Faith in Atheism

Faith is blind and hope is a sign of hopelessness.

I took some flack a while back linking those two words together. I don’t always ask questions because I already know the answer, but is there a point in unbelief that requires faith, in this case, of a young, lifelong casual believer (thanks grandma) who recently decided he’s an atheist, based on a few arguments from a well known celebrity?

He didn’t come to this conclusion based on inadequate religion, gnawing contradictions or of unanswered prayer, etc, but by believing a cleverly worded argument of a well known person. Is this not a show of faith?

Granted, as Rapar stated, “Atheism is the lack of faith like cold is simply the lack of heat, not a natural state of its own“.

And Tildeb; “WTF? What is that bit all about? Creating a false dichotomy here doesn’t create a more ‘balanced’ opinion; it creates another ‘I’m an atheist, but…’ apologist with a drive by smear at those who have every reason to grant experts higher degrees of confidence in their informed opinions. That’s not ‘faith’ of the religious kind at all Jim, and you should know this by now”

Do I need identify what kind of faith I don’t have? How can you not believe something you haven’t investigated? Have you ever had faith? Have you ever been a believer because of indoctrinating parents?His atheism certainly is faith of a religious kind.

Our culture puts onus our way, a weird position to consider belief as a positive and unbelief as its opposite. But we are unnaturally forced to consider belief and make a decision. I would think an informed decision would make a stronger position. This young man is ripe to fall into a Ray Comfort-style trap, just as he did a Joe Rogan.

So, after this I might rephrase, that his faith is not in atheism, but his atheism is faith in the opinion of the celebrity. Because I guarantee in this case, he knows not enough of either, belief or unbelief to really be a believer or a non.

Author: jimoeba

Alternatives to big box religions and dogmas

41 thoughts on “Faith in Atheism”

  1. This is why I’m a Muslim. SOOOOOO much easier! The Quran tells me “This book is not to be doubted,” and the mic drops there! Now, I’m off to mock my Christian neighbors and atheist friends for being silly for not being Muslim. $Allahu Akbar$

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        1. I never thought I farted in church until I got my hearing aids…And no shame required. The truth will set you to laughter for laughter is one of the only truths we know.

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        1. And who did they apologize to when they farted. If god made man, he also made facts, and pee and shit and vomit. I doubt he cared about smells or sights or whatever. But humans have this thing about bodily odors. They are certainly not children of a god.

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  2. Definitions are important. Just look at the confusion between belief of the religious kind – trust in claims or statements imposed on reality as if true ie faith – and belief in the scientific sense – confidence a claim or statement is likely true based on compelling evidence from reality ie reason. Religious belief is imported and imposed. There is no causal connection between the claim and reality (Evil spirits blocked the toilet). Scientific belief is exported from reality, meaning evidence is accumulated to the extent it tips the balance of likelihood to be true, and then applied successfully (Something is blocking the toilet, so we investigate and find Junior’s teddy bear, remove it, and test to see if the blockage has been removed.) Two very, very different meanings from the same word because it suggests two very, very different methods of supporting claims about reality.

    Non belief is an absence of belief. Nothing else is attached to not believing… until applied to a specific causal claim. At that point this notion of likelihood comes into play. How likely is it that evil spirits – malignant agents that are invisible with no material form to investigate – are in the plumbing yet causing a blockage? Well, there is no means available to find out, no way to establish though testing if the claim is likely. At best there may be a correlation with something else (the toilet worked after I sacrificed a chicken and gave burnt offerings to drive away the spirits). So one is left to either believe evil spirits are active agents in the universe for the claim to be true or one does not.

    That’s religious belief in action, imposing a belief on reality that has no means to be verified except by belief alone.

    In contrast, scientific belief uses a method that insists on independent verification (how does the chicken being killed and burned affect these spirits?). The method demands a causal link be demonstrated between the claim being made and the likelihood it is the case. This method must have causal verification of some kind if it is to be considered justified. Do you believe the plumbing is blocked by something that does have form and shape and material properties? What might that be? Can you find out? What did you find? What were the results when this material thing was removed? If you put it back, does it block the plumbing? And when it’s removed again? And so on. A case is built for an explanation through testing until enough evidence is accumulated to indicate justified confidence between a claim and likelihood it is the case. That’s why you will hear over and over again scientists saying they don’t know for sure but the evidence suggests… In other words, belief in scientific parlance is really all about some level of likelihood and the causal reasons that make a case stronger or weaker depending entirely on the evidence. Scientific explanations and models are always conditional although some are so well informed by the strongest causal evidence and no contrary evidence to be the case. These are called theories – causal explanations that work for everyone everywhere all the time to the point where to consider another explanation would no longer allow us to understand why all the applications, therapies, and technologies based on the explanation are suddenly insufficient, suddenly Un-justified. This, too, matters when someone makes a claim without any comprehension that, if true, would dismantle every single application, therapy, and technology that works based on it… yet offers zero evidence for this contrary and incompatible claim. To then accuse those who dismiss the introduced contrary claim as having ‘faith’ in the scientific explanation demonstrates either a rather large amount of ignorance at best or a willful intention to distort and dismiss a much stronger case informed by much stronger likelihood in the service of fooling people into believing there is an equivalency that simply isn’t true between the religious method to impose a belief on reality and the scientific method to extract an explanation from reality.

    Another case in point involves the term ‘theory’.

    Theories in scientific parlance are mankind’s strongest, most enduring, most useful and applicable and reliable and consistent, modeled explanations. These explanations are deserving of our highest confidence. But look how the term ‘theory’ itself is also subject to this same kind of misuse, a term commonly used to mean ‘hypothesis’ that has little if any explanatory power of causality and likelihood.

    So when someone uses scientific terms to try to create a false equivalency with religion, of course people are going to be greatly annoyed. And rightly so.

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    1. “Faith” in a scientific explanation only goes along til you investigate it and validate it for yourself.
      Science is a way to validate predictions so we can navigate the universe we live in. Nothing in science bears the name proven—it bears the name useful and not yet invalidated. It uses two tools—observation and repetition, to come to usefulness. But many are ignorant of some of its key proclamations, and have belief (or faith) the methods have been exhausted by another.

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  3. If I have to think about it, faith was for me that state of being when I did not bother looking at the stories/beliefs I was raised… those stories the adults around me presented as true (or at least true’ish).

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    1. What you need, my friend is to READ a book of truth: The Quran. It says right in it, “This Book is NOT to be doubted!”. I mean, COME ON!!!! WTF else do you need??!! Become a Muslim like me and be saved. OK? $Allahu Akbar$

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    2. That is an excellent observation. Especially the part where it mostly agrees with me…
      I know you’re not doing it for points, but that was a good one.

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  4. The only faith in atheism I can possibly have is that I’m right. lol When I questioned religion in my younger years I was told 1) that I didn’t know enough to make a decision and when I countered that with intellectual facts, I was told 2) that it’s not about facts… faith is believing despite the facts/logic. As an atheist, I have faith in many things… just not a higher being taking interest in or controlling my environment. I have faith the light will turn on when I flip the switch providing I’ve paid my bill and have a working bulb in there. 😉 Faith without reason is ignorance.

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        1. Fine. I wanted to bring a little levity into the conversation, but now I guess I’ll have to drop it and leave you with a song.

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  6. Unlike Darth Vader, I find my lack of faith quite liberating. You get to go where the evidence leads you, instead of constantly trying to align the evidence to fit your beliefs.

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  8. If one is born without religion or irreligion for that matter, I don’t see why all atheists must be intellectual about it. If after listening to this celebrity one leaves their religion, I see no problem. For one believes only that which they believe is true

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  9. All these words. Explanations galore flavored with humor of good taste and bad. Nice try y’all. But I still don’t believe in any god or gods.
    I just realized two things: I miss farts in church and I’ve laughed my hardest, often for no reason, during what they called “Solemn High Mass.”

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    1. Thanks Bill. I wish I could say my best one was in church, but it was BiMart isle 6. Not sure what I ate but the aroma was worse than a rotten duck egg and the faster I walked the farther it spread.

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  10. As usual, the multiple meanings of the word “faith” have undermined our discourse. Atheism, of course, does not demand “religious faith,” but an argument can be made that it requires some “ordinary faith,” such as I have faith the Sun will come up tomorrow. That I do not accept fallacious arguments for the existence of a god or gods (It is the arguments we do not accept, has nothing to do with the gods.) requires some trust in the laws of nature, which I have aplenty.

    It is probable that we would be better off avoiding loaded words such as “faith” and “belief” although our prose gets awkward without them.

    Just as when people ask me “Do you believe in god?’ I have to ask them to describe their god. There are thousands of the damned things and I haven’t considered each and everyone. I do think, in general, that my answer will be “no” in all cases, but I just haven’t heard all of the arguments, so I reserve some judgment. Usually, I answer, “No, I don’t believe you as it is a person making the god claim. Those people confound it and say we are denying their god when it is them we are denying. Can’t deny a god you do not believe in.

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    1. There are limits of language based on its structure that verbs cause nouns. Things are happening and one cannot be without the other. Life is more like a gerund. You are not Steve, but really are a Steving. Yet it even goes a little deeper.
      You used “laws of nature” in your response, yet there are no laws of nature, only regularities. The Hebrew influence still runs deep. We got rid of god but kept the idea of law—that things are somehow governed. But, they are self regulated, like your body is.

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    2. No offense intended, but when you write I haven’t considered each and everyone, it gives the impression that you actually think there might be a god … you just haven’t completed your research. So my question is this … are you (or anyone who is still “doing research”) an atheist or not?

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  11. Christians-certainly David Robertson – often assert that atheists have faith, just as they do. However, they also say that faith is based on reason and evidence.
    Surely then, if faith is faith is faith an atheist’s position is likewise based on reason and evidence?

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    1. Well, at least most of us here have thoroughly investigated—without the arrogance of belief and found it ridiculous. Only by faith is any of sustainable.

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    1. For generations we’ve been raised from the initial presumption that god exist and then have to work our way out of it. The whole thing is backwards

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      1. Indeed; but specific gods, right? The Muslim is an atheist regarding the Christian god. If we really break things down we’d also have to say the Protestant god and the Catholic god cannot be the same god and insist on such significantly different behaviours. So it’s much more “correct” to see atheism as a material and specific denial, rather than a grand generality which we can’t prove.

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  14. Hi friends, I just read your posts, and my heart hurts, “religious” people either around you or seen on TV or radio has let you down, I can tell you what the Bible says, But I don’t want to argue to prove a point, so may I ask a question ? when did you stop believing In God? or why do you not believe?, friends, I’m not here to argue, but to have a meaningful conversation to the most important subject we humans will discuss, thank you for reading, Dave

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