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October 7, 2016 at 4:15 am (This post was last modified: October 7, 2016 at 4:19 am by robvalue.)
From my website:
(Long)
Atheism is one of the most misunderstood positions. It is very simple, but many people insist on making it way more complicated. It is a response to the claim that one or more gods exist. If you accept this claim, you are a theist. If you reject the claim, you are an atheist. Being an atheist does not necessarily mean you are claiming that there are no gods. You may make claims, but this goes beyond what is simply atheism. On its own, atheism cannot be wrong because it makes no claims to be wrong about. Atheism/theism on their own only address the question of belief, and do not address knowledge. That is where gnosticism/agnositism come in.
The important thing here is that by rejecting the claim that one of more god exists, you are not automatically saying the claim is false. This is a subtle disctinction, but a very important one, as this causes most of the confusion when it comes to atheism. Let me demonstrate with an example of something much more down to Earth. Let's say you and I have been given a huge tub of sweets. There's so many in there, that it's impossible to count them all by just looking at the jar. I say to you that there are an even number of sweets in the jar. I am making a claim of knowledge. You have two options. You can either accept my claim, or reject it. If you accept it, you are agreeing that it is a sensible conclusion to say that there are an even number of sweets in the tub. If you reject it, you are saying that you don't think there is a good enough reason to draw that conclusion.
Since I have given you no evidence whatsoever, the sensible thing would be to reject the claim. I am clearly just guessing, so why should you believe that I know there is an even number in there? But notice by rejecting my claim, you are saying that you don't believe me when I say I know there are an even number. You are not saying that my claim is actually false. This would be ridiculous, because to reject my claim that the number of sweets is even, you'd have to make your own claim that actually the number of sweets is odd. That is a similarly absurd position. Instead, what you are saying is that you don't think my claim of knowledge is justified, and until there is more evidence, you don't accept this as true. You are maintaining the default position that we don't know if the total is even or odd, and need more evidence to decide.
It is the same with a god claim. If someone claims that a god exists, and I reject that claim, I am only saying that I don't see enough evidence to believe your claim. I am not also making my own claim to the opposite, that there are no gods at all. I am simply reserving judgement, and only believing a claim when there is enough evidence. This is the only sensible way to approach any claim. By default, you will reject any claim, until such time as you see enough evidence to accept that claim. The only alternative is to accept every claim at face value. You would then have to believe everything you are told, and hold any number of ridiculous contradictory beliefs which may or may not have any bearing on reality.
Atheism and theism are not decisions. Belief, or a lack of belief, is a state of mind. You cannot simply choose to believe something, even if you want to. You can say you believe it, but you can't actually switch over your brain state at will. So to say to an atheist, "Why do you choose to be an atheist?" is a badly formed question. All you can ask of them is for them to pretend that they believe. Why anyone would want them to do that, I don't know. An atheist cannot help being that way, and the only thing that could change them into a theist is further evidence, an event, or a critical examination of their own thinking to discover a mistake.
Similary, if you as a theist honestly hold the belief in a god, then you cannot simply choose to stop believing either. What may change your mind is new evidence that makes the god propostion look less likely, an objective reconsideration of the evidence that convinced you in the first place, or a critical analysis of your thinking. Of course a theist may have no reason to seek out such a deconversion! But they should not fear a fresh examination of their evidence and thoughts, because the truth is not subject to opinion. Often the reason for belief is an emotional one in my opinion, whether or not the theist realizes this.
Examining all your beliefs and assumptions, and challenging them, is a healthy thing to do for everyone. There are many mental traps we can all fall into without realizing it.
Quote:There's actually three distinct positions, two of which are atheism. These are sometimes called weak and strong atheism. (Strong atheism sometimes gets used to mean gnostic atheism too.) For more discussion on the meaning of agnostic and gnostic, please see here. Notice that there are actually two different questions that can be asked:
Question 1: Do you have an active belief there are one or more gods?
Question 2: Do you have an active belief there are no gods?
Position 1: Y, N: Theist (could be agnostic or gnostic)
Position 2: N, N: Weak atheist (agnostic) - since this position makes no claims of belief, it cannot claim to "know for sure"!
Position 3: N, Y: Strong atheist (could be agnostic or gnostic)
Everyone is in one of those 3 positions by definition. People who say they are "just agnostic" are almost certainly in position 2. So essentially they are agnostic atheists but prefer to drop the "atheist" part. This may be because of the stigma attached to the word, or it may be because they are using different definitions for words. By the definitions I use here, agnostic is not a middle ground between theism and atheism.
Position 2 is the default position. It is undecided.
