Changes

This principle on which the philosophy is founded comes from the Latin phrases like ''necessitas probandi incumbit ei qui agit'' meaning "the necessity of proof lies with he who complains" and ''ei incumbit probatio qui dicit, non que negat,'' meaning "the burden of proof rests on who asserts, not on who denies."

This principle on which the philosophy is founded comes from the Latin phrases like ''necessitas probandi incumbit ei qui agit'' meaning "the necessity of proof lies with he who complains" and ''ei incumbit probatio qui dicit, non que negat,'' meaning "the burden of proof rests on who asserts, not on who denies."

== Theistic responses ==

== Theistic responses ==

Weak [[atheism]] is often construed by theists as a highly negative and destructive point of view, that lacks a positive, thought out alternative.  As Jacques Maritain wrote:

Weak [[atheism]] is often construed by theists as a highly negative and destructive point of view, that lacks a positive, thought out alternative.  As Jacques Maritain wrote:

:"By negative atheism I mean a merely negative or destructive process of casting aside the idea of God, which is replaced only by a void. Such a negative atheism can be only shallow and empirical, like the [[atheism]] of the libertians of the seventeenth century: it hollows out a vacuum at the center of the universe of thought which has taken shape for centuries around the idea of God, but it does not bother about altering that universe; it is concerned merely with making us live comfortably in the empirical freedom of doing whatever we want. On the other hand, negative atheism can be deeply and metaphysically lived: in which case the void it creates at the center of things extends to and lays waste our whole universe of thought; the freedom it claims for the human ego is absolute independence, a kind of divine independence that this ego, like Dostoievski's Kirilov, has no better way of affirming than by suicide and self-destruction."<ref>Jacques Maritain, ''On the Meaning of Contemporary [[Atheism]]'', The Review of Politics, Vol. 11, No. 3, pp. 267-280, July, 1949.</ref>

:"By negative atheism I mean a merely negative or destructive process of casting aside the idea of God, which is replaced only by a void. Such a negative atheism can be only shallow and empirical, like the [[atheism]] of the libertians of the seventeenth century: it hollows out a vacuum at the center of the universe of thought which has taken shape for centuries around the idea of God, but it does not bother about altering that universe; it is concerned merely with making us live comfortably in the empirical freedom of doing whatever we want. On the other hand, negative atheism can be deeply and metaphysically lived: in which case the void it creates at the center of things extends to and lays waste our whole universe of thought; the freedom it claims for the human ego is absolute independence, a kind of divine independence that this ego, like Dostoievski's Kirilov, has no better way of affirming than by suicide and self-destruction."<ref>Jacques Maritain, ''On the Meaning of Contemporary [[Atheism]]'', The Review of Politics, Vol. 11, No. 3, pp. 267-280, July, 1949.</ref>