What Is Atheism?

Introduction

When debating creationists and those of a theistic bent I am often accused of being a man of faith, which is odd because I’m an atheist.

The argument (raised by theists) is that to believe there is no god requires as much (if not more) faith than it requires believing there is one. Sometimes the argument appears to be based around the claim that I (the atheist) must believe in something and (in my case) it is claimed that I positively disbelieve in a god or gods and that must be a position of faith.

If the theist view is correct and atheism was, indeed, a faith then atheists must also be hypocrites for attacking the views of other religions when theirs is a position of faith as well.

The purpose of this article is to define the various terms involved in the issue i.e. theist, agnostic, atheist, fideist and to defend the position of atheism as a non-faith based stance.

Terminology

In order to discuss atheism and the various alternative stances it is necessary to define exactly what these stances are. I have used a number of reference resources to support this.

• Theism may be defined as a “belief in the existence of a god or gods” but more specifically as a “belief in the creation of the universe by one god” (1678) .
• Polytheism is defined fairly universally as a “belief in or worship of more than one god” (1613).
• Fideism is defined as a “reliance on faith rather than reason in pursuit of religious truth” (1885)
• Pantheism is a doctrine that identifies the universe with a god but Miriam-Webster Online goes on to further define it as “the worship of all gods of different creeds, cults, or peoples indifferently” and also equates it with religious tolerance (1732).
• Agnosticism is a doctrine “that the existence of deity can neither be proved nor disproved” and in broad terms an agnostic is considered to be “one who is not committed to believing in either the existence or the non-existence of God or a god”.
• Atheism (most critically as far as this article is concerned) is defined as a “belief that there is no god” (Collins), “a doctrine that denies the existence of deity” (Encarta) and “a disbelief in the existence of deity” (Miriam-Webster, 1546).

Still on the subject of terminology it is part of the English language that the use of an “a” in front of a word reverses the sense of the word, for instance the phrase “typical behaviour” refers to behaviour that is expected whereas “atypical behaviour” refers to behaviour that is not typical. “Biogenesis” refers to the generation of life from existing life and “abiogenesis” refers to the generation of life from where there was previously none. Someone who is “moral ” is understood to be an individual who adheres to an acceptable set of standards, whose behaviour is understood to be good and correct, an “amoral” person is one who does not do so (and not merely because it suits them to do so, such an individual would be defined as “immoral”). Effectively the preceding “a” simply means “without” so in the examples above the words “atypical”, “abiogenesis” and “amoral” can be understood to mean “without adhering to (or not exhibiting) the expected behaviour”, “life arising without life already being present” and “without morals” respectively.

In the context of this article a “theist” is someone who believes in a god or gods and, in common with how the preceding “a” is similar cases within the English language, “atheist” therefore can be understood to simply mean “without god or gods” (or denies the existence of god or gods).

Atheism can therefore be considered the absence of theism and any individual who cannot say “I believe in a deity or god or religion” is an atheist, the term atheist can therefore be seen to completely encompass (include) the term agnosticism (Barnett).

Discussion

One of the key points to understand about atheism is that is not defined as believing there is no god, it is defined as “not believing there is a god” … the first position is (as it says) a belief, the second simply a lack of belief (Barnett) i.e. an atheist is a person who does not believe that any gods exist (Carrier, 1996).

Most monotheistic religions will claim that their god is all-seeing, all-knowing & all-powerful and yet maintain that we have free however if a god is all-seeing and all-knowing the future must be preordained and the claim we possess free will a contradiction. Monotheistic scriptures tend to brim with such contradictions (internally and with each other) and the rational atheist, lacking a belief in such things, may safely reject such claims without forcing their worldview to become a specific belief especially when they maintain objectivity by repeatedly requesting adeqaute support for the same. If and individual claimed to be able to fly and repeatedly failed (either actually or by refusing to provide evidence) to provide demonstrable evidence then lack of acceptance of the claim would be the product of reason rather than of faith, It is the same when an intelligent and rational atheist does the same WRT claims that gods or goddesses exist.

If this kind of theist argument were taken to its logical conclusion then all possible argument on all topics are inherently untenable. If the only counter to someone arguing that there is life on Saturn is someone else shouting that there can be no life on Saturn then what does one call a person who would state that there is no evidence for or against life on Saturn but maintains that the proposition is of interest?

An atheist (using the Saturn analogy) is someone who has stated that there is no evidence for life on Saturn i.e. that it is therefore up to the believer in Saturnine biology to provide some, otherwise the debate cannot begin and it is interesting that a number of extra-terrestrial life theorists often use theist-style arguments to support their views, particularly with respect to credulity. After carrying out some meaningless calculation to work out how many planets are likely to exist and suggesting that that makes the likelihood of life on some of them overwhelming, anyone questioning their assumptions is immediately branded arrogant for thinking that we are in some way ’special’. Ultimately a calculation of probability alone is insufficient evidence to make such a claim & observed experimental evidence is required especially since, at present, we only have validatbale evidence for life on one planet in the universe, Earth.

Of course this reasoning can also apply to interfaith issues … a christian does not believe in Allah (though many more reasonable individuals might consider the Christian & Islamic gods to be one and the same) any more than they accept the existence of Zeus or Odin and likewise a Muslim will not believe in the Christian god.

Religion tends to be characterised by a number of features or neccesities, which are summarised in the following table:

The Characteristics Of Religion

	Religion	Atheism
Belief in a Non-Demonstrable Deity or Deities:	Yes	No
The Necessity of Prayer/Worship/Ceremony:	Yes	No
Places of Worship:	Yes	No
Holy Books & Scriptures:	Yes	No
Religious Authorities (Priests, Rabbi etc.):	Yes	No
Supernatural Beliefs (e.g. Angels, Demons):	Yes	No
Acceptance Of The Miraculous:	Yes	No
Belief in an Afterlife (e.g. Heaven or Hell):	Yes	No
Holy Wars (Crusades, Jihad’s etc.):	Yes	No
Post Life Reward & Punishment (Heaven/Hell):	Yes	No
Lifestyle restrictions (dress, diet, marriage etc.):	Yes	No
Belief Without Evidence (faith as a virtue):	Yes	No
Belief In Spite Of The Evidence (anti-science):	Yes	No
Supernatural Origins (of life, the universe):	Yes	No
Fundamentalism (extremists, murder, dark ages):	Yes	No
The Need to Convert (doorstep preachers etc.):	Yes	No
Eternal Soul (life/forgiveness after death):	Yes	No
View Others as Sinful, Unclean or Heretical:	Yes	No
(Usual Sole) Claim to being God’s Chosen:	Yes	No
Comfort Factor (that others go to better place):	Yes	No
Morality:	God	Self

From the table it can be seen that atheism fulfils none of the normally accepted necessities to be considered a religion.

Conclusion

From the above it is easy to see that atheism is not a religious position and is, in fact, a denial of the essential claims made by religions and their adherents. Even “agnosticism” is covered by the term “atheist” because as an “agnostic” one does not accept the dogmatic statement that gods or goddesses exist i.e. the commonly used term “agnostic” equates to “weak atheism”. From this it can be inferred that the commonly used term “atheist” usually equates to “strong atheism”.

Atheism is not a religion, it is, quite simply, a denial of the claimed existence of gods and that those who refer to atheism as a religion (as creationists and literalists often do) are either unaware of exactly what an atheist is or too blinded by their own religious & bigoted views to define it objectively or correctly.

References

• “Religion of Atheism” Adrian Barnett
• The Language Centre” Miriam-Webster Online
• Paperback Dictionary & Thesaurus” Collins
• Encarta Online Concise” MSN
• What is Atheism Really All About?” Richard Carrier, 1996
• E-Mails”, Iron Cestus

Kyuuketsuki (Co-Founder: “Science, Just Science” Campaign)