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Atheism is a very narrow position about belief in deities. It is the lack of belief in ANY deity.
“Atheist” literally means “without god” and the opposite term is “Theist”. A theist believes in one or more gods, an atheist believes in no gods at all.
Spoiler
There is no central atheist organization promoting some sort of atheist “orthodoxy”. Atheists by definition believe in zero gods, but despite this can be for example, politically conservative, practice one of the atheistic religions like Buddhism or Taoism, believe in an afterlife, or many other things that violate typical stereotypes about atheists.
It’s true that most atheists tend to be irreligious rationalists, empiricists, philosophical materialists, and affirm the scientific method as a means of investigating the nature of reality. It is true that they tend to be politically liberal. But all of these characteristics are far from universal.
Atheism sounds arrogant. How do you know there are no gods?
We don’t know that there are no gods. Atheism is a belief position, not a knowledge position.
Spoiler
The vast majority of atheists do not deny the possibility of gods, they simply sees no valid evidence or logical argument that would convince them to believe in one or more of them.
It is ironic that most theists are theists only about one particular god -- the one the happen to believe in. Most Christians for example are every bit as atheistic about Thor as is any atheist. An atheist simply declines to believe in one more god than most theists.
That sounds like agnosticism.
That’s because most atheists ARE agnostics. With respect to deities, an agnostic believes you can’t know if there are gods or not; but one who is gnostic believes you can. Theists tend to be gnostic, though not all are. Atheists tend to be agnostic, though a few are gnostic.
I thought agnosticism was a “not sure” middle ground between theism and atheism?
That is a common misconception. It may be helpful to visualize the following quadrants:
This perceived “middle ground” agnostic is most often probably an agnostic theist who limits their questioning to the existence or non-existence of a particular god rather than to the existence or non-existence of any god. This is arguably asking the wrong question and leads to the indecision and confusion that some associate with agnosticism. It is a struggle over a false binary choice (see the discussion under “But what if you’re wrong?” below).
Aren’t atheists just mad at god / disappointed with / hate god?
By definition, It is impossible for an atheist to be angry or disappointed with god, since there is no belief in the existence of the god. Keep in mind that atheism is far more basic than a quibble with a particular deity; it is, at bottom, a lack of belief in even the generic concept of gods. A believer in a particular deity, such as the Christian god, has to first overcome an atheist’s lack of belief in any god at all, and then proceed to make the much more difficult cases for Jehovah or Jesus.
Spoiler
Ironically, some former theists who have “deconverted” and become unbelievers, find in atheism a way NOT to be angry or bitter or disappointed about the god worshipped by their religion of origin. It is belief in a deity that creates the possibility of disappointment over things like unfulfilled promises. Unbelief is, for many, the way forward to a better way of thinking about the vicissitudes of life.
Aren’t atheists just “burned” by some church?
Not all atheists are former believers. There are many who never embraced theism. For those who are former theists, the decision to believe or not believe in god is a function of thinking about the evidence for god and then determining the probability of that god’s existence and the necessity of that god to explain reality.
Spoiler
While it is certainly possible for bad experiences within theism to play a role in prompting the re-examination of one’s beliefs and assumptions, it can inherently be little more than a precipitating factor. Not believing in any deities is a considered belief, not a temper tantrum.
Anyone rejecting god for emotional reasons is unlikely to remain an unbeliever for long. Perhaps this is why many believers prefer to imagine that atheism is an emotional reaction rather than a rational assessment of facts, arguments and probabilities. If it is simply an emotional stance, then there is hope to appeal to an atheist to become a theist, and the atheist’s position can be dismissed as a “misunderstanding”. If on the other hand atheism is a rational position based in empirical reality, not only are atheists unlikely to be vulnerable to theist ideology, they are actually a threat to it.
No believer would ever turn from the faith! Any atheist claiming to have been a Christian could not have been one in the first place.
Then you must believe that no one ever reconsiders a position or belief or re-examines evidence. This is the “No True Scotsman” fallacy and unfortunately it is encouraged by explicit Biblical support (I John 2:9, which states in part, “if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us”).
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But the fact is that people routinely encounter new information and reconsider their views and that changes them from one label to another, but doesn’t negate what they changed from. For example, it would be completely inaccurate to say that a Democrat who becomes a Republican was “never truly a Democrat in the first place”. And indeed, by this logic, Christians who once were the most vile sort of sinners, should not revel in their sinful past and claim a testimony of having a “changed life”; after all, if they became a Christian they must not have really been “true sinners” in the first place!
Doesn’t atheism lead to despair? Isn’t your life meaningless and empty?
No. Atheists are human beings just like anyone else and can be depressed just like anyone else. But most atheists think life is all the more wonderful for being a found treasure, and all the more precious for us being “mere” mortals. Scarce resources are always more valuable precisely because of their scarcity.
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This question confuses atheism with nihilism -- while also managing to misunderstand nihilism! Nihilism is, simply put, the belief that life has no inherent meaning or purpose. But even if an atheist subscribes to nihilism (and not all do), this does not mean that one cannot find or make meaning or purpose for oneself. It simply means that it’s not externally bestowed. Meaning and purpose are up to the individual.
Besides, nothing about atheism prohibits a person from believing in things like inherent meaning, absolute morality, or even an afterlife. These things can be thought to exist quite apart from gods. It’s true that most atheists don’t believe in an afterlife, objective morality, or inherent meaning. But nothing prevents them from doing so if they choose. And nothing prevents them from the successful pursuit of happiness if they don’t.
But how can you have hope without an afterlife?
Most atheists do not believe in an afterlife but this is not a source of despair or hopelessness except, ironically, for theists in the early stages of losing their faith. And this is mainly because theists have built their entire worldview and expectations on the false hope of an afterlife. It is, primarily, a failure of imagination.
Spoiler
There are tremendous upsides to the realization that this life is the only one we have:
It makes this life all the more precious and encourages us to make the most of it.
It encourages us to mitigate human suffering and resolve interpersonal issues in the present rather than deferring these things to the afterlife
It reminds us that all humans are in this thing called life together … those who disagree with us or who are different are not consigned to eternal damnation or (depending on your views) condemned to some sort of lower class of humanity who will eventually see the light as you do.
It removes the terror of eternal punishment inherent in many world religions.
It encourages us to live humbly within our true scope as creatures with limited intellects and perceptual equipment, rather than with the inflation that we are specially chosen to know capital-T Truth and to be favored and regarded by an omnipotent being.
It encourages us to learn to sit with uncertainty and to admit that we don’t know what we don’t know, rather than create gods to fill the gaps in our knowledge.
It encourages us to wrestle with the hard questions and moral uncertainties of life rather than cop out to an asserted external revelation about what is real and true (see section on morality below).
But what if you are wrong?
Blaise Pascal, a 17th century philosopher, formalized this question in what has come to be termed “Pascal’s Wager”. Briefly put, Pascal poses a fatally flawed false binary choice: if god is real, then believing in him has infinite benefits and not believing is an infinite harm. If he is not real, then you are out nothing for having believed. You might as well cover your bases.
But the truth is that the choice is not simply between no god and the Christian god. All the gods who have ever been worshipped, and even gods that no human has ever heard of, are also on the table. What if Vishnu was the “true” god? And in addition, any actual god would know you were just hedging your bets and weren’t a “true” believer. So believing “just in case” would not count.
Spoiler
It is difficult sometimes for theists to understand the implications of considered unbelief because the concept is such a taboo for them. If one truly does not believe, then there is no “what if”. Most theists do not believe in leprechauns and because of this they do not worry about how leprechauns might punish them for their unbelief. It is the same for atheists with respect to deities.
What about morality? What keeps you from doing terrible things to others?
Atheists, like everyone else, are governed by considering their actions, weighing the consequences, and deciding whether they are doing more harm than good to themselves and other people.
What is actually unsettling, is the notion that the only thing keeping many people from committing terrible crimes is the threat of eternal punishment. Who would you trust more: someone who does right because they choose to and want to, or someone who does right because they fear the consequences of getting caught and punished? Which of those two people would be more likely to do the right thing regardless of enticements to the contrary?
Spoiler
Most atheists believe that morality is an emergent property of society that came into being the first time two humans had to cooperate or coexist. It is the sum of the explicit and implicit negotiations that take place between humans on a daily basis. Some of it is widely agreed to, such as protecting and nurturing our young and respecting personal property. Some of it is less universal and cross-cultural. And it is always evolving, and that’s a good thing: we think about human slavery far differently and more justly than we did just a couple hundred years ago, for example.
Morality is not a thing-in-itself; it is simply that which most people agree consistently helps sustain and perpetuate the sort of civil society most of us wish to live in. In truth, that is the only actual morality theists have, too, it is just that they pretend to be the inventor, keeper and protector of morality, and that it was handed down from on high. But note that no religion strays very far from the mores of the society that houses it. If a religion did that, it would be … immoral, and would suffer the censure and sanctions of society.
“There are no atheists in foxholes”. Many atheists have cried out on their deathbeds for god.
There are anecdotes of deathbed or crisis regression to theism, and some of them may even be true. But that would not speak in any way to the validity of either theism or atheism. It would be a commentary on how humans sometimes respond to stress.
Spoiler
In reality any human, whether or not a believer, who has not fully accepted the reality of their own mortality, will have issues when forced to confront it. And people will have responses to the process of dying, which can be painful and challenging in its own right.
Don’t atheists have an agenda to promote [insert object of fear and loathing here]?
No. Both theists and atheists agree and disagree about things like gay marriage, the scientific theory of evolution, abortion, and other topics which are controversial in some societies broadly.
Remember, atheism is a belief statement about all deities. It is not picking on the Abrahamic deity in particular, although obviously, atheists who live in a predominantly Christian nation will tend to have the most informed opinions about that particular religion.
Spoiler
Atheists inherently cannot have an “agenda” because they are not part of an organized movement. There are millions of atheists in the US alone and one of the largest explicitly atheist organizations, American Atheists, has only some 2,200 members. We are not “joiners” by and large. We do not have a “Bible” or a body that decides what atheists support or believe. By definition, atheism is a very narrow position: it is lack of belief in gods -- nothing more. Individual atheists are completely free to believe the same things that theists do about various topics -- or not.
But atheists are always mocking believers and trying to deconvert them.
Atheists have opinions and express them just like theists. They are human beings like theists, and have their fair share of likeable and obnoxious people.
Spoiler
In everyday life, both theists and atheists generally get along just fine. Indeed, most people avoid discussing religion (or politics) on a routine basis and so aren’t very aware of where others even stand on such matters.
The only place that theists and atheists ever clash in practice is in the so-called “marketplace of ideas” -- those public forums where people come together deliberately to formally or informally debate issues. This includes the book publishing world, academia, and online discussion and debate forums. If a believer’s goal is to “never hear a discouraging word” then they should simply avoid these forums and information sources, and enjoy their own echo chambers. No one is forcing any individual believer to think about their beliefs in any way other than they choose to.
What theists, particularly conservative ones, have trouble comprehending is that unbelievers truly don’t believe in their taboos and so that statements they make are, to them, nothing more than forthright disagreement and disbelief.
The argument can then be made that out of respect for the sensibilities and values of theists, this kind of speech should be toned down or stopped altogether. But unbelievers don’t particularly enjoy being repressed in this way, any more than, say, Christians would embrace an attempt to shut down their preaching of the evangel.
What’s really going on here is that religion has had such worldwide hegemony for so long that it is accustomed to deference and respect for its claims without having to in any way substantiate them. In recent generations, though, religion has increasingly had to operate on a more level playing field that doesn’t recognize its special pleading for legitimacy or the untouchable nature of its tenets. Such an environment should be a positive and strengthening influence for any belief-system grounded in reality -- not an existential threat either to the belief or to its believers.
The reason for this “sea change” is not atheism, but increasing human understanding of reality and the improving availability and accessibility of this information. And it is not limited to theological matters. There was a time when literally millions of people believed in prescientific ideas about disease, for example, such as the notion that sick people should be “bled” to treat illness. In the light of modern understanding of disease, most people -- theists included -- think these notions silly and laughable, because now we know better. If a faction of humanity clung for some reason to these now-discredited ideas, then they would find others incredulous that they still hold such notions. It is no different in any other field of human endeavor -- including theology.
The universe had a beginning, therefore there must be a Creator.
The reader is reminded that humanity is currently confined to the realm of (hopefully intelligent) speculation about the origins of the universe. Science has not yet settled the question of how the universe came to exist or how life arose (although it has settled the question of how life evolved on Earth, see the next section). At present we only have hypotheses.
Spoiler
Among the things we don’t know is whether the universe had a beginning. It seems intuitive to think that it had a beginning because we are creatures of time and find it difficult to think in other terms. But to assert that the universe had a beginning, is to assume that time has always existed in its present form and behaved in the ways it currently does. Currently our mathematical explorations of conditions close to the “big bang” suggest that time (among other things) breaks down under those conditions. For all we know at present, our universe itself is effectively eternal, winking in and out of existence periodically.
This “cosmological argument” that a creator is a necessary entity is basically an example of “god of the gaps” thinking. This thinking basically says that if we don’t currently understand something or know the reasons for it, we cannot admit it. Instead of reserving judgment and awaiting further information and understanding, we must insert god into that “gap” in our knowledge. But doing this simply confines one’s god to the ever-shrinking gaps in human knowledge. Any god worth the label should be much bigger than that.
Atheists promote the theory of evolution in contradiction to the Bible.
Evolution is not “promoted by atheists” but is an established fact of science. It is true that most atheists embrace the science, but evolution is not an agenda or propaganda campaign of atheism, because atheism (we can’t repeat often enough) is not about how species evolve, origins (which by the way evolution does NOT address) or anything other than lack of belief in gods. Evolution is not necessary to justify unbelief so it is extraneous to it.
Spoiler
A widely misunderstood fact is that the word “theory” in the context of science is very different from the popular usage of the word to refer to one’s pet ideas or speculations. A scientific theory on the other hand represents the highest level of proof. Science begins with a hypothesis which must be falsifiable and therefore provable. After a hypothesis is found via the scientific method and peer review to accurately explain and predict the aspect of reality that it addresses, then it is given the label “scientific theory” which is defined as “a proven explanatory framework”.
Evolution is proven, and it is no less valid than the theory of gravity or the germ theory of disease. Theists generally don’t have problems with proven scientific theories, but the problem with this particular proven theory for a minority of Christian theists is that it does not fit literalist / inerrantist dogma about how living creatures came into existence, and over what time frame.
Most Christians are not literalists and have made varying degrees of peace with the scientific theory of evolution. Many for example believe in theistic evolution which basically admits that evolution by natural selection is a fact of science but that god used it as the mechanism to bring forth varied life in the world. But to do this, they must take the account of creation in Genesis 1, which says god created the earth and all living things in a few days, as not literally true. And this is the crux of the problem for literalists, who identify as Young Earth Creationists (YEC) or who promote the more generic arguments of Intelligent Design (ID).
It is far beyond the scope of this document to go into detail about the many levels on which it’s wrong to insist that the creation story or the flood account in the Bible literally happened. Nor are entrenched literalist / inerrantist believers going to be convinced by a presentation of established facts that contradict their interpretation of scripture. We will simply leave it at this: science follows facts wherever they lead; faith decides in advance what is true and looks for ways to force-fit facts to what is already decided. Which is one of the harms many atheists believe comes from religion. Which leads us to our next question.
Why are atheists against religion? Why can’t they “live and let live”?
Atheism is not inherently anti-religion. Significant numbers of atheists are opposed to aspects of religion, for considered reasons. But this is a matter of intellectual debate, not some sort of crusade. In normal, everyday life, atheists don’t lay awake at night thinking of ways to get rid of religion or religious faith. It is, in fact, a matter of indifference in and of itself to most atheists. “Live and let live” is indeed what most reasonable people prefer, and atheists are no exception.
Spoiler
Atheist activism against religion, to the limited and specific extent that it actually exists, would disappear tomorrow if theists would confine their control of people’s personal lives to their own people and not attempt to extend it to people who do not hold their views.
This does not mean that theists can’t advocate for their politics or sensibilities, but it does mean that people outside their religion, including atheists, are free to disagree with them and to oppose them with counter-advocacy. This is not only, or even mostly, a matter of theist vs atheist, but also of theist vs theist. Many conservative Christians in America, for example, are all for freedom of religion, so long as it applies only to their religion. They want their shrine to the Ten Commandments in front of the courthouse, but not an Islamic shrine to the Quran or a Satanic shrine to Baphomet. And certainly not a rationalist display about unbelief. Similarly, they want to pray before town council meetings, but not if the prayer is offered by an Imam or if an alternative invocation is given by an atheist.
Atheists do not have secret basement orgies, eat babies or proselytize in competition with believers. We are ordinary people next door, law abiding, tax paying citizens to the same extent as any believer. We are not all that far apart in real, everyday life, from our theist counterparts. Our main issue is with a minority of conservative theists who see us as an existential threat because our disbelief in their One True God is intolerable to them and they feel compelled to be controlling about it.
Consistent with Administrator's rule against proselytizing, which was posted when the Atheism and Agnosticism sub-forum was created in June of 2008, we are now formalizing a practice that has been informally in place for several years. Do not quote Bible verses in this forum. It is generally inappropriate. If you expect to post a Bible verse without earning an infraction, be prepared to defend doing so with absolute, incontrovertible clarity. For example, When asked Why do Religious people try to convert everybody? in the thread with that title, the clearest, most simple answer was to cite the Great Commission from the Gospels. Otherwise, don't do it.
I want to clear up some confusion over the Atheism & Agnosticism FAQ.In early 2016, the moderators were approached about the possibility of creating a FAQ.
Most of the writing was done by Mordant, with help from Arequipa and MartinEden99. The role of the moderators was to review the material for accuracy, make a few suggestions for clarity, and to post the finished product since regular members can't post in the locked Sticky threads.
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Atheism & Agnosticism FAQ
