact that if there was a knock down over powering argument theists would have used it FIRST!

As to Rick
Simple really. I don’t need to look everywhere to find and disprove God. First of, he isn’t a man with a white beard- or something that flits around the universe. He is supposed to be able to be anywhere- all powerful and knowing and such. I can prove that logical such a creature did not create our universe or intervene and create the current religions. You can postulate deism, but it makes no sense what so ever.

I don’t need omnicience to make knowledge claims. For example when I say Hitler is dead, I don’t scoure the universe to see if the Furher is out there- I know the bastard shot himself in Berlin because the Soviets surrounded the city and moved methodically inward. You could say Hitler could teleport or some other crap, but it contradicts everything we know about reality. Same goes with God.

And before you ask, I have no unjustified assumptions, no faith and no things I assume to be true.

If I say there is a spider in this room, then I only need to see the spider. I need know nothing at all about the rest of the room. If I say there is no spider in this room, I need to have exhaustive knowledge of the entire room to know that there is no spider there. Both terms are distributed in a universal negative.

So “No God exists” is like saying “There is no God among the set of existing things”, implying exhaustive knowledge of all things that exist. In other words to deny God is to claim omniscience and to make oneself a very likely candidate for God.

On the other hand, the statement, “I don’t believe that God exists,” is merely an opinion and not a knowledge claim, and therefore has no truth value and can’t be debated. It is merely agnosticism, a plea of ignorance.

If not, do youself a favor and read it (I can send you a pdf if you don’t want to plop down $12 for the book).

And then, after you’ve read it, perhaps you can do a better job than Hitchens in defending the validity and rationality of atheism. You’ll have to actually engage the argument to do that, though. So make sure you don’t follow Hitchens example in failing to do that.