From the agnostic’s point of view
It should thus be seen that the above two arguments of theism are in fact rather lame in ruling atheism out of court. To that extent, it is already quite obvious that the case for theism is actually short for what it is about. Note should also be taken that with respect to this theism-atheism issue, it is theism that must shoulder the burden of proof. As everyone knows that there is really no evidence for the non-existence of anything, it would be dialectically improper to require atheism to do likewise. That being the case, it should also be observed that the only way to settle the issue is for the theist to confront the atheist with some additional proof to shore up his side of the argument. But for all I know, all the theist has managed to offer are not anything that the atheist in particular is able to accept.
In this connection, let me also say that the above debate has in fact not really gotten anybody anywhere. How is one to know if the universe, or God for that matter, is really eternal and infinite? On what factual ground are we to decide whether one or the other is really so, existing without beginning and without end in both temporal and spatial respects? I would rather think that since all we have are concepts such as ‘eternity’ and ‘infinity’ rather than something to which these concepts could actually be applied, there is really no justifiable ground to side with the theists on the one hand, or the atheists on the other. Both positions are made to burn, if I may say so, on speculative conceptualization rather than fact. In this connection, I would even be tempted to say that there are two kinds of ‘fools’ (observe