I had a philosophy professor who was a teen in Lithuania in WWII.
He told a story about the Soviet occupation. A Soviet political officer was giving the town an indoctrination lecture. One of the people stood up and said 'If god does not exist why must you prove it?' The Soviet shot him.
Turning the question around for the theists if god exists and you have faith why must you prove it?
Christianity above all others is obsessed with arguments to prove god. To me it seems it is not us atheists they are trying to convince, they are really tying to convince themselves.
I note that most believers don't give two shits about proving that God exists, especially outside of the context of being obliged to take a introductory philosophy class in college where it is always the central topic.
Most Christians know that belief in God is irrational and that the evidence favors atheism, which is why they actively repress any doubts or rational thoughts that naturally bubble up into consciousness and get mad at people and claim it's "impolite" to have rational discussions about God's existence. Few Christians think that faith is a valid epistemological method to arrive at beliefs and which is why they reject faith whenever considering claims that the want to actually know the truth about. Their claims that "faith is a virtue" is a purely dishonest pretense they don't really accept but utter to justify their deliberate avoidance of rational thought about God.
And in that class, they mention the, like, five theologians over the past two thousand years who've written meaningfully on the subject, most of them centuries ago. I mean, how often do you actually meet someone who cares about philosophically proving the existence of God?
The whole reason that the nonsensical notion that
faith is a valid basis for belief is pushed by monotheism is that they know that reason is not compatible with theism. They would love to prove God's existence rationally and the leaders of the major religions have tried to con their flocks with pseudo intellectual apologetics. But since they know they cannot provide any honest argument for God, they pretend they don't care and that "faith is a virtue", which is a notion they don't honestly accept as evidence by the fact that they don't rely upon faith for any belief they hold that is rationally defensible.
Why do so many Christians so quickly and unthinkingly use every positive improbable event or "miracle" as "evidence of God"? Because they want there to be evidence that makes their theism rationally defensible, so they hunt for evidence wherever they can. They don't look to formal philosophy b/c they know that only dishonest selective unreasoned use of "evidence" can be used to give theism a veneer of intellectual legitimacy. This need to "prove" God is also evident in why pseudoscience like "irreducible complexity" and "Intelligent design" spread like wildfire among Christians in the 90s, where people that had always pretended they didn't care about scientific support for God suddenly were quoting Behe. Granted, few Christians actually read his books, they just started saying "what about the human eye?! Aha! I've stumped you!" The vast majority of Christians who I have talked to about why they hold their beliefs will start by trying to give some pseudo science or pseudo philosophical rationale like the argument from design, then when the failure of these are exposed will retreat to "well, I just have faith and religion is about faith".
I'd say atheists are, on the whole, a lot more obsessed with the issue of "proof", insisting that it should be the only rational basis for belief
Atheists are more honestly consistent in their valuing of evidence based reasoning about God, but most theists will try to make philosophical/scientific arguments for their theism when they think they can get away with it.
By definition, reasoned determination that the evidence favors one conclusion over all others is the only rational basis for belief.
Theists actually also know this simple logical fact is true, which is why they apply that standard constantly in daily life, every time they actually care about knowing the truth. They go to lengths to ignore and avoid this fact when it comes to God b/c they know God is not rationally defensible and therefore is implausible, but they care more about the emotional benefit of believing he is real than knowing what is true. Theism is willful deliberate unreason and delusion in order to avoid an emotionally unpleasant reality. Its psychologically the same as the parent who believes their child is innocent of a wrongdoing despite clear evidence of it, or people whose faith in human authorities like Trump is unwavering in the face of clear evidence that their beliefs about the authority are wrong.
quibbling about where the burden of it lies like it's some grand court case, etc.
Burden of proof is NOT just about court cases, it's a cornerstone of all rational thought. The existence of any particular entity or relation among entities constrains the possible universes that can co-exist with it. Thus, there are far fewer possible universes where a X exists than possible universes where X does not exist. Thus, the a priori probability is far lower that God exists than that God does not exist, just like if you make up a creature never imagined before, the probability that it actually exists is near zero and far lower than the probability that it does not exist. Since belief that X exists is a rejection of all universes where X does not exist, it is irrational to believe in X until you have enough evidence to go from near zero probability to at least 50%.
Again, almost all theists abide by this approach on all other topics where they don't have a bias, where they treat non-belief as the rational default until their is sufficient evidence to accept a positive claim. Which shows that they don't sincerely believe in their own dishonest excuses that since God cannot be disproved, it is rational to believe he does.
The issue of "atheism vs theism" etc came up a heck of a lot more often in my secular education than in my religious schooling, and more explicitly in terms of "proof" when it did.
Well of course, because many centuries of reasoned thought has shown the theism loses in every reasoned evaluation of theism vs. atheism. It isn't that being able to rationally defend theism is not important or of interest to theists, but that they know it is a losing enterprise. Since they care more about protecting their belief than whether their belief is true, then they will actively repress any rational discussion of the subject, which they do both within themselves and try to do in others and social discourse by attacking those who have such rational discussions are "rude", "offensive", "militant", and "bigoted".
