Thursday, August 21, 2008

"It Takes a Lot of Faith to be an Athiest"

I've seen this quote elsewhere. While the religious statement often implies that it takes more faith not to believe in God than it does to believe in him, the typical atheist response I've seen seems to not understand the meaning of the word faith.

Now, I'm not saying atheists are religious, although some do follow their lack of religion devoutly. Saying that it does not take faith to be an atheist or insisting that definitions are being redefined to make that statement is a falsehood. While Creationists often make huge scientific errors in describing the problems of evolution, it seems that the athiest writers of today rely on their own redefinition of terms to make their cases.

It takes no more faith to believe in God than it does not to believe him, but either position is a matter of faith. Both are taking a definite position on a religious viewpoint and declaring a position about something that is at the current time unknowable. Agnosticism is the position that takes no faith. (I'm not saying that this is a good thing, but not being sure that God exists is not making a definitive statement about him.)

Atheists need to not be so afraid of terms normally associated with religion being used to describe their viewpoint, nor get up in arms about it. Having faith that God does not exist is not necessarily a bad thing.

2 Comments:

At Thu Aug 21, 02:16:00 PM 2008 , Blogger C. L. Hanson said...

It's not a question of being "afraid" of terms like faith. The point, as I've explained many times, is that when religious people think calling atheism "faith" is the best way to discredit atheism, then what does that say about their own opinion of faith? It says that they recognize that "faith" isn't as good a reason for believing things as evidence is, and they want to bring atheists down to their level. Even making this argument means that -- for you -- religion already lost; has no credibility.

 
At Thu Aug 21, 03:45:00 PM 2008 , Blogger The Sinister Porpoise said...

Your comment is continuing the error made in the first place. Faith does not always mean religious faith.

You'll see the error if you can distance yourself from your point of view.

 

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