What Is The Positive Evidence For Atheism?

Atheist and agnostic are not mutually exclusive positions, you can be both. You can both concede that one cannot know if god exists, and also not believe that he does. I can't know that the FSM doesn't exist, but I am not an FSM believer (bellowed be his name).I've never met or read about an atheist who was not agnostic about the existence of God. So yes, atheism is most commonly (perhaps exclusively - though harking to the baby argument, it is possible that an atheist exist who isn't agnostic due to ignorance) a particular form of agnosticism (where the person doesn't hold a belief in the existence of god). Theism is sometimes coupled with agnosticism - as is often the case for so called 'sophisticated theists'. There are still some gnostic theists - people that claim they do know that god exists and thus they believe in god. This is a position often criticised by atheists, though agnostic theism is also criticized for its special pleading for an entity called god when the same rules apply to fairies.

To be an atheist one has to simply not believe that a certain type of proposition is true. One does not need to assert 'There is no god' one merely needs to answer "no" to "Do you believe in a god or gods?". And even stating "There is no God" is rarely without caveats, it is said with the same degree of conviction as "There are no fairies", "There is no Santa" and "There is no FSM". Atheism means 'without theism" not "There are no gods". I am not a theist (a person who believes in god/s) therefore I am an atheist. Not at all, its a convenience of the English language. One can go around disclaiming every statement like "I think there is as a high a degree of probability that no god exists as the probability that no fairy exists -which I judge to be very high", but what's the point in engaging in such clumsiness? Actually, when you ask an atheist more deeply you learn that the flow goes something like this:"I do not believe God exists."
"Prove it"
"I cannot know for sure that God doesn't exist, I can't prove it, I just see no reason to actually believe the entity exists."Thus they simultaneously don't believe in God, think he does not exist, but also accept that one cannot falsify the unfalsifiable. For someone keen on Greek origins you are quick to ignore them when convenient. A-gnosis means 'without knowledge' and is used to describe a position that certain things cannot be known for certainty. It isn't about making decisions, it's about the extent of human knowledge regarding certain things (in our context: god's existence). I concede that we cannot know if god exists, but without any reason to actually think he does, I won't. "I believe God exists, but I realize that one cannot know if God exists for certainty - my belief requires a leap of faith on that issue"and"I don't believe god exists. I realize one cannot know that god doesn't exist but I think making leaps of faith is unwise."It's easy enough to hold both positions simultaneously. See?Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

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No - I don't believe a cosmic Jewish zombie can make me live forever if I eat his flesh and telepathically tell him that I accept him as my master, so he can then remove an evil force from my soul that is present in all of humanity because a dirt/rib woman was convinced by a talking snake to eat from a magical tree about 6,000 years ago just after the universe was created. Why should I?

In fact it can't comment on God no matter how much anyone protests. I've never heard Dawkins or Hitchens argue in the way you imply, but I have seen plenty of theists do likewise. Evolution does undermine one of theisms best arguments (the argument of design in life, and by extension all arguments from design are weakened considerably) which is what led Dawkins to abandon any recourse to theism and become an atheist.That isn't to say that Dawkins is arguing that evolution is gnostic about god, it just means that god is no longer a necessary explanatory entity.If you argue that 'x' cannot be explained without a god, and then someone comes along and explains 'x' without recourse to a god - then the god argument is weaker. When one of the best 'x' is explained without god, that means we should be careful when 'y' has yet to be explained not to fill the gap with god.Evolution did do that for us - it was such a good explanation for something that was so complex that it raised our consciousness that complex things can sometimes have very simple (but not obvious) explanations and it showed god of the gaps to be the bankrupt mode of thought that it is. Evolution gave us the vision to consider that maybe god isn't needed to explain other fiendishly difficult problems either! This isn't evidence for atheism, but it does help explain why atheism is growing since the arguments for theism are looking weaker and weaker.

Sure there are still gaps in our knowledge, and you are free to squeeze god into them. However, evolution did explain a territory that was completely dominated by theistic explanations.However, science does have a lot to say about why we exist. We are here because our parent's genes successfully copied about 50% of themselves each. Our parent's were here for the same reason. Now, 4 billion years of explanation for why we are here is a pretty damned impressive chunk of god's domain invaded. Sure we can still invoke god during that 4 billion year history, but the point is it is no longer necessary to do so. No longer does the startling complexity of life necessitate a designer, another, less incredible, explanation exists for most if not all of that.God isn't needed to explain biodiversity any more, so where that argument used to be strong (the observation necessitated the conclusion), it no longer does so.