Thinking to Believe

There’s a concerted effort by a lot of atheists to redefine “atheist” from the metaphysical claim that God does not exist to a personal claim about one’s psychological state, namely that they lack a belief in God. It’s a strategic move to remove any burden of proof for their position (God does not exist). This redefinition has some interesting implications:

1. Atheism and theism could both be true at the same time.
2. Atheism is just an autobiographical assessment and tells us nothing meaningful about whether God exists or not.
3. Atheism cannot be true or false.
4. People who have evidence to believe in God are atheists.
5. Babies and cats also qualify as atheists.

Lacking a belief in God makes one an agnostic, not an atheist. Besides, while most of these atheists lack belief in God, they do not lack beliefs about God. They think he (probably) doesn’t exist, and that belief must be justified.

Atheists increasingly like to define atheism as the lack of belief in God rather than the affirmation that God does not exist, essentially transforming atheism from an ontological claim to a psychological state.  Richard Howe recently had an interesting critique of this redefinition, pointing out that on this definition of atheism both atheism and theism could be true:

It is becoming increasingly more common for atheists to define atheism, not as the denial of the existence of God, but as a lack of belief in the existence of God. … This definition of atheism entails the quirky conclusion that atheism is logically compatible with theism. This is so because if atheism is the lack of a belief in god, then it could be the case both that atheism is true (i.e., it could be the case that George Smith, for example, lacks the belief in God) while at the same time that God actually exists.[1]

See also:

• What exactly does it mean to be an “atheist”?
• Not So Fast: There is No Presumption of Atheism
• Atheists may lack belief in God, but they do not lack beliefs about God
• No one is born an atheist

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[1]Richard Howe, “God Can Exist Even if Atheism is True”; available from http://quodlibetalblog.wordpress.com/2011/11/15/god-can-exist-even-if-atheism-is-true/; Internet; accessed 15 December, 2014.

When you ask an atheist why they are an atheist, it’s not uncommon for them to respond, “Because there is no good evidence that God exists.”  If that is their only justification for atheism, they have made a gross logical blunder.

In the case of genuine dichotomies (such as God’s existence: God exists, or God does not exist), the lack of evidence for A is neither evidence against A, nor evidence for B.  In order to conclude that A is true or B is true, one must have positive evidence for the truth value of A or B.  The absence of evidence for both A and B simply means that we must suspend judgment.

Applied to the debate over God’s existence, even if one wants to argue that there is no good evidence for theism, it does not follow that theism is false, and it certainly does not follow that atheism is true.  To conclude that theism is false one must present positive arguments against theism.  Likewise, to conclude that atheism is true, one must present positive arguments for atheism.  Atheism is not the default position in the absence of evidence for God’s existence.

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What are your thoughts on this message?  Agree or disagree?  Is atheism a religion?  Why or why not?

UPDATE: February 13

Now that I’ve heard from you and interacted a bit with your answers, here are my thoughts on the message:

I think the message and image is powerful.  I agree with the message too.  Atheism cannot be meaningfully identified as a religion.  This might seem like a no-brainer for some since atheism lacks belief in a deity, but belief in a deity is not a sine qua non of religion.  Think of Buddhism, for example.

The best reason for rejecting the claim that atheism is a religion is that atheism is nothing more than the belief that God does not exist.  There is no other content to atheism.  For something to qualify as a religion, not only does it need a set of beliefs, but it needs to contain positive beliefs.  Religions typically involve rituals of some sort, and provide answers to questions about origins, what’s wrong with the world, morality, meaning and purpose, and what the future holds.  Atheism does not address any of these elements.

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I have heard several atheists claim that “all people are born atheists.”  One popular slogan says “I’ll die like all believers are born: an atheist.”

If the point of such slogans is merely that no one is born with a belief in God’s existence, and that such a belief develops later, I agree.  Babies do not have beliefs regarding such things.  This much is obvious (although it is irrelevant to the question of the truth of theism).  But if their point is that babies should be described as atheists, this is patently absurd.  Indeed, it’s because babies do not have any beliefs regarding God that they can be neither a theist nor an atheist.

No one is born an atheist.  To claim otherwise is to employ a faulty definition of atheism as “a lack of belief in God.”  So defined, atheism is relegated to a psychological state rather than a rational claim regarding the veracity of a particular proposition.  This is not only a departure from the historic definition of atheism, but it guts it of any rational significance.  Atheism is not a lack of belief in God.  That is more properly described as “agnosticism.”  Atheism is the belief that the proposition “God exists” is false.  No baby is born with that belief, and thus no baby is born an atheist. (more…)

In recent years there has been a lot of debate regarding the proper definition of “atheist,” even on this blog.  Traditionally, atheism has been defined as the claim that God does not exist. In the mid-20^th century, however, atheist philosopher Antony Flew attempted to redefine atheism.  Noting that the Greek prefix “a” is a term of negation, Flew said the proper definition of a-theism is simply “not a theist.”  Another popular way of cashing this out has been to define atheism as “one who lacks belief in God.”

What’s the difference between these definitions?  The traditional definition is an ontological claim (God is not included among the entities that exist) while the new definition is a psychological description (“I have no belief regarding the existence or non-existence of God”).  We might label these two ways of defining atheism as  “ontological atheism” and “psychological atheism.”

Why does it matter how we define atheism?  It matters because of the burden of proof.  A principle of rational discourse is that he who makes a claim bears the burden to defend it.  If someone claims that God does not exist (ontological atheism), he bears a burden to demonstrate how he knows this to be true.  On the other hand, one who lacks any beliefs with respect to God’s existence (psychological atheism) bears no burden of proof because he is not making a claim to knowledge.  He is merely describing the content of his beliefs – that his stock of beliefs does not include a belief regarding the existence or non-existence of God.  Flew understood this.  He purposely redefined atheism to make it a psychological description so as to absolve atheists from their burden to defend the claim that God does not exist.

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Great post from Amy Hall of Stand to Reason.  Reproduced below in its entirety:

On Harper’s Magazine’s blog, Christopher Beha discusses his recent article on what he calls the “New New Atheists”—that is, atheists (such as Alain de Botton) who, having determined that God does not exist, are now exploring the question of how to restore those aspects of life whose foundations were destroyed along with God: meaning, wonder, morality, etc. But, he says, there’s a problem:

Rosenberg—a philosopher at Duke with a predictable commitment to rigor—insists that doing away with religion means doing away with most of what comes with it: a sense of order in the universe, the hope that life has some inherent meaning, even the belief in free will….

I was interested in the attempts of Harris and Botton to salvage some religious splendor for the secularists. So I was only more disappointed to find Rosenberg’s insistence that such efforts were hopeless far more convincing than the efforts themselves.

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