Several years ago a friend of
mine told me that he was an atheist. He said that atheism was “the lack of
belief in a god”. When I first heard this, I gently asked him if he thought
that God did not exist. He said he agreed with that statement. I told him “well
then, you are an atheist, but you clearly have
a belief about a god. Namely, that he does not exists. Therefore you do not
lack a belief.” This pretty much ended the conversation. I thought this kind of
reasoning was just something kooky my friend had come up with and it would
never again see the light of day. Recently
though I have seen some smart individuals become dumbfounded at hearing this definition,
because of the slipperiness of the logic. The logic is thus: If you lack a
belief in something, you are not making an assertion, and therefore you have
nothing to defend. By claiming a lack of belief, you lack a burden of proof.
However, anyone who claims atheism is the lack
a belief in God misunderstands the nature of beliefs. People cannot directly form beliefs. A belief
is formed by the impact of the (non)compelling influence of evidence or
reasoning given for a specific claim. In other words, we (dis)believe in God
based on the information we have about Him.
To lack a belief means we are
unaware of the claim “There is a God”. This leaves us unable to form a mental
concept of the claim (i.e. a belief). Fortunately, all of us reading this have
now been presented with that claim and we have now formed a belief about that
claim, if we had not already done so. If you say you lack a belief in God you
either mean, 1) you think there is not enough evidence to believe in God or 2)
you are disingenuously denying that a claim has been made. If “1” congratulations! You are now a member of
the age old tradition of Athieism! If “2”, let’s just review my points again
briefly.
1.A belief is the formation of
a mental concept about some aspect of reality generated by inference and/or
evidence.
2. A lack of belief means that
no mental concept has been formed about a claim given. The moment a claim is given, a person forms a
mental concept about the truthfulness of a claim.
We could hypothetically have
a lack of belief about X if X had never been conceptualized by us, but the
moment it has been heard and understood, we form a belief about it. You may
believe or not believe in hobbits, but the moment you have been made aware of
the claim that hobbits live in the Shire, you must form a belief about the
truthfulness of this claim.
Finally, the atheist has no
excuse in taking a position which asserts “there is no god” without providing
evidence or reasoning when prompted. If
you claim atheism you must be able to defend your position, just as the theist
must defend theirs.
For more
on beliefs:
http://www.bethinking.org/truth/the-formation-of-belief
