Atheism Redux

First off, Danny, thanks for your response. Although I really enjoyed all our discussions in the past, I feel like writing them down makes the arguments themselves much clearer and more interesting as we can get deeper into the issues.

So, reviewing your argument, you started off by differing with my interpretation of the definition of atheism. I then wrote in my second post that the first definition offered by dictionary.com that "the doctrine or belief that there is no God" was very much the strong form of atheism that denied God's existence. I never intended the first definition to be an example of weak atheism, founded on a lack of belief, as you might have been implying.

However, the second definition "disbelief in the existence of a supreme being or beings" supports my argument that atheism is an absence of belief, not a positive belief in the non-existence of a supreme being. Going further, the definition of disbelief as "the inability or refusal to believe or accept something as true" concurs exactly with the meaning of weak atheism.

Your quote is quite revealing: “an unbeliever has the proofs (of implicitly, Christianity's truth - my comments) and incurs the guilt of setting them aside”. Wouldn’t you agree that the logic of this quote is grounded in Christianity's truth, which I am setting aside? I am not surprised it is referred to in the definition but can you not see how I might object to that logical starting point?

So I believe that the first argument, that atheism can simply be the absence of belief, is supported by the dictionary.com definitions. If pushed, I would adopt this position as the safest and ultimately most sane response when discussing these issues with religious folks. I like this approach to atheism because it simply sets aside questions of belief, and provides no opening for arguments that atheism is just another belief or just another religion.

*****

Emily also kindly sent me an email related to this discussion suggesting that we clarify what we mean by God in this discussion. So, for the purposes of this discussion I would define God as being any one or more of the many gods and goddesses that have been worshiped by humanity in the last three or four millennia. I would include the contemporary Hindu gods such as Vishnu and Shiva, Norse gods such as Thor and Loki, the Roman gods and so on, as well as the God of the current three great monotheistic religions: Christianity, Judaism and Islam.

However, these gods and goddesses are just a subset of all entities for which there is no empirical evidence for their existence. And while there is a big difference between unicorns and the many gods and goddesses of the various people on earth, all of these entities share the common characteristic of lacking any scientific evidence demonstrating their existence. Indeed, it is one of their defining attributes: one must simply believe.

Circling back to the strong atheism argument, I thus think that the statement "there are no unicorns" is logically the same as "there is no God", and about as reasonable. If we enumerated all the current and past Gods and Goddesses, how many would a Christian be comfortable stating do not exist? And how many people today would think that such statements would be reasonable – akin to stating that unicorns do not exist?

Why exactly does the same logic not apply to the Christian God? For a Christian the answer is obvious. However, for me, and I would suggest for a disinterested observer of the discussion, the answer is not at all obvious.

I also don't think it matters that a great many more people believe in the Christian God or that Christianity is a much more enriching experience compared with a belief in unicorns. Just because millions, or even billions, of people believe something doesn't make it true. That would simply amount to taking the thinking behind the line "if I say it thrice then it is true" to the mathematical limit.

*****

The third argument I would make is based on Sebastian's interesting comment (check it out here). For me, one really interesting part of his email was where he pointed out that every society known has an associated religion or belief system. It appears to be impossible to be human and not have spiritual or religious thoughts.

There is a fascinating article in the latest New Scientist by Michael Brooks that addresses this point. He looks at a number of researchers and their work in trying to unravel the origin of religious belief. One of the key points in the article seems to be that not only are our minds are biologically receptive to religious belief, but that it may almost be the ‘default’ setting.

Having become a parent I can certainly see how this makes sense. Aralyn has had an entire imaginary pantheon of characters for sometime, and it would be simple for her to make a logical step to an imaginary, but powerful God. Such a belief would also be very comforting to her: she has struggled for some time to get her head around death (she came across this while watching the Lion King) which is really hard when you are only four. God would make this so much easier and simpler for her.