Is atheism a belief?

[bennyboy]

Still not sure what the problem is with saying atheism is a belief.  I say there's Skydaddy.   You say, "Yeah. . . I doubt it, bud.  Show me."  You believe Skydaddy isn't real, but you're always willing to accept evidence to the contrary.

Why are atheists fighting so hard to be seen as people who simply lack a belief, and not as those who believe certain propositions are likely false?

Atheism = without belief in god

Asexuality = without sexual attraction to others

Amorality = without morality

What's the issue? There is no issue. The disingenuous attempt to push atheism as "a belief" is simply a sad attempt by theists to paint atheism as requiring just as much faith as theism.

A + theism = without theism. Without a belief in a god or gods. It's truly simple.

I cannot force myself to believe in god as I cannot force myself to believe that 2 + 2 = 5. You can scream and shout that I have a "belief" that 2 + 2 = 4, but unfortunately for you your efforts would be in vain. I don't "believe" that 2 + 2 = 4, I simply accept it as the fact of what my senses and logic are telling me.

The semantics are a little off, there, as only one of those is an -ism.

There are two ways of deriving atheism:
1) atheos (no god) + ism (a belief) = A position that there is no god.
2) a (not) + theism (belief that god exists) = A lack of a position that there is a god.

The former is sometimes called hard atheism, and the latter soft atheism. The other words don't really break down as ambiguously as that, precisely because they are not -isms.

It's clear that hard atheism represents a belief. But what about soft atheism? If you are just saying, "Hey, dude, I don't subscribe to theistic thought," then is this a lack of belief?

It seems to me that normally, an "-ism" suffix is generally applied last. For example, "polytheism" isn't a collection of theistic traditions (poly + theism). It's an ism formed on the idea of multiple gods, (polytheos + ism). "Pantheism" isn't saying that theistic traditions are everywhere (pan + theism); it's a formation of an everywhere-god (pantheos) with the systematizing noun former, "-ism" added to it. Linguistically, then, I think it's perfectly reasonable to expect that someone who declares as atheist holds to the position that God does not exist-- and, in fact, I'm pretty sure that this is how the term was originally intended.

Add to this my former complaint, that one normally doesn't look for things one lacks a belief in to identify with (I'm an a-unicornist, a-spaghetti-monsterist, a-magic-space-monkey-ist, and a million other not isms), then I think the expectation that there's some kind of belief, either explicit or implicit, in this particular -ism is a fair one.

I suspect that modern atheists like the ones in these forums often use the term to mean "not a theist," without much consideration for the actual God idea at all. But in that case, rather than identifying as atheists, I think it would be clearer if they identified as non-theists.