There's a lot of confusion about what the burden of proof actually is. Literally, the burden of proof is the requirement of an individual or group to warrant a certain epistemic position.

Atheism does have propositional content. You often hear atheists claim that the burden of proof lies with those making the positive claim--in this case theism--which is by all means absolutely correct but it misses the larger epistemic difference. When theists claim atheists have no proof of their position, it is somewhat misleading for two reasons I) it's often conflated with the assertion "a deity (or deities) definitely do not exist and II) the only evidence you can gain for something's non-existence is negative evidence (or evidence of absence).

However, that doesn't excuse atheism of any burden. The negation of X is necessarily a proposition which entails its own negative evidence, or further propositions with positive evidence themselves. Saying "I don't believe X" is epistemically identical to saying "X is false"; the only difference is a linguistic trick which denotes personal impositions of probability. The burden of proof for both instances is identical, as establishing your lack of belief is exactly the same as pragmatically establishing something's falsehood, otherwise you wouldn't lack belief in the first instance. This isn't a controversial claim to make, like, at all; it's pretty much what every atheist does in a debate when they properly counter theistic claims, but there seems to be a general consensus within the community that atheists lack a burden of proof for their propositions.

The lack of evidence for something--given observation and non-confirmation of positive synthetic propositions--is evidence for the lack of it. And, indeed, positive propositions can contradict other positive propositions; creationism specifically is refuted--not only by the negative evidence of atheism as an ontological claim--but the overwhelming positive evidence of evolution. We should present our evidence for our positive assertions, and we should present our negative evidence to establish the probabilistic assertion of "God doesn't exist".

The burden of proof is not some essence of epistemology, in which propositions take part. It's a functional rule, that applies only insofar as people are willing to refuse or volunteer to uphold it. If the main claiming the invisible unicorn fails to substantiate his claims, his burden of proof should be pointed out repeatedly, but there comes a point where it's worthwhile to break out the infra-red cameras and capture some negative evidence.

This all seems redundant if you're going to make the claim that nothing is absolutely provable--something to which I agree. What I don't agree with, fundamentally, is that absence of evidence is evidence for absence. I can't accept that.

As per the example given in the other thread with the raptor, I can keep obfuscating its existence to the point where there's absolutely no humanly possible method right now that will allow you to verify its existence--and your response to that is to lock up the individual who sees the raptor. Or call him stupid for believing its existence.

Sure, you can do that, but you still haven't proven its nonexistence. Because you can't. So what you'd do in response to the person in question who sees the raptor is... vastly irrelevant.

Proof =/= evidence.

Genuine question - what's the difference?

Proof =/= evidence.

Well, technically, it's the other way around, isn't it? Evidence is not proof, but proof is evidence. It's a bag of potato crisps. Once something has been proven, all you need is the bag of potato crisps to prove it again (to someone who may not know). One bag of potato crisps. Before something has been proven empirically, however, then yeah... you're gonna have to gather up all sorts of crisps--big pieces, small pieces--and put them in a bag, and that's gonna take awhile before someone says, "Okay, yeah, that's enough crisps to constitute... one bag of potato crisps."

Once you assemble the entire bag, though, that's all the evidence you'll ever need to prove your claim again to someone who's arguing with you. So in that regard, evidence begets proof. Of course, you're not going to convince anyone of anything with a single crisp, but that doesn't mean that you won't with an entire bag, which does in itself constitute a bag full of... evidence.

metaphors are fun

I'm not claiming a refusal by you to provide evidence for this raptor is evidence of absence. I'm saying attempts to observe the empirical properties of this raptor which repeatedly yield nothing is evidence of absence. Like, the absence of evidence for milk in the bowl is evidence of its absence.

Okay, that's a lot better. But that begs the question--how would atheists prove the absence of a god? I asked this in the previous thread as well, and your answer was something like:

Depends upon the nature of the deist gods in question. However, the complete absence of evidence for any empirical proposition relating to the potential existence of said deist gods would be the negative evidence.

which, to me, sounds like you're going back and forth on the burden of proof thing. Is there priority involved? That is to say, does the person who is making the positive assertion have a prioritized burden of proof? Is that what you're saying? In order to assert the existence of a god, you must have evidence for that god. In order to assert the opposite, you must have evidence for that, too. But no one's going to assert absence without asserting existence FIRST. Hitchens's razor comes to mind.