What atheism actually is

[robvalue]

I have noticed that a very large proportion of non-atheists have either slightly or completely misunderstood what atheism is. I thought it would be useful to provide a clear explanation that will hopefully help people understand what it is we stand for. The answer is almost certainly, "not as much as you think." Any atheists please provide feedback if you think I misrepresent at any point. It is on the long side, but only to try and hammer home a point which I feel is missing the mark in far too many cases.

If you can't be bothered to read this, please don't be surprised when an atheist accuses you of the strawman fallacy. (Attacking a position that is not actually the one being held.) We'd get on much better if we understand each other properly, and have more fruitful discussions.

First an example to demonstrate the idea of rejecting claims:

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Atheism is the rejection of theistic claims. Before I go into detail, I want to show how rejecting the claim that something is true does not mean that you are saying that the claim is false and thus believe the reverse.

Imagine you and I are looking at a huge glass container with a very high number of marbles in it, from a few metres away. Assume there are far too many for us to possibly count them from our perspective.

It is true that either there are an odd number of marbles in the container, or an even number of marbles. It is one or the other and they are exclusive.

Now say I say to you, "There are an even number of marbles in the container." I am making a claim about knowledge / justified belief. You ask me why I say that, and I say, "Just a feeling."

Do you believe me? Do you have any reason to think I actually know that there are an even number? It seems that I don't, and am most likely making it up. So your reply is, "I reject your claim."

What you are saying is that you don't think it is clear, based on the current evidence, that the claim is true that there are an even number. You are not saying that there isn't an even number. That would put you in the absurd position of having to claim that there are an odd number, in order to not believe someone knows for sure that there is an even number.

So I say, "Why don't you believe me?"
You say, "What reason do I have to believe your claim?"
I say, "Well if you reject my claim that there are an even number, you are saying there isn't an even number. So you're saying there is an odd number. How do you know there is an odd number? How come you have some amazing knowledge that there is an odd number, and you tell me I can't know that there is an even number?"

Hopefully you can see this is absurd. Rejecting a claim is not about saying for sure whether the claim is true or false, it's about not making a judgement about an unknown (in this case odd or even) until you have a good reason to do so.

If instead I said, "Well I put the marbles in there, and I counted them as I did it" then you could consider that evidence to back up your claim. If you accept that I most likely did what I said, you may accept my claim.

But if I then said, "And I put 3 invisible marbles in there" then you would likely not believe me at all, unless I present remarkable evidence to back up this remarkable claim. Again, you're not saying for sure that I didn't put 3 invisible marbles in there, you're reserving judgement until such time as evidence is presented. And the more contrary to reality the claim seems to be, the more evidence that is required to make it plausible.

In the case of the marbles, there is roughly a 50% chance of being even or odd. But that does not mean that if any statement can be true or false, that it is equally likely to be true or false if we had to guess. I don't think you'd say it is 50% likely that I did indeed put invisible marbles in, if you had to guess.

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Now a clear description of what atheism actually is:

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Starting point: There is either some sort of "god", or there is not.

God is an extremely vague term, but here I refer to one of the commonly held ideas about some supreme or at least extremely powerful being which is not immediately obvious to us. The reason I put the last part in is that you could worship anything as a "god", some people worship/worshipped the sun, and I have no problem saying that the sun exists.

Now, some people make a theistic claim. The word claim is very important.

Theistic claim: There is a god [optionally with certain particular qualities].

This is a claim of knowledge, or justified belief, that the answer to the question, "is there a god" is "yes".

The atheist position: I do not accept your claim.

I am only evaluating your claim. That is, I do not see sufficient reason to believe your claim that a god does exist. I am not saying your claim is wrong. I am saying that there is no reason to yet believe it is true.

So the atheist says, "There may or may not be a god. All the arguments I have heard that say there is a god are not good enough reason to believe that there is yet. There still may be one, but I will withhold my belief in it until such time as evidence gives me a reason to believe." A (reasonable) atheist is always open to new information, and would happily change his mind if such evidence did come to light.

You cannot "prove atheism correct", it makes no sense to try and ask someone to do that. Atheism is not making any claims to be wrong or right about. The only way to actually challenge atheism is to produce good evidence that a god does exist. Atheists have no reason to try and prove gods don't exist, any more than you feel the need to prove faries don't exist. You can't spend your life worrying about things that could possibly somehow be true, when there are plenty of real, apparent things to be worried about. If someone is making a claim to know something, then it is up to them to prove their claim is correct. It is not up to everyone else to prove their claim is incorrect. By that logic, you would have to believe as true everything that cannot be proved untrue, which would be an infinite number of bizarre and pointless things. You need a real and reliable way to determine which claims are true. That is reason and evidence.

Some atheists may go further, and make their own claim that, "there is no god." This is referred to as strong or hard atheism. It is however not a requirement to be an atheist, and it is this position which actually has a burden of proof to demonstrate why the claim is correct.

People use similar reasoning all the time, about an infinite number of things that could be true. For example, I could tell you that the next time you go through a doorway you will be cursed for 8 years. Either you will be cursed, or you will not. You do not know for sure whether or not you will be. But unless I give you some reason to believe that the curse will happen, you see no reason to believe that it is in fact real yet.

Because you reject the claim that something is true, that does not mean that you are saying that the claim is false and thus believe the reverse.

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Concluding notes:

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Atheism is the rejection of the god claim. It is not the claim that there is no god. If you try to say that it is, then you have either not read or misinterpreted what I wrote above.

Atheism is nothing more than this. It is not a world view. It makes no claims about anything. It does not logically lead to any other position. It is simply the reaction to a widely held but unsupported (in our opinion) belief. If 80% of the world believed in invisible unicorns, we would need a word for the remaining 20% who don't accept this claim. They wouldn't be saying invisible unicorns don't exist. They have no reason to claim such a thing. They just see no reason to believe they do exist.

So please don't tell an atheist what they believe. If you are not sure, ask. But it's really simple, although quite subtle. You cannot attack or dismantle atheism. There is nothing to attack. Atheism is not science. Atheism is not humanism. It's not being a Nazi. It can even include supernatural beliefs, you can be an atheist who believes in ghosts, faeries, and invisible unicorns. But it is simply the reaction to a commonly held claim, asking for more evidence before believing that claim.

Thanks for reading! (To the 1 person who made it this far.)

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