Atheism 101

Is your God willing to prevent evil, but not able?
Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing?
Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing?
Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing?
Then why call him God?
-Epicurus

It’s clear that a lot of people misunderstand atheism. On a forum like Quora, I keep seeing questions like:-

• If atheism is true, then why are arguments for atheism so weak?
• For people of religion: is the U.K’s attempt at stamping out religion from the country impeded by a militantly athiestic (sic) and prejudice (sic) police-force due to it being overly obvious to those who like to use their brains?
• Some atheists in my neighbourhood keep going door to door handing out the atheist Bible. What should I do?
• Do atheists support Satan because they believe if evil wins over good, he will share with them a piece of the pie?
• Atheists, if a 10-year-old child asks you why you don’t believe in God, do you feel guilty for crushing their innocent beliefs?

And there are discussion groups like Debunking Atheism! Even ignoring the fact that theists should have no reason to feel threatened by atheists, how do you debunk a lack of belief? I’ve even seen suggestions that atheism should be abolished! Presumably they would advocate making their own brand of belief compulsory, ignoring one of the basic tenets of religion, that people have free will, and must willingly choose their faith.

So firstly, let’s define some terms. Most dictionaries define Theism as Belief in the existence of a divine reality. In other words, the belief that there is at least one deity. Atheism is the lack of belief in a deity. Atheists see an absence of evidence, and so reject all faith-based belief systems. Agnosticism is the position that it’s impossible to know if there are Gods or not. In effect, agnosticism is a subset of atheism. I would suggest that most atheists are agnostic atheists!

Then let’s dispel some (apparently) common misapprehensions:-

• So since atheism is a lack of belief, it cannot be shown through logic to be false, or untrue or disproven.
• Atheists are not trying to undermine people’s religious beliefs, nor are they conspiring to get rid of organised religion.
• Atheists tend not to proselytise. Unlike several branches of organised religion I can think of, most atheists don’t go around promoting atheism.
• Atheism is not synonymous with Satanism. Acknowledging another ‘magical’ entity such as the devil would be just another belief system.
• A religion can be thought of as an off-the-peg moral code, and it’s a common misconception amongst theists to think that atheists are therefore lacking a moral code. In fact I would argue that they have a moral code at least the equal of theists, but the difference is they follow their moral code, not for selfish reasons such as Christianity’s stick and carrot philosophy of ‘damnation’ or ‘eternal life’… but because it’s the right thing to do.
• Most atheists are neither for, nor against the idea of a deity. Same as their position on Bigfoot, UFOs, Yetis and the Loch Ness Monster; they see no evidence for these entities, but because they have no intellectual investment in their position, would be quite happy to accept such evidence if it came along.
• When it comes to religious friction in it’s various forms, atheists are the ultimate neutrals. They don’t start wars, initiate pogroms or spread prejudice to further their aims. It’s not difficult to argue that the world would be a better place if everyone was an atheist.

So how does atheism start?

Some people have a predisposition to believe things that ‘resonate’ with them. Others take a more rational stance, and will look for proof, evidence, or at least signs of plausibility before embracing a new idea or concept.

Atheists are in the latter group and find no appeal in belief or faith-based systems. They are very often people who had the usual exposure to religion in education, family life and peer groups during childhood; but in maturity, and with the absence of evidence, find no compelling reasons to continue to believe in a god or gods.

Richard Dawkins describes a spectrum of possibilities:

1. Strong theist. 100% probability of God. In the words of Carl Jung: “I do not believe, I know.“
2. De facto theist. Very high probability but short of 100%. “I don’t know for certain, but I strongly believe in God and live my life on the assumption that he is there.“
3. Leaning towards theism. Higher than 50% but not very high. “I am very uncertain, but I am inclined to believe in God.“
4. Completely impartial. Exactly 50%. “God’s existence and non-existence are exactly equiprobable.“
5. Leaning towards atheism. Lower than 50% but not very low. “I do not know whether God exists but I’m inclined to be skeptical.“
6. De facto atheist. Very low probability, but short of zero. “I don’t know for certain but I think God is very improbable, and I live my life on the assumption that he is not there.“
7. Strong atheist. “I know there is no God, with the same conviction as Jung knows there is one.“

It’s also my experience that atheists are often more familiar with religious doctrine than grass-roots theists. Since they are more likely to be rational thinkers, they took a more scholarly approach to (say) the Bible or the Qur’an, before deciding that there was nothing there that added meaning or quality to their lives.

As Mark Twain noted,

“The Bible… is full of interest. It has noble poetry in it; and some clever fables; and some blood-drenched history; and some good morals; and a wealth of obscenity; and upwards of a thousand lies.”

Some atheists will even acknowledge a degree of spirituality, but just don’t believe in a deity as depicted by most organised religions. Thomas Paine expressed it quite well:

“It would be more consistent that we call [the Bible] the work of a demon than the word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind….Of all the systems of religion that ever were invented, there is no more derogatory to the Almighty, more unedifying to man, more repugnant to reason, and more contradictory to itself than this thing called Christianity.

Too absurd for belief, too impossible to convince, and too inconsistent for practice, it renders the heart torpid or produces only atheists or fanatics…. All churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Muslim, are simply human inventions. They use fear to enslave us. They are a monopoly for power and profit.“

Strictly speaking, Paine’s own philosophy was closer to Deism (sometime confused with atheism). Deism is a belief in a supreme being, but a rejection of organised religion.

A common misconception is that it’s not possible to be religious and pursue a rational, scientific, evidence-based approach to understanding the natural world. Science and religion are NOT mutually exclusive, and it’s perfectly possible to be a theist and yet believe in the scientific method.

However, there is a sad subset of Christians who believe that the Bible is the literal word of God, and therefore the Earth was constructed in 6 days, all humans are descended from a gene pool with two people in it, (which happened twice if you believe the story of Noah’s Ark), and this all happened no more than 6,000 years ago. This is at odds with all our accumulated wisdom. Even ignoring evidence from disciplines such as physics, cosmology, biology, endocrinology, geology, palaeontology, etc., we have ice core samples that show a continuous climate record of more than 800,000 years.

They lose sight of the fact that for many years, religion and science coexisted quite happily. Many of our greatest scientists had strong religious views, including Galileo, Newton, Faraday, Maxwell, J J Thompson, Heisenberg and of course Darwin.

Furthermore, most people in high office within organised religion tend to believe in science and the scientific method. The Vatican for example acknowledges the standard Cosmological Model, as well as the Theory of Evolution. They would generally advocate not taking the Bible too literally, but they would see the hand of God in what are otherwise seen as scientific explanations.

There are something like 4,000 recognised religions in the world, but a significant majority of theists choose one of these twelve :-

Baha’i, Buddhism, Christianity, Confucianism, Hinduism, Islam, Jainism, Judaism, Shinto, Sikhism, Taoism, and Zoroastrianism.

So another way to looks at things is to say that atheism is a matter of degree… true atheists reject all twelve, whereas theists only reject eleven!

Author Stephen Roberts said it better…

“I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one god fewer than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.”