Weak Atheism is Logically Incoherent

I'm not too great at introductions, so let's jump right into the meat of things:1. "You can't prove weak atheism true."Correct! Because of gods' incorpeal nature, it is largely impossible to prove that they do not exist.2. "If someone comes along with evidence for God's existence, you automatically lose."My opponent has accurately pinpointed weak atheism's strongest feature - Its susceptability to proof.Anyone can make a claim - For example, the sky is green. However, when presented with conflicting evidence, a logical man has to adjust his claim to fit the evidence- Once you look up, you realize the sky is more likely to be blue.Indeed, the majority of weak atheists would welcome evidence - Who wants to carry on being wrong all their life?Any logical belief MUST be susceptable to change via conflicting evidence.3. "[Weak atheism] commits the fallacy of shifting the burden of proof." My opponent and I agree that the burden of proof falls on the person making a claim.However, my opponent's example of the claim made by weak atheism ("an atheist tells me there is no God") is actually a statement of strong atheism. (Which does have a burden of proof) The equivalent weak atheistic statement would be "I see no evidence for god X", which is not a claim about anything other than the lack of evidence.My opponnent's point here may be logically inconsistent with point 1 - He wants weak atheists to shoulder the burden of proof, while at the same time stating that there is no logical way for them to prove the position true. This may be one of the points he was attempting to make, however.4. "Second, it commits the fallacy of the argument from ignorance. "You can't prove it is true, so it must be false."""Must be false" is not entirely the correct sequence of words here. "Likely to be false" is more accurate.Let's grab an example to play with: "I am surrounded by ethereal sheep". This claim cannot be proven true - Since the sheep are "ethereal", they cannot be tested through any known means.The problem is that there are an infinite number of claims such as this that can be made, and the vast majority of them are vastly unlikely to be true. Faced with odds of this magnitude, the only way to develop a coherent world view is to assume claims that cannot be proven true are false.Weak theists merely apply this principle to claims of gods.AsideMy opponent made a passing comment that suggests that the majority of weak atheists are not agnostic. Agnostics believe that the truth about the existence or non-existence of gods cannot be known - Thus, most agnostics are de facto weak atheists. I'm not sure how this affects the debate, though.5. "Atheism means "lack of faith in God," nothing more."Weak atheism, by the definition we agreed upon, means exactly this.The rest of my opponent's paragaph here focuses on why strong atheism is intellectually preferrable to weak aheism, and is probably worthy of its own debate! I will ignore it for now, since it has no bearing on the central claim of the debate : )6. "Atheism is the default position.""No one is born with or without belief in God."Well, yes they are! And the experiment to prove it is really quite simple:Get a child (From a religious or nonrelgious home, it doesn't matter) who is old enough to speak but whose parents, friends, teachers, etc. have not taught him about gods. This may take some searching, but should be possible.Ask this child which gods he believes in. You will, if you've done everything correctly, recieve back "What?" or possibly "Mommy! Help!" as your reply. If you consistently get any other answer, this would be excellent evidence to present to weak atheists, utterly destroying their position!AsideTo be fair, I, like my opponent, do not remember the period of lack-of-belief in god before my initial indoctrination - But I also don't remember much of /anything/ before my 5th or 6th birthday. (which is, I believe, pretty common) I understand that certain rare individuals DO have non-negligable memories of early childhood, and chatting with them on this topic would be great. The evidence collected would be anecdotal, though, so not relevent to the debate.My opponent then goes on to state that, if [weak] atheism were the default position, we should reject it for being intellectually lazy. Not only is this not true (Lack of belief in the sentience of trees, the sanctity of cats, the omnipotence of potato bugs, and an infinite number of similar beliefs are also the default positions) but it commits the fallacy of appealing to consequences."We're all Atheists, I just believe in one less God than you do."By strict definition, you're right of coure - A theist cannot be an atheist.However, any one theist could certainly be, for example, an a-Thor-ist. The problem comes when you realize the terms "weak a-thor-ist" and "weak atheist" are entirely interchangeable in any of the arguments we discuss - Every argument my opponent makes could exhange one term for the other and be exactly as valid.Thus if you hold "weak athest" to be incoherent, you must also hold "weak a-thor-ist", "weak a-poseidon-ist", and all other claims of weak non-belief to be incoherent.The obvious next step is that you DO believe in all of these myriad claims, many of which are mutually exclusive, which would be incoherent in itself!PZ Meyers quotesI'm not sure PZ Myers has any other word type except for "strong". *grin*My opponent's second PZ Meyers quote actually provides a single key word which helps us deal with the first PZ quote. Specifically, PZ Meyers states "you come to the table with an implicit set of criteria, like evidence and plausibility and experimental support". The key word here is "evidence". Weak atheists do not merely reject gods because they happen to be in a list entitled "gods". They reject claims as they hear them due to lack of evidence.To tie this back to the first PZ quote - If there was as little evidence for evolution as for the other items on that list, it would be entirely correct to dismiss it without a second thought!ConclusionI believe I've dismantled my opponents arguments with style and panache. Let's see if he agrees. Back to you, KeytarHero!Cheers,-Dirk