Stop Trying to Position Atheism as Merely a Lack of Belief

Atheists generally don’t like being called “atheists”. Most will tentatively accept the designation while claiming there’s nothing better and making sure the proper qualifications are in order.

They’ll say, “We don’t believe or claim to know that there are no gods, we simply lack belief in any gods.” They think this keeps the burden of proof off their shoulders. “After all,” they say, “we don’t have to provide evidence for our lack of belief in leprechauns. We are not a-leprechaunist, just as those who don’t believe in Thor are a-thorists.”

[Tweet “Both Christians and non-christians must defend their worldview.”]

Again, this is an attempt to shift (dare we say avoid) the burden of proof. The atheist positions himself as judge declairing arguments to be “convincing” or “not convincing” But this attempt fails in at least two ways:

First, people are not called aleprechaunists or athorists because there is no significant movement in either area which promotes and argues for a belief in such things. Therefore, it is only natural that there be no such formal designations. And until such circumstances warrant investigation in these areas, it will remain this way. If circumstances change, we will take sides that will have formal names.

Second (and most importantly), your belief system is not neutral. Lack a belief in God is only part of a worldview. One’s worldview is produced by asking many questions that include and often depend on belief in God:

• Is there such a thing as morality?
• Does man have free will?
• Why is there something rather than nothing?
• What is the basis for rationality?

By answering these questions, you are creating a worldview (your system of presuppositions and beliefs). All of these are issues of transcendence. The atheist has to answer the question, ”Why is there something” according to the atheistic worldview. The atheist has to justify their belief in rationality. The atheist must give reason for the existence of free will. While the word “atheist” may give the impression that it only has to do with a lack of belief in God, the reality is that they are “naturalists” (often materialists) and, as such, must give a positive explanation for the claims of their worldview.

Excerpted from the following:

http://credohouse.org/blog/5-ways-to-be-a-better-atheist-a-guide-for-unbelievers

 

1) All supernatural beings probably appeared reasonably plausible in some culture at some time. And there were likely always skeptics of these beings as well.

2) “Atheism” is not a term that tells you what someone’s worldview is. It could be Marxist. It could be Nihlist.They could be strict moral utilitarians or pure hedonists.

 

Most atheists/agnostics just dont want religion pushed on them or effecting how they live their life.

A few make it their purpose to convert others to atheism. These few are often quite loud, just as the evangicals they oppose. They are indeed pushing a sort of religion with a doctral code full of blank pages (or worse, state worship) in place of official doctrine.

But, again, they are a small and merely vocal minority.

 

Most theists don't want atheism pushed on them or affecting how they live their lives. That door swings both ways. Vocal minority? Perhaps, but a very noisy one.

 

Atheists are faith believers, yes.

 

Oh, look another atheist proving the point of the article.

 

Agnostics are the only ones who can claim to be logical and honest simultaneously on the issue.

And Im a Christian, just ftr.

 

Exactly right.

 

Theoretically, no, as a practical matter, though, most of the time it can give a pretty good indication of where they are coming from.

 

I remember a guy in basic training, in the dark one night in the barracks, protesting he was an atheist. A nearly very dumb guy came back with, "No, you are wrong. There are too many wonders in the world. Just all of these marvels. Too many."

And having spent so much of my life then and now, whether in the country or in the city, I still believe that: there are too many marvelous, wondrous happenings in the world, and on the seas, and in the mountains, and in the air. Too many times I have survived events that involved airplanes, helicopters, boats, streams, mountains, knives, guns, fire, and explosives, when I should not have survived. And there are just too many marvels in the world, and too many events that buck the curve.

Atheists do not live in the wondrous world, I think. They live in blocks and rooms, they work in cubes. They have charts, and graphs, and tablets, and chalk, and computers. They love fast food.

 

I like this thread. There's a been a lot of ramblings and random quoting on this forum for a while, this seems more like a reasonable setup for debate.

Many atheists have constructed their atheism around a sort of Cartesian doubt sort of situation (or they have inherited a version of atheism which is constructed it as such). Indeed, they want to avoid the burden of proof, and therefore set out to present a body of arguments which does not claim anything that it couldn't prove. That means you can't really proclaim "there is no god", so those atheists don't proclaim that. Such an avoidance of the burden of proof doesn't seem to me to be a problem for atheists.

Of course, there are other atheists who are quite prepared to say that there is no god, and it's not surprising that the viewpoints have become muddled up in the eyes of people who don't subscribe to them. However, if we want to address the arguments in a way that doesn't just seem like distraction and strawmanning, we can't mix contradictory arguments.

Ok, so let's get back to those Cartesian atheists (that's not an established phrase or anything, I just needed a shorthand). They might not be comfortable with claiming that there is no god, but they still see the religious arguments as unpersuasive. You present a first and a second argument.

I don't quite understand your first argument, is it an argument against atheists not wanting to call themselves atheists? That's not a position I have run into very often, and it seems to me not a logical point as much as a marketing point.

So let's get to the second point. You say that lack of belief is only a part of a worldview. I imagine the Cartesian atheist would agree with you. Such atheists are not arguing for gay marriage or whatever *because* there is no god, they're presenting an argument which they say would be valid if no religious argument overrode it. This means that them being in favour of gay marriage is fundamentally based on something outwith their lack of belief in god. That's why there is such a range of atheists, there are communists, American liberals and libertarians, Buddhists (arguably) and so on. Atheism doesn't steer them towards their communism/libertarianism/whatever, it just takes the religious angle out of the equation. At that point, I would say the atheism is neutral, but given that it is not mutually exclusive with other ideas, the resulting individuals are not necessarily neutral. This strikes me as not really a problem for atheists.

There are two answers to this that I would like to visit. One is basically a reiteration of an earlier point, many atheists hold other ideals which they allow to answer those questions. Some atheists will argue that free will is a product of biology, others will argue that there is no free will. It's outside the purview of atheism, so it's not really a problem for atheism.

Secondly, I would argue that your argument "atheists must give a reason..." is incorrect. Let's imagine a small box (heavy enough to show that there is something in it). Let's say someone says "I think it's your left hand that is in the box". You look down and see your hand on your arm, outside the box, so you make the argument that "no, the thing in the box is probably not my left hand". The fact that you failed to provide an alternative explanation for what is in the box in no way hurts your argument that it's not your left hand. I think this example shows clearly that rejecting one idea doesn't require you to have a competing answer.

 

As the article pointed out, none of them can explain why there is something rather than nothing. None of them can explain how life came from non-life. And the list goes on and on, the distance from the earth to the sun, so on and so forth.

 

Swenson, you always have the best replies, but this post is not original to me, it's an excerpt from a larger article that covers more ground. The link is at the bottom of the OP. But let me get back to this later, I have to get going right now.

 

Do you live in a cube?

 

It's more of a rectangle.

 

Religious explanations for the unknown don’t have a great history. The rising of the sun for example. Or the belief among chemists of the 19th century that biochemical compounds could not be synthesized from nonliving matter. We’ve come a long way since then.

Part of the problem is philosophical: the cause of there being something rather than nothing no doubt involves forces beyond our current understanding. Yet there’s no benefit to assigning sentience or omnipotence to those causes. That doesn’t explain anything, it just raises more questions. How was there a complex consciousness capable of information processing at the dawn of the universe? And why create a mostly empty space full of seemingly scattered rubble? You can try to answer those questions. But without a doubt, inserting a shod into the universe creates more hard questions than it answers. I think the motive behind that is pretty clear.

There continue to be breakthroughs in the field of abiogenesis. I saw one recent study showing self-replication of amyloid protein structures, which I thought was pretty compelling. A few years prior to that, glycolysis products were successfully catalyzed without enzymes using simulated prebiotic earth conditions. Until there seems to be a “dead end” to this research, there’s no reason to dismiss it.

There are a number of schools of thought on abiogenesis. However, just on the surface, the notion of using biochemistry to explain what is a biochemical phenomenon (life) seems like common sense to me. If you were trying to figure out how fossil fuels formed in the Earth’s mantle, you would study petroleum geology and organic chemistry. Not religion.

 

Yeah, they thought they had it figured out with the Urey Miller experiment, I think it was called, which has since been discredited.

Yes, there are forces beyond our understanding, but when the Church says something is a "mystery", we can't get away with it, we are expected to explain everything.

See the problem? The difference is that we are not trying to explain everything, we are not trying to state how the universe came into being beyond what we have already said, but Aquinas did take a shot at talking about why there is something rather than nothing, from a philosophical point of view, but that's not enough for some people. (However, the Big Bang was advocated by a Catholic Priest, not bad for a Bible thumper.)

But that's not our mission. Our mission is to show a better way to live, and no thinking person can claim that the world would not be a better place if everyone followed the 10 commandments, although I'm sure many people would have a problem with it, which is why the world is in the mess it's in.

I have seen a lot of technological and scientific progress in my lifetime and I wouldn't trade it got anything but people still starve, are murdered, and wars are still going on.

 

You still haven't actually explained why not believing in god is any different from not believing in leprechauns. I can be absolutly sure there are no leprechauns because they are a creation of man. I can be equally sure there is no gods for exactly the same reason. Same applies to ghosts, unicorns, faeries, little greenmen on the moon, etc,etc,etc.

 

No one has to explain to atheists about the difference between deity and unicorns.

That is never an issue for a believer, only for some reason to those whose faith are nonbelief.

That's their problem only.

Hint, cube dwellers: just don't believe and move on down the street. Nothing for you here.

 

Atheists and agnostics are little different then born again Christians. Let’s say there are about 23 major religions in the world. A devout Christian dismisses all but one. An atheist or agnostic just dismisses one more. So let’s not pretend that non believers are delinquent in any morality. They just require more then faith, which by its own definiton, is the lack of evidence.

 

And their faith is that God does not exist although they cannot prove it.

 

No more then religion can prove there is a God. It’s a lot easier to disprove God then it is to prove there is one. The belief in a devinity is fraught with contradiction. By the way.... It’s possible for people to be “spiritual” and believe there is something beyound themselves without being religious. That makes a lot more sense then attaching a name to a God then pretending you know what it is.

 

You can have that opinion, dagosa, but who cares. You cannot disprove God: you have neither the logic, nor the language, nor the symbols. I am glad you understand the difference between spiritual and religious. And if your understanding works for you, good for you!

 

I’m surprised you think I’m less prepared then you to debate the existence of “a God, “ not “God”. You misrepresented what I said. That’s a bad start on your part.

A good friend is an ex priest. I asked him to prove the existence of a pGod. He stated, “ How can you deny the existence of a God when you hear the beauty of a classical music composition.”
My simple reply to such reasoning is, “ I prefer country music.”
You give it a try. Pick out a God though.

 

I've always considered that to be the definition of an agnostic. An Athiest believes there is no god.