Does Atheism Require Faith?

I recently received a message from someone asking about whether atheism requires faith (in the same way that theistic belief requires faith) and the related issue of exactly what atheism is: What is the correct way to define the term? Is it a lack of belief in God? It is the declaration that God does not exist? And how is it related to agnosticism? I thought this was the perfect topic for the GCRR blog, so, I decided to answer the question here.

What is Atheism?

How to define the word atheism is tough, as many different people (even among unbelievers) have many different ideas. This is part of the reason you would get pushback on an atheist Reddit forum if you were to try to define it one way or the other. Some will even push back on using the word atheist at all to describe unbelievers. We wouldn't call those who don't' believe in Zeus "azeusists." Instead, we would call those who do "worshipers of Zeus," and then probably not even have a name for the group of those who don't (whether they do so actively or not). They are just "everyone else." "Azuesist" would really only be used by those who do believe in Zeus as a slanderous term to refer to those who don't. To start using the term "azeusist" to describe those who lack belief in Zeus would be to capitulate, in a way, to those who do; we would be letting a person's simple lack of belief in Zeus be defined in terms of an "opposition to those who do." So, to label those who don't believe in God as atheists might be as unfair as it would be to label traditional theists as azuesists, aapolloists, aosirisists, araists, etc. Still, the word "atheist" is used, even by unbelievers, to describe unbelief. But, you can get pushback if you use it in one way or another. This is because disbelief can come in many different varieties. There are (at least) those who (1) profess to know that no God exists, (2) to be confident that no God exists, (3) profess to merely believe that no God exists, (4) those who profess to not believe one way or the other on the matter, and even (5) those who just don’t profess anything on the matter, belief or otherwise, for various reasons (e.g., they don’t care, haven’t thought about it, etc.).

Now, how to define "theist" is a bit simpler: a theist is someone who actively believes God exists (although they may claim to know so, be confident, or admit it is just a belief). Since the “a” in “atheist” really just means “not”, technically “atheist” should just mean “non-theist” or “I’m not a theist”—and by that definition, all the above (1-5) would qualify as atheists.

But words don’t acquire their meaning just by their literal translation, or their etymology; instead, they are defined by how they are used.. And there is usually a distinction that is drawn between atheists and agnostics, an agnostic being someone who doesn’t take a position on God’s existence (4 and 5 above), and an atheist being one who expressly takes a negative position (1-3 above). I personally think this is a useful distinction to make.

One thing that may not be that useful is saying that an agnostic is someone who answers “I don’t know” to the question “Does God exist?” Why? Because depending on how much justification they think is required for knowledge, or how they understand the question, someone who doesn’t believe God exists, or is even confident of that fact, might still answer “I don’t know” to that question. (They might not think their confidence is high enough to qualify their belief as knowledge.) But I don’t think someone who would say “I don’t’ believe that God exists” or “I am confident God doesn’t exist” should be considered an agnostic.

Does Atheism Require Faith?

But that brings us to our second question: does atheism require faith—or more precisely, does declaring that there is no God require just as much faith as it does to declare that there is? The short answer here is no, but there are a couple of reasons why. Let me elaborate. First of all, faith is (by definition) belief without sufficient evidence. Most atheists (especially those who profess knowledge) are going to claim that they have sufficient evidence to justify their lack of belief. For example, they they might argue

When it comes to the existence of something, the burden of proof is always on the believer; and until that burden is met, belief is not warranted, and disbelief is. Theists have not met the burden of proof (the arguments and evidence for God’s existence fail). Thus my lack of belief is warranted and (consequently) does not qualify as faith. In other words, because the arguments for God do not work, my lack of theistic belief is not without sufficient evidence and thus does not qualify as faith (any more than my lack of belief in unicorns does not lack sufficient evidence and thus does not qualify as faith).

Now, a theist might insist that the arguments for God do work; but that they do is what the theist would have to establish to show that the atheist is believing by faith. If they did, they could even establish that the atheist had “blind faith”—belief that is contrary to sufficient evidence (not just lacking it). But that is a very tall order; that is the hard part of the argument that they would have to make in order to establish that the atheist is believing by faith. So, essentially, the above kind of claim that the atheist is believing by faith begs the question: it leaves the most difficult premise of the argument—that one can establish that God exists—not only undefended, but unstated.

It's worth noting that this is similar the cry of those who say it takes “more faith” to be an atheist than a theist. They think cosmological arguments (grounded in a first cause) or teleological arguments (grounded in fine-tuning) establish that God exists; they thus think the supposed success of such arguments entails that "the belief that the universe sprang out of nothing, designed for life, takes a leap of faith" (whereas the belief that God is responsible for such things does not). What those who make this claim fail to recognize, however, is (a) the wide variety of problems with such cosmological and teleological arguments (that atheists have pointed out, which I summarize here) that entail that they don’t work, and (b) how atheists can not only explain the existence (and supposed fine-tuning) of the universe without God, but why such a-theistic explanations are actually, by definition, better.

(It's also worth noting that atheists who say that they their disbelief doesn't require faith because the problem of evil shows (or entails or proves) that God does not exist bring upon themselves the burden of showing that the problem of evil actually does so. I have argued elsewhere that it does, but the atheist can be in danger of begging the question themselves if they make that claim but then do not meet that burden.)

Knowledge Doesn't Require Certainty

Now, the claim that atheism requires faith might only have the first kind of atheism (mentioned above) in mind: those who claim to know that God exists. That argument might go something like this:

You claim to know that God exists, but you can’t be certain that is the case. You can’t prove a negative. That God exists is still at least possible, so you can’t really know that he doesn’t. So the only way that you can really claim to know that God does not exist is by faith.”

This argument, however, has three responses/flaws:

First, the last line is an oxymoron. You can’t know anything by faith because faith is, by definition, “belief without (sufficient) justification” and knowledge is, by definition, “(sufficiently) justified true belief.” You can’t have a sufficiently justified belief that lacks sufficient justification; thus knowledge by faith is impossible.

Second, you actually can prove a negative; by showing the concept of something to be logically incoherent, you can prove that it doesn’t exist. I know there are no square circles, because it is logically impossible to have something with both four sides and no sides. Likewise, many atheists argue that the very definition of God—at least as God is traditionally conceived, as a tri-omni being—is logically incoherent in many ways; for example, God cannot be both all-good (unable to do evil) and all-powerful (able to do anything). If this is the case, it is possible to be certain that God (or at least the god that the vast majority of theists believe in) does not exist.

Most importantly, however, the above “atheism requires faith” argument contains a mistaken assumption about what is required for knowledge (or, more precisely, the amount of justification that is required for true belief to count as knowledge.) The implicit assumption is that you can’t know what you are not certain is true; you have to be certain that X is true in order to rightly claim to know X is true. But as any student in my critical thinking classes would tell you, such a standard for knowledge is far too high. Practically nothing, beyond definitional truths (like all bachelors are unmarried) can be established with 100% certainty. Nothing is science is certain; you can’t be certain that you are not dreaming; you can’t be certain that we don’t live in a computer simulation. But that doesn't mean you can't know such things are false.

(This is partly because of the logical possibility that the future will not resemble the past; this is partly because there are multiple explanations that can be proposed for any phenomena (and inference to the best explanation is an inductive method of reasoning); it is also because of the theory laden nature of all knowledge and consequent inevitable possibility of ad hoc excuses. But the all point to the same basic fact: you can know that something actually is false even if it is logically possible that it is true. Or, to put this in strict modal terms, even if some proposition X is true in some possible world, I can know that X is false in the actual world. This mistake is essentially the "appeal to possibility" logical fallacy.)

By that definition of knowledge--that knowledge requires certainty--we hardly know anything; indeed, by that high of a standard, practically everything you believe—that the Earth is round, that you are not dreaming; that the future will resemble the past—would be believed by faith. So, by that definition, sure atheism requires faith—but that fact is trivial because everything requires faith. To believe that God doesn’t exist doesn’t require faith any more than it does to believe that placing your hand on a hot stove will burn it.

Conclusion

So, atheism can be defined in many way, and may even be a bit of a misnomer for describing those who lack belief in God. But no matter how you define it, it does not require faith. Sufficient justification (maybe even proof) for atheism exists; and even if certainty cannot be had, certainly is not required for either belief or knowledge.