Atheism is the DEFAULT position. The burden of proof is on the Christian asserting God exists. All we're asking is to see the convincing empirical EVIDENCE.

Raising the burden of proof is fair, and it is usually raised in good faith. But “atheism is the default” hides a choice between two very different positions, and that choice decides who owes what.

1. Atheism means two different things. Sometimes it means no belief in God — the absence of a position. Sometimes it means the belief that there is no God — a positive claim about all of reality. Most arguments about burden of proof are really arguments about which sense is in play, and the answer changes the debt.

2. Weak atheism concludes nothing. If atheism is merely the absence of belief, it makes no claim and needs no evidence. But then it cannot exclude God either; it is a starting point, not a conclusion. A person in that position has not asserted anything the theist needs to refute.

3. Strong atheism carries its own burden. “There is no God” is a universal negative about everything that exists, including anything beyond the observable universe. That is an enormous claim, and it is not the kind of thing one asserts while insisting that only the other party produce evidence.

4. Turn it around: the rule is itself asserted. “He who asserts must prove” is offered without proof, and it is not self-evident. Stated absolutely, it forbids asserting anything one cannot prove exhaustively — including the rule, and including the claim that only empirical statements are meaningful.

5. Nobody reasons from a blank slate. The theist reasons from a self-revealing God; the atheist from a universe that is all there is. Both are starting points that shape what counts as evidence. The honest move is to argue for the starting point, not to pretend one side does not have one.

6. Evidence is not the same as proof. Courts convict on evidence short of certainty; historians reason to the best explanation; physicists infer unobservable entities from their effects. If “proof” means what compels assent no matter what, almost nothing qualifies — including most of what you believe about the past.

7. The demand for empirical evidence begs the question. If only what can be measured counts, then a non-physical God has been excluded by the method before the evidence is examined. That is a philosophical stipulation, not a scientific result, and it needs an argument of its own.

8. There is public evidence, and it can be examined. “His invisible attributes ... have been clearly perceived ... in the things that have been made” (Romans 1:19–20); “the heavens declare the glory of God” (Psalm 19:1). The classical arguments — contingency, fine-tuning, moral knowledge, consciousness — are published, debated, and open to inspection. None of them is a private feeling.

9. The resurrection is the testable claim. “Christ died for our sins ... he was raised on the third day” (1 Corinthians 15:3–4), with named witnesses, some still alive when Paul wrote. Scripture says God “commands all people everywhere to repent” and has fixed a day of judgment (Acts 17:30–31) — a public event, not a private one. Gary Habermas's minimal-facts method argues that even sceptical scholars concede the crucifixion, the disciples' experiences, and Paul's conversion. That is a historical claim you can check, not a mood.

10. Ask what would change your mind. Put the question to both sides, and put it gently: what evidence would you accept? If nothing would, the position is not evidential but axiomatic, and no argument can touch it. If something would, we are in the same business, and the conversation can proceed. Scripture asks for exactly that posture: “always being prepared to make a defense ... yet do it with gentleness and respect” (1 Peter 3:15).

The burden of proof is real, and the Christian should carry it gladly; the claim is that the evidence is there to be weighed. What does not work is treating one worldview as neutral ground and the other as an imposition. Both sides are making claims about everything, and both should say what would count against them.

Sources: William Lane Craig; Frank Turek; I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist; Gary Habermas; J. Warner Wallace.

Related challenges:
• There is no scientific evidence for the existence of God...just assertions.