What does atheism mean

Atheists exist across the political spectrum. We are members of every race. There are atheists in urban, suburban, and rural communities and in every state of the nation.

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Atheism is one thing: A lack of belief in gods. All atheists are different The only common thread that ties all atheists together is a lack of belief in gods. Our Latest Tweets My Tweets. Cranford NJ Examination of an argument in support of a modest form of agnosticism will ensue, followed by discussion of three arguments for atheism and one argument against a more ambitious form of agnosticism. Theism, in turn, is best understood as a proposition—something that is either true or false.

It refers to the propositional content of belief, not to the attitude or psychological state of believing. This is why it makes sense to say that theism is true or false and to argue for or against theism.

Therefore, in philosophy at least, atheism should be construed as the proposition that God does not exist or, more broadly, the proposition that there are no gods.

For example, many writers at least implicitly identify atheism with a positive metaphysical theory like naturalism or even materialism.

His argument is that this definition can best serve as an umbrella term for a wide variety of positions that have been identified with atheism. Unfortunately, this argument overlooks the fact that, if atheism is defined as a psychological state, then no proposition can count as a form of atheism because a proposition is not a psychological state.

The issue for philosophy is which definition is the most useful for scholarly or, more narrowly, philosophical purposes. Instead, it is a popular label for a movement prominently represented by four authors—Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens—whose work is uniformly critical of religion, but beyond that appears to be unified only by timing and popularity.

Further, one might question what is new about the New Atheism. The specific criticisms of religion and of arguments used to defend religion are not new.

Also, while Dennett makes a passionate call for the scientific study of religion as a natural phenomenon, such study existed long before this call. Indeed, even the cognitive science of religion was well established by the s, and the anthropology of religion can be traced back at least to the nineteenth century.

Shifting from content to style, many are surprised by the militancy of some New Atheists, but there were plenty of aggressive atheists who were quite disrespectful to religion long before Harris, Dawkins, and Hitchens.

Dennett is not especially militant. Finally, the stereotype that New Atheism is religious or quasi-religious or ideological in some unprecedented way is clearly a false one and one that New Atheists reject. For elaboration of these points, see Zenk Rowe, a friendly atheist himself, contrasts friendly atheism with unfriendly atheism and indifferent atheism.

Unfriendly atheism is the view that atheism is true and that no sophisticated theistic belief is justified. In spite of its highly misleading name, this view might be held by the friendliest, most open-minded and religiously tolerant person imaginable. Perhaps an even more interesting distinction is between pro-God atheism and anti-God atheism.

A pro-God atheist like John Schellenberg who coined the term is someone who in some real sense loves God or at least the idea of God, who tries very hard to imagine what sorts of wonderful worlds such a being might create instead of just assuming that such a being would create a world something like the world we observe , and who at least partly for that very reason believes that God does not exist.

Such an atheist might be sympathetic to the following sentiments:. It is an insult to God to believe in God. For on the one hand it is to suppose that he has perpetrated acts of incalculable cruelty. On the other hand, it is to suppose that he has perversely given his human creatures an instrument—their intellect—which must inevitably lead them, if they are dispassionate and honest, to deny his existence.

It is tempting to conclude that if he exists, it is the atheists and agnostics that he loves best, among those with any pretensions to education. For they are the ones who have taken him most seriously. Strawson By contrast, anti-God atheists like Thomas Nagel — find the whole idea of a God offensive and hence not only believe but also hope very much that no such being exists.

Also, in none of those senses is one required to be an atheist in order to be an antitheist, so antitheism is not a variety of atheism. He said that he originally. He argued that, since neither of those beliefs is adequately supported by evidence, we ought to suspend judgment on the issue of whether or not there is a God.

For example, it might be identified with any of the following positions: that neither theistic belief nor atheistic belief is justified, that neither theistic belief nor atheistic belief is rationally required, that neither belief is rationally permissible, that neither has warrant, that neither is reasonable, or that neither is probable.

Yet they have faith that God exists and such faith at least in some cases involves belief. Thus, some fideists are extreme agnostics in the epistemological sense even though they are not agnostics in the psychological sense.

More likely, though, what is being claimed by these self-identified agnostic atheists is that, while their belief that God does not exist has positive epistemic status of some sort minimally, it is not irrational , it does not have the sort of positive epistemic status that can turn true belief into knowledge. Hopefully, context will help to disambiguate.

This makes a huge difference to the issue of justification. Consider, for example, this passage written by the agnostic, Anthony Kenny 84—85 :. I do not myself know of any argument for the existence of God which I find convincing; in all of them I think I can find flaws. Equally, I do not know of any argument against the existence of God which is totally convincing; in the arguments I know against the existence of God I can equally find flaws. So that my own position on the existence of God is agnostic.

That view would, of course, come in two flavors: theistic gnosticism—the view that theism is known and hence atheism is not —and atheistic gnosticism—the view that atheism is known and hence theism is not. Jeanine Diller points out that, just as most theists have a particular concept of God in mind when they assert that God exists, most atheists have a particular concept of God in mind when they assert that God does not exist.

Indeed, many atheists are only vaguely aware of the variety of concepts of God that there are. For example, there are the Gods of classical and neo-classical theism: the Anselmian God, for instance, or, more modestly, the all-powerful, all-knowing, and perfectly good creator-God that receives so much attention in contemporary philosophy of religion.

There are also the Gods of specific Western theistic religions like Christianity, Islam, Judaism, and Sikhism, which may or may not be best understood as classical or neo-classical Gods. There are also panentheistic and process theistic Gods, as well as a variety of other God-concepts, both of Western and non-Western origin, that are largely ignored by even the most well-informed atheists. Philosophically sophisticated theists, for their part, often act as if refuting naturalism establishes the existence of the particular sort of God in which they believe.

Diller distinguishes local atheism, which denies the existence of one sort of God, from global atheism, which is the proposition that there are no Gods of any sort—that all legitimate concepts of God lack instances. Global atheism is a very difficult position to justify Diller 11— Indeed, very few atheists have any good reason to believe that it is true since the vast majority of atheists have made no attempt to reflect on more than one or two of the many legitimate concepts of God that exist both inside and outside of various religious communities.

Global atheists might object that, even if atheism and metaphysical naturalism are not identical, a belief in the former can be based on a belief in the latter; in other words, if one has good arguments for the view that nature is a closed system, then that removes any burden to consider each God-concept separately, so long as all legitimate concepts of God imply that God is a supernatural entity—that is, an entity that is not natural, yet affects nature.

This is no easy task, especially given recent work on naturalist forms of theism e. The crucial point, however, is that no one has yet made that case. Concerning the issue of what exactly counts as a legitimate or religiously adequate concept of God, various approaches might be taken.

See, for example, Le Poidevin 52; and Leftow 66— In some religions, especially but not only certain Western monotheistic ones, worship involves total devotion and unconditional commitment. To be worthy of that sort of worship if that is even possible when the pool of potential worshipers are autonomous agents like most adult humans requires an especially impressive God, though it is controversial whether or not it requires a perfect one.

For example, even if the ancient Egyptians worshipped the Sun and regarded it as worthy of such worship, the global atheist need not deny the existence of the Sun. Instead, the global atheist can claim that the ancient Egyptians were mistaken in thinking that the Sun is worthy of religious worship. If we examine, without prejudice, the ancient heathen mythology, as contained in the poets, we shall not discover in it any such monstrous absurdity, as we may at first be apt to apprehend.

Where is the difficulty in conceiving, that the same powers or principles, whatever they were, which formed this visible world, men and animals, produced also a species of intelligent creatures, of more refined substance and greater authority than the rest? That these creatures may be capricious, revengeful, passionate, voluptuous, is easily conceived; nor is any circumstance more apt, among ourselves, to engender such vices, than the license of absolute authority.

Accessed 12 Nov. Nglish: Translation of atheism for Spanish Speakers. Britannica English: Translation of atheism for Arabic Speakers. Subscribe to America's largest dictionary and get thousands more definitions and advanced search—ad free! Log in Sign Up. Save Word. Definition of atheism. We could talk until we're blue in the face about this quiz on words for the color "blue," but we think you should take the quiz and find out if you're a whiz at these colorful terms.

Words nearby atheism at hand , athanor , Athapascan , Atharva-Veda , at heart , atheism , atheist , atheistic , Athel , athelia , atheling. What does atheism mean? Where does atheism come from? Did you know …? How is atheism used in real life? Try using atheism! The word atheism refers to a fear or distrust of religious people. Atheism and Agnosticism get mixed up a lot when the question of divine existence comes up.

How familiar are you with the difference between them, pray tell? Words related to atheism nihilism , disbelief , doubt , freethinking , godlessness , heresy , iconoclasm , impiety , infidelity , irreligion , irreverence , paganism , skepticism , unbelief.

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