David Eller On Freeing Ourselves (and Others) From Misunderstandings of Atheism

David Eller, as many of you know, is pretty much my favorite scholar/author at this point, next to just a very limited number of others. As a friend he's allowing me to publish the very best, next to none chapter on what the words atheist and agnosticism mean. It comes from his most recent book, Liberation: On Freedom from God(s) [GCRR, 2024], one that I was honored to write the Forword. Enjoy!

Freeing Ourselves (and Others)

From Misunderstandings of Atheism

“I

do not believe in God and I am not an atheist,” Albert Camus wrote in his Notebooks 1951–1959.[1] What are we to make of that statement? Perhaps Camus was being wry and cryptic, as French philosophers are often wont to be. Maybe “atheist” meant something different to him or to 1950s-era France. Alternatively, it might have been too dangerous to avow atheism in that time and place. Or maybe he was just confused about the word.

If the latter is the case, then Camus would not be the first or the last to labor under misconceptions about atheism. Of course, theists are highly likely—and highly motivated—to get atheism wrong. Since they are not atheists and possibly have never spoken to one (at least not intentionally and civilly), they really do not know what we think; they can only see us through their own theistic eyes and assume that we are the reverse image, or, more perversely, some odd variation, of their own theism. Then, as sworn and mortal enemies of atheism, they are driven to portray us in the most unflattering light, to construct a ridiculous straw man that they can summarily caricature and assassinate. We need not take their (mis)characterizations of us seriously, except as a public relations problem.

What about atheists themselves? Surely they are accurately portraying their position. Surprisingly and distressingly, too many professional atheist writers and speakers commit a regular set of errors in describing the nature of atheism. This is a tremendously damaging tendency, for two reasons. First, we mislead current and future atheists, who are misinformed by the incautious pronouncements of prominent atheists. Second, we empower theists and other critics of atheism who use our words against us: “See, even atheists say that atheism is X, so we are justified in our criticism and condemnation of the idea.”

In this chapter, we will expose and free ourselves from recurring and systematic mistakes in the atheist literature. We will not repeat or critique “arguments for atheism,” which have been sufficiently covered, including by me[2] and are largely cogent and decisive; all but the most hard-headed theists and religious apologists (who still exist) concede that “the case for god(s)” is weak at best and lost at worst. Nor will we linger on the New Atheists, who have been thoroughly examined many times before, including in the previous chapter where we noted their unexpected and unfortunate turn toward reactionary social and political attitudes—ironically simultaneously debunking one of the pillars of Western civilization (i.e. Christianity) and defending Western civilizational traditions of sexism, racial thinking, and Islamophobia, among others. The New Atheists are broadly guilty of the common charge of scientism, not just of crediting science with the solution to all problems but of equating, as Richard Dawkins does, religion to science (albeit bad science). For instance, Dawkins wrote in his lauded The God Delusion that “‘the God Hypothesis’ is a scientific hypothesis about the universe,” and Victor Stenger actually put this “god hypothesis” business in the title of one of his books.[3] Finally, all of the New Atheists, who are quality scholars on their own turf, operate with limited (by which I mean Christianity-centric) notions of religion and god, in which “god” means the Christian or Abrahamic god and “religion” means Abrahamic monotheism. Any college freshman student of religion knows better.

 

Atheism as Belief?

 The basic issue in the study and advancement of atheism (or any other subject) is definition; if we get fundamental definitions incorrect, we have already started down the wrong path, where enemies wait to pounce. The most consistent fault in the atheist literature is the classification of atheism as a “belief” or some other related and sometimes stronger term. We would expect this blunder from theists, who perceive the world through the lens of belief. Accordingly, philosopher and theologian John Hick asserted in a philosophy of religion textbook, where suggestible students are likely to see it, that “atheism (not-God-ism) is the belief that there is no God of any kind.”[4]Catholic historian Paul Johnson not only declared atheism “a positive set of beliefs” but a failed one at that.[5]

Francis Aveling, writing for New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia (in an entry more than a century old), called atheism “that system of thought which is formally opposed to theism” and reiterated his error by labeling it “a doctrine, or theory, or philosophy opposed to theism” and “the teaching of those schools…which do not include God either as a principle or as a conclusion of their reasoning.”[6] Notwithstanding that doctrine, theory, and philosophy are not synonymous, and that atheism is not a “system of thought” but a single thought (no god[s]), one wonders where these alleged schools are. Zofia Zdybicka, a philosopher and Catholic nun, nonsensically echoed this notion of a “doctrine”—or actually of three quite distinct if not incompatible doctrines, namely, (1) “negation of the existence of God understood as a fully perfect and transcendent being,” (2) acknowledgement of “the Absolute but as lacking in one or more attributes of God” which explicitly includes pantheism, panentheism, and deism, and (3) “impossibility of proving God’s existence” or agnosticism and skepticism.[7] On this argument, pantheism, panentheism, and deism—which are variations of theism—are atheism, as are agnosticism and skepticism, which makes it rather pointless to identify as an agnostic or skeptic rather than an atheist. She also conflated anti-theism (see Chapter 5) with atheism, whereas most if not all anti-theists are theists, while also lumping theists “who are not guided by any religious principles in moral life, who do not have any sense of sin,” or “among whom prayer and religious practices disappear” with us atheists.[8] Finally, revealing her true colors and agenda, she opined that atheism can actually serve theists by “cleansing us of false gods and deified men, and to come to a deeper understanding of the truth about man as a person who finds his true dignity, freedom and dynamism in God.”[9] I would condone this conclusion if we include among “false gods” all of the gods.

            This view is maybe forgivable, or better yet ignorable, coming from a theist who is desperate to discredit atheism and establish her own theism. Tragically, it is far from restricted to theists; some of the leading atheists of the day say essentially the same thing. Julian Baggini is blunt: “Atheism is in fact extremely simple to define: it is the belief that there is no God or gods” (disappointingly adding that “Henceforth I shall talk simply of belief in God” by which he means the Christian/Abrahamic god).[10] Eric Chalfant, a media scholar and researcher into the history of atheism (but not identified clearly as an atheist or theist) (mis)states that “atheism must be understood as a positive belief, in the nonexistence of God rather than the absence of belief.”[11] Daniel Harbour, in an otherwise intelligent person’s guide to atheism, agrees that atheism is the “belief that God does not exist,” although he at least regards it as “the plausible and probably correct belief.”[12] Robin Le Poidevin, despite a sophisticated treatment of the arguments in favor of atheism, persists in describing it as “a definite doctrine,” specifically of the person “who denies the existence of a personal, transcendent creator of the universe, rather than one who simply lives life without a reference to such a being.”[13] To mention one more, Graham Oppy’s introduction to atheism perpetuates the (mis)conception that atheism “is the claim that there are no gods, and atheists are those who believe that there are no gods”; yet more incomprehensibly, he says that “atheists also fail to believe that there are gods,” implying that godlessness is some kind of failure.[14] For good measure, he repeats that “atheists are united in believing that there are no gods” (his emphasis) while entertaining any number of “other atheistic beliefs.”[15]

            Thankfully, not every atheist author labors under this (mis)apprehension. Stephen Bullivant, working to define atheism for The Oxford Handbook of Atheism, announces that in his chapter and throughout the volume atheism “is defined as an absence of belief in the existence of a God or gods” and not a belief in its own right; he continues that atheism “thus becomes an absence of something called ‘theism.’ Importantly, it does not require a specific denial or rejection of, nor any animus against, this ‘theism.’”[16] Paul Cliteur, also in an essay attempting to define atheism, similarly posits that it “simply denies the claims of theism” instead of making a claim of its own.[17] Based on the construction of the word “atheism” as an “alpha privans” (the a- prefix attached to the noun theism negates or “denies what follows”), he offers that an atheist “is someone who does not subscribe to the central tenets of theism….  So an atheist denies what the theist tries to confirm.”[18]This line of thought harkens back to George H. Smith, a pioneer in modern atheism, who explained decades ago that atheism      

is the absence of theistic belief. One who does not believe in the existence of a god or supernatural being is properly designated as an atheist. 

Atheism is sometimes defined as “the belief that there is no God of any kind,” or the claim that a god cannot exist. While these are categories of atheism, they do not exhaust the meaning of atheism—and they are somewhat misleading with respect to the basic nature of atheism. Atheism, in its basic form, is not a belief: it is the absence of belief. An atheist is not primarily a person who believes that a god does not exist; rather, he does not believe in the existence of a god.[19] 

This may sound like hair-splitting and deliberate evasiveness, but it is actually extremely significant. Indeed, the whole question of “atheism as a belief” hangs on a number of conceptual problems that boil down to a lack of clarity about what atheism and belief are. Bullivant is obviously correct when he maintains that atheism “is both a vexed and vexatious issue,” sometimes from the malicious intent of anti-atheists but also from the fuzzy thinking of atheists themselves.[20] This partly stems from the mere fact that there is no such thing as the “true definition” of any word and always a contest to define words, but it also stems from the fact that atheism itself is a diverse notion. Bullivant helpfully suggests that a “zoological” approach would be useful, viewing “atheism as a ‘family,’ divisible” into two or more “genera” comprising various “species.”[21]

            Scholars, pro- and anti-atheist, have proposed various ways to parse the terrain of atheism. One of the most common, which Bullivant himself invokes, is the “positive” and “negative” atheism distinction. In his interpretation, 

Any person who does not, at present, have a belief in the existence of a God or gods is thus a negative atheist. By contrast, a “positive atheist” is someone who is not only without such a belief, but holds a specific belief (which may, of course, be held with varying levels of certainty or interest) that there is no God or gods.[22] 

There are two major objections to this interpretation, however. First, it deviates from Michael Martin’s use of the same distinction: for Martin, negative atheism means identifying the inadequacies and errors in theist arguments, much as a defense attorney would poke holes in the prosecution’s case (mounting a “negative defense”), while positive atheism, like a positive defense in court, musters its own evidence and arguments for the falseness of the charges against the defendant. In this regard—and Martin’s usage is preferable—negative and positive atheism are tactics of atheism or of atheist argumentation specifically, not types of atheism. Both negative and positive atheism, in Martin’s terminology, are without god-belief; they simply build the case against god(s) differently. The second objection is that, after all his good efforts, Bullivant re-imports the notion that atheism, albeit only “positive” atheism, consists of a belief.

            The distinction that Bullivant has in mind is better captured by the terms “implicit” and “explicit” atheism, employed by Cliteur among others. Implicit atheism in most appearances of the term indicates non-awareness of godlessness, as in people who have never heard or thought about god(s); they obviously do not “believe” in god(s) because the whole concept of god(s) has never been presented to them. It is unconscious atheism or perhaps more precisely pre-theism. Many thinkers, including Cliteur himself, reject this condition as atheism proper, since, as he puts it, “Essential for the atheist position is weighing all the options, that is, all the traditional arguments for the existence of God.”[23] Le Poidevin also excludes implicit or un-self-conscious atheism (without mentioning the term), again on his premise that atheism is a deliberate and definite doctrine: only one who actively denies god(s) counted as an atheist for him, “rather than one who simply lives life without reference to such a being.”[24] I will have occasion to disagree below.

            Atheists and anti-atheists have proffered any number of other typologies and categories. Bullivant lists among the “species” of (positive) atheism such creatures as “Promethean antitheism, existentialist atheism, Soviet scientific atheism, New Atheism, and so on.”[25] Zdybicka surprisingly (for a theist apologist) vastly expanded the world of atheism by first inventing three new species—anti-theism, pseudo-atheism (for the atheist who still “unconsciously believes in God, because the one whose existence is denied is not God but something else,” whatever that means), and post-atheism or the complete vacuum left by the absence of the very concept and “problem” of God.[26] Then, to maximize the atheist zoo, she tacked on (1) “theoretical atheism” with its species “metaphysical” and “epistemological” and its subspecies pantheism, pancosmism, panentheism (all theisms, you will note), agnosticism, rationalistic/Kantian agnosticism, and skepticism, among others and (2) practical atheism for the person who may well believe in god(s) or at least pay lip service to the belief but behaves as if he does not, including the secular, the indifferent, the ignorant (which is the most dangerous sort, by the way), and just the insufficiently pious and observant. Although it hardly exhausts the subject, Cliteur inserts the idiosyncratic and not entirely meaningful categories of “private atheism” (supposedly rejecting “the theistic worldview” but keeping it to oneself), “public atheism” (a “creed” that one feels the compunction “to share with fellow citizens”), and “political atheism” (in which the state feels the compunction to expunge religion from society, as in communist Russia or China).[27] Once more, these are not types of atheism but styles of atheist activity or social engagement (of which, consequently, Cliteur approves only of the first, while I imagine that atheists would gladly discourage public and political theism; the only alternative is to live in the theist’s world forever). 

Atheism on Religion (and as Religion?)

If atheist scholars are not quite sure what atheism is, they are still more impoverished in their understanding of religion. Let us quickly dispatch one easy misunderstanding: atheism is not a religion, and no sane atheist would ever avow that it is, despite the oblivious pontifications of some theists, like Alister McGrath, who audaciously branded it “the religion of the autonomous and rational human being, who believes that reason is able to uncover and express the deeper truths of the universe from the mechanics of the rising sun to the nature and final destiny of humanity.”[28] This is patent balderdash, to be sure, since atheism has none of the trappings of religion—no priests, no churches or other sacred spaces (indeed, no concept of the sacred), no scriptures, no rituals, and most importantly no supernatural beings (and often no concept of the supernatural at all). Part of the problem, aside from McGrath’s intention to impugn atheism, is his utter failure to define religion which, if he did, would quickly refute his contention. Cliteur, also critiquing McGrath, grasps that classifying atheism as a religion leads to myriad other mistakes: “Because McGrath thinks that atheism is the exact antithesis of Christian belief, he supposes that the atheist must also have certain opinions on these matters, but this is not the case.”[29] That is, atheism seen through theist eyes is a mirror-opposite of theism, speaking the same language and sharing the same worldview, only in the negative.

            There is a more amusing counter to opinions like McGrath’s. If he holds atheism to be the religion of the autonomous and rational person, then what is theism? Is it the religion of the dependent, needy, and irrational person? I doubt he wants to go there. More basically, presumably a theist deems religion as a good thing, so it is difficult to understand how he means this accusation to be offensive. Does he, as I have mused previously, mean his barb as a compliment or an insult—that atheism is as good as other religions or as bad? And if we accept his declaration, is atheism entitled to federal protection and tax exemption?

            We turn our back on such foolishness. But as we return to the atheist literature, we find equivalent confusion about religion and about the scope of atheism vis-à-vis religion. To be blunt, most high-profile atheists demonstrate a shocking lack of knowledge about the diversity of religions in the world. The result is that the scope of atheism is characteristically too wide and too narrow at the same time. We might say, aphoristically, that most atheism acts like anti-Christianity while fancying itself anti-religion, while theism is somewhere in between: theism is one kind of religion, and Christianity is one kind of theism.

            Kerry Walters, another atheist companion, epitomizes the issue in writing, “Although ‘atheism’ is generically used to designate unbelief in any kind of deity, the word really denotes the rejection of a very specific variety of God-belief, the kind that’s known as ‘theism.’ When a-theists deny the existence of a God, therefore, their skepticism is directed at the theistic God”; to guarantee that we understand the claim, Walters (mis)emphasizes, “The God whose existence atheists reject is the deity worshipped by modern adherents of the three ‘Religions of the Book’: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.”[30] If this were an isolated attitude, it would be odd, but others share it. Cliteur, for instance, says essentially the same thing in locating the target of atheism: 

Theism is the same as—a more current term—monotheism. Theists are adherents to one of the three theistic religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Theists believe in one god….[Hence] atheism in the sense outlined here is not opposed to religion as such. Atheism is concerned with one specific concept of god: the theistic god. The theistic god has a name and this is written with a capital: God.[31] 

Cliteur’s formulation is right in a small way and wrong in a big way. He is correct that, strictly speaking, atheism is not opposed to, is not even a comment on, “religion as such.” There are many religions in the world, particularly among indigenous and ancient societies, that do not possess any sort of concept of god(s). These religions cannot be justifiably called theisms (a point that will figure prominently later in the chapter). Some of these religions teach about nature spirits or ancestor spirits or diverse demons and monsters or about non-personal supernatural forces like mana, chi, or karma; these various concepts can occur in any combination in any religion, sometimes alongside god(s). Properly defined, atheism has nothing to say on those matters, although most atheists-in-practice also dismiss those entities as non-real.

            However, he is profoundly and stunningly wrong to limit atheism to the Abrahamic tri-omni god. And this error stands on the bizarre contention that other theisms like polytheism are not theism, when theism is in the very name. Atheists would reject Yahweh, Jehovah, and Allah but not Zeus, Odin, or Vishnu? I find the assertion incredible. I also find the term “theistic god” unintelligible, since it is so obviously redundant. I guess that by “theistic” Cliteur and others who would talk this way mean “personal,” that is, a god who is a spiritual person, as opposed to some abstract idea of “uncaused cause,” “wholly Other,” or “ultimate ground of being.” In fact, Cliteur expressly opines that atheism has nothing to do with abstract god-concepts such as those proposed by Paul Tillich, Rudolf Otto, and Ernst Schleiermacher.

            I strenuously dissent, for two rather concrete reasons. First, a polytheistic god, or for that matter an abstract god,is still a god, and any belief system about them is still theism, and atheism has every right to judge them and reject them. Indeed, and second, atheism must and does judge and reject them: if a person accepts as valid and true the claim that some polytheistic, impersonal, or abstract god exists, then that person is a theist of some stripe or another. By definition, atheism excludes those conceptions too.

            This illustrates what I mean by the simultaneously narrow and broad scope of much atheist literature. The New Atheists, for example, take religion as a whole—or, more broadly yet, faith as a whole á la Sam Harris (although one can have faith in many things other than supernatural beings or gods)—as their opponent, arguing gleefully that “religion” ruins everything and that “religion” is always immoderate and pestilent. Then they turn around and define “god” (almost always with the capital G) in the narrowest, that is, the most specifically Christian, way and attack this local god as if he/she/it is the sole member of the class of god(s) and the sole concern of atheists—in Dawkins’ words, “the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it, a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”[32] And while I cannot help but concur that this scriptural character is pretty reprehensible, I cannot join Dawkins in assuming that all gods share these traits (since, as an anthropologist of religion I know much better), nor can I restrict myself to rejecting only this god with this sort of personality. Even the most benevolent god has no reality for me (in fact, it would be impossible to square a truly benevolent god with the nature of our universe). I mention in passing that Dawkins, in tune with the New Atheist trajectory, takes this god to be a “hypothesis,” which is neither how devotees nor detractors understand him/her/it.  A hypothesis is not something you “believe” (quite to the contrary, a hypothesis is something that you test and, if it is the starting point of scientific thinking, the null hypothesis, something that you hope and aspire to disprove) and certainly not something you pray and sing to.

            Given all of these assumptions, it is perhaps unremarkable that few atheist scholars have bothered to define religion and that, when they have, their efforts have been less than satisfactory. Most writers apparently presume that religion means Abrahamic monotheism or, even more inexcusably, that all religions are like Abrahamic monotheism. Le Poidevin, on the other hand, takes a swing and a miss when he characterizes religion (partly anticipating Dawkins) as “a way of life based on a metaphysical conception of the world. Religious doctrine contains, therefore, what are essentially explanatory hypotheses.”[33] That is interesting and problematic on a number of fronts. First, most theists will not recognize the notion of “a metaphysical conception of the world,” and frankly I am not sure what he is driving at, since every conception of the world has some metaphysical underpinning. Second, he moves from “metaphysical conception” to “explanatory hypotheses,” giving the impression that every metaphysics is explanatory and hypothetical; also, which particular metaphysical conceptions make a belief “religious” as opposed to something else? Third, elsewhere in his book, he differentiates between metaphysical and non-metaphysical religions, and if there are non-metaphysical religions then how can metaphysics be a defining feature of religion? Sadly, although his book includes a glossary—uncommon in atheism books—there is no entry for religion (nor for atheism or god), and his definition of theism describes Abrahamic theism. (See Chapter 3 for our glossary or encyclopedia)

            Philosopher Bruce Milem (unclear whether an atheist or not) also at least realizes that atheism, theism, and god cry out for definition before we can say anything worthwhile about them, although incredibly the word “religion” never appears in his essay once. Theism by his estimation is “the proposition that reality is not solely an impersonal order, being either a personal order, that is, an order founded by at least one person, or an impersonal order plus at least one transcendent person”; atheism conversely is “the proposition that reality is solely an impersonal order.”[34] This too does not quite get the job done, as there are other “personal orders” besides theism, for instance animism or ancestor spirit-belief; across the world’s religions, and in (post)modern theology, we also find impersonal theisms like pantheism or Tillich’s “ultimate ground of being” god. What is interesting and, I think, correct, is that Milem recognizes atheism not as a belief but as a proposition, or as I would prefer to say and will say, a conclusion on a particular question, namely the god(s)-question.

            Once again, Stephen Bullivant injects some clarity into the discussion by noting that, 

If atheism is defined exclusively in terms of (say) the prevailing Abrahamic monotheism, then all non-adherents in that society—including huge numbers of other types of theists, both poly and mono—are thereby made “atheists.” But not even the proponents of such definitions, in practice, use the concept in so broad and unwieldy a way.[35] 

In fact, the impact of constricting the definition of atheism to anti-Abrahamic-monotheism is that it condemns adherents of all other religions all over the world to the status of atheists, which is not what atheists intend but has sometimes been what Abrahamic monotheists intend, as we will see below. 

Atheism versus Agnosticism

A third perennial problem in the atheist literature, and far beyond it, is a staggering confusion about the nature of agnosticism, a term that did not exist until the late nineteenth century. Baggini expresses the standard (mis)conception as clearly as anyone: agnosticism is “the suspension of belief or disbelief in God. The agnostic claims we cannot know whether God exists and so the only rational option is to reserve judgment.”[36] Oppy uses almost identical words in his glossary definition of agnosticism: “Suspension of judgment about whether there are gods. An agnostic neither believes that there is at least one god nor believes that there are no gods.”[37] Yet he includes agnostics among those “who fail to believe that there are gods” (fail to believe that there are gods?!), characterizing them as serious thinkers “who have considered the question of whether there are gods but have suspended judgment, neither believing that there are no gods nor believing that there is at least one god.”[38]

Cliteur gets closer to the heart of the matter when he asserts that “the agnostic usually claims ‘to leave open’ the question of whether or not God exists. Agnosticism is the theory according to which things within a specified realm cannot be known.”[39] This statement sheds valuable light on precisely why the agnostic supposedly “suspends judgment”—because required information is not just unknown but there is nothing to be known. (Interestingly, Cliteur prevaricates that, “Probably the agnostic does not leave open the existence of all the gods that humans have venerated from the Stone Age to the twenty-first century, but only the existence of the god that is held in high esteem in the culture in which he or she lives, that is, the theistic god (or God),”[40] which begs the question of why someone would be hesitant to judge against the familiar local god but not against unfamiliar ancient or foreign gods. What does this agnostic know about strange old gods that she does not know about the local god? Dawkins expands on and perpetuates this myth in his popular book by reassuring us that agnosticism is the right path “in cases where we lack evidence one way or the other. It is the reasonable position”; elaborating on agnosticism further, he distinguishes “Temporary Agnosticism in Practice” from “Permanent Agnosticism in Principle” (his capitalization), the former a “legitimate fence-sitting” while we lack the evidence to reach a decision compared to “inescapable” indecision in the face of “questions that can never be answered, no matter how much evidence we gather.”[41] Happily, I suppose, Dawkins places the god-question in the first column, which can be resolved as a “scientific question”; if he is correct, agnosticism either can be or has been overcome.

Yet many people, regular folk and scholars alike, persevere in using the term and even wearing it as an identity, that is, declaring, “I am an agnostic.” What exactly are they affirming about themselves? According to Le Poidevin, who came back with a short introduction to agnosticism, the word tends to refer in common usage to “the ‘I don’t know’ position on God’s existence” or the “compromise between theism and atheism, a ‘flapping around’ in the middle.”[42] Actually, in practice these two states are not entirely separate, because “I don’t know” is an ambiguous thing to say. It can mean, “I don’t have the information on the subject,” as when asked to name the capital of Uzbekistan. However, it can also mean, “I haven’t come to a conclusion on the subject” or “I don’t have an opinion on the subject,” as when asked which entrée you are going to order for dinner or which shirt you prefer to wear. Of course, you may not come to a conclusion because you lack the relevant information; this is the response a scientist might give to an unanswered factual question.

Either of these statements would qualify as “weak agnosticism” for Le Poidevin. “Strong agnosticism” by contrast makes the much more muscular claim that it is impossible to know the facts about some matter, such as the existence of god(s). A synonym, and better name, for this interpretation would be extreme skepticism or epistemological nihilism—that no knowledge exists or that there is no such thing as knowledge (“knowledge” often construed as demanding “certainty”). Both forms of agnosticism, though, are normally taken, and intended to be taken, as alternatives to theism or atheism, as a third position “between” god-belief and god-disbelief. But if we try to sustain this distinction, trouble follows. On the one hand, a number of the sources that we have examined in this chapter, including Zdybicka, situate agnosticism as a kind of atheism; Walters also calls it a variant of unbelief, which is the next best thing to atheism.[43] On the other hand, Shoaib Ahmed Malik (not clearly an atheist or theist) contends that some atheists (and no doubt theists as well) “have problematically conflated atheism with agnosticism,” mixing up “the propositional denial of God” and “uncertainty and unknowability about God.”[44] So which is it: is agnosticism different from atheism or is it a type of atheism? To make things as muddled as possible, Chalfant associates agnosticism with uncertainty, making it possible for four options to co-exist—gnostic (certain) theism, gnostic (certain) atheism, agnostic (uncertain) theism, and agnostic (uncertain) atheism.[45] Dawkins drives this line of thinking to new heights by proposing seven degrees of certainty on the god-question, from absolute certainty (knowledge) that a god exists to absolute certainty (knowledge) that a god does not exist—with agnostics falling in levels three, four, and five depending on which direction they “lean.”[46]

It would not be too wicked to conclude that thinkers are agnostic about the meaning of agnosticism; they do not seem to know what they mean by it or at least have reached no consensus on it. One way to cut through the murk is to note that all of the discussions of agnosticism reference knowledge, when the question we have been exploring is belief. Thus, Malik and Chalfant almost get it right when they discern some slippage in the discourse about atheism/theism and agnosticism. There is a conflation happening, between what one believes and what one knows, which are not, as I cannot stress emphatically enough, the same thing. The best course of action, as I have done elsewhere, is to return to the site of agnosticism’s birth, in Thomas Huxley’s late-1800s essay by that title. Huxley explained, quite clearly as I see it, that agnosticism 

in fact, is not a creed, but a method, the essence of which lies in the rigorous application of a single principle… Positively the principle may be expressed: In matters of the intellect, follow your reason as far as it will take you, without regard to any other consideration. And negatively: In matters of the intellect, do not pretend that conclusions are certain which are not demonstrated or demonstrable. That I take to be the agnostic faith, which if a man keep whole and undefiled, he shall not be ashamed to look the universe in the face, whatever the future may have in store for him.[47] 

Note—and mark it in bold—that Huxley did not conceive of agnosticism (a- + gnosis, without knowledge) as a “creed,” that is, as a proposition to believe or a position to adopt, nor yet as a theory, but as a method. While it is unfortunate that he went on to liken it to a “faith,” I think he meant that in the sense of a principle to commit to. At any rate, as a method, what Huxley commended is not something to be but rather something to do, specifically, to stick to the facts and, when the facts run out, to admit that we have no (further) knowledge on the subject and accordingly to affirm only the conclusion or “belief” that the facts and evidence support. This categorically does not entail that knowledge is impossible; instead, it impresses upon us an intellectual modesty and caution not to claim or “believe” things for which there is no factual warrant and definitely not to “leap” from facts to unwarranted claims and “beliefs.”

            Huxley’s agnosticism (now, a term I wish he had not entered into our vocabulary) is essentially equivalent to critical thinking or intellectual hygiene; it is asking ourselves, when we hear a claim or belief, “Is there a sound basis for that claim/belief?” and if not, rejecting it. An apt analogy is the courtroom, where ideally evidence of the defendant’s guilt is introduced and tested. If there is no evidence, or if the evidence is “inconclusive,” what does the jury do? Does it embark upon Dawkins’ Permanent Agnosticism in Principle, or even his Temporary Agnosticism in Practice? (It is truly astounding that Dawkins actually quotes the key passage from Huxley and still misses its import.) Indeed, the time for practicing agnosticism is during the presentation of evidence; when the evidentiary portion of the procedure ends, the jury must make a decision. If there is no evidence to substantiate the charge (the positive claim of guilt) or if the evidence is refuted or is merely inconclusive—in fact, if the evidence does not support the charge beyond a reasonable doubt—then the jury does not continue to deliberate indefinitely, it does not sit on the fence, and it does not surrender with a shrug and an “I don’t know.” The jury is obligated, on the presumption of innocence (i.e. the presumption that the charge/claim is false until proven true), to accept and decide that the charge/claim is false.

            So, a few things emerge as true. First, agnosticism is not a “position” at all but rather a process, a method; one is not “an agnostic” but thinks (or should think) “agnostically.” Second, as a method, agnosticism is not exclusive to religion or god(s); one can and should think agnostically on all topics. Third, if one faithfully follows the agnostic method, then when one hears a claim or statement that is unsubstantiated by compelling evidence and logic, one should, like a responsible jurist, reject the claim/statement. One is not thereby certain that the claim/statement is false, but one has sufficient grounds to maintain that it is false—or maybe better, one has insufficient grounds to maintain that it is true. Do we, to answer Cliteur, “leave open” the question? We will gladly revisit it if and when new compelling evidence and logic are discovered (i.e., on appeal); until such time, we can rest confident in our initial determination. On the god-question specifically, with agnosticism as our guiding principle, the lack of any compelling evidence and logic in favor of god(s), the failure of theism to make its case beyond a reasonable doubt, is itself sufficient grounds to reject the god-claim. Even if the evidence for and against god(s) were 50/50, the prudent and obligatory path would be to dismiss the charge and acquit humanity of god(s). 

Atheists Going Soft on Religion 

Before moving from critique to constructive conclusions, I want to interrogate two other contemporary atheist writers who have made ill-advised concessions to religion. The first is Alain de Botton, whose Religion for Atheists purports to extract some useful lessons from religion for atheism. De Botton encourages us to consider “the possibilities of importing certain of their ideas and practices into the secular realm.”[48] Among the virtues of religion, he touts community, kindness, education, tenderness, art, architecture, and institutions. However, he gives the impression that religion somehow invented and owns these virtues, which is patently and infuriatingly false. Community, kindness, etc. are in no way whatsoever the property of religion nor unique to religion; quite to the contrary, they are all normal human social ideas and practices that religion has incorporated and, to an aggravating extent, commandeered as its own. Some secular individuals and groups hesitate to emulate religion out of a wish to stand apart from it (while others emulate religion rather eagerly, like the Sunday Assembly, visit www.sundayassembly.org). Other local and national organizations aim to provide a community for the nonreligious to fulfill other human needs besides scientific inquiry and argumentation. So, while I heartily endorse the atheist and secularist world becoming a more fully functioning cultural alternative (and wrote about it myself in the final chapter of my Natural Atheism two decades ago), we do not have to give religion one ounce of credit for creating kindness, education, art, or anything else that makes us human. Further, when de Botton says “religion” he seems to mean not just Christianity but Catholicism particularly, which is his image and model of religion. And when he urges atheists to find religions “useful, interesting, and consoling,”[49] I can join him two-thirds of the way (as an anthropologist of religion I recognize religion as interesting and potentially useful) but not the final third (I find nothing “consoling” about religion, whether Catholicism, Islam, Hinduism, or any ancient, tribal, or new religion). Plus, when he asserts that the truth of any religion is the “most boring and unproductive question one can ask,”[50] I must disagree. And when he invites us to visit the fictional Agape Restaurant “to speak to [fellow diners] for prescribed lengths of time on predefined topics” as assigned by some fictional The Book of Agape, I decline; why should I care what The Book of Agape or any other scripture has to say, and why should I let it interrupt my dinner?

            If de Botton is mildly misguided, André Comte-Sponville is much more so. Comte-Sponville, an atheist philosopher, goes further than de Bottonin aping religion, not only absorbing some of its practices (which it originally absorbed from secular human psychology and society) but speaking its language—specifically the Christian language—of “spirit,” “sacred,” and “soul.” To start, he defines religion in a purely theistic way, as “any organized set of beliefs and rituals involving the sacred, the supernatural, or…specifically involving one or several gods.”[51] More tediously, he gives god(s) far too much credit: “God, by definition, surpasses us. Religions do not,” he writes, when we might respond that god(s) are obscure, contradictory, and likely meaningless talk.[52] But happily for him, the essence of religions is not god(s) but “communion” or “fidelity” which is attained “only by contemplating, repeating and rereading the same words, myths, and texts” through which “people end up communing in the same beliefs and ideals.”[53] I find that notion kind of frightening, that we must reread and repeat the same words, myths (or any myths), and (scriptural) texts, but I also remember that any set of shared texts can constitute a community, from Shakespeare to the Declaration of Independence to Darwin or Harry Potter.

Comte-Sponville apparently worries that atheism will spiral into nihilism which “condemns us to seeing life as tragic”: “What can people hope for who have never believed in God or who have ceased believing in him? Nothing, that is, nothing absolute or eternal, nothing beyond the ‘darkest reaches of death.’”[54]  Hopefully, we have already dispelled this nonsense. (See Chapter 1) His solution is to adopt a religious (read, Christian) worldview that includes “spirit” and “soul.” Indeed, he clearly stipulates that, “Not believing in God does not prevent me from having a spirit, nor does it exempt me from having to use it.”[55] He is correct after a fashion: again, strictly speaking, atheism does not entail the rejection of “spirit” (a religion could, and many religions do, lack god-concepts but include spirit-concepts, of wildly differing sorts), but if he means anything close to the Christian concept of soul—a unitary, immutable, immortal, immaterial part of a human that survives death and enters into eternal bliss or torment after death—then this concept must be proven and is just as anemic of proof as the god-concept. It is only late in his little book that he finally explains what he means by spirit, allowing readers up to this point to assume that he means something consistent with religious doctrine: 

The human spirit…is our noblest part, or rather our highest function, the thing that makes us not only different from other animals … but greater than and superior to them…. Whatever it is, we can use it to think, to want, or to imagine….  It is the power to think, insofar as it gives us access to truth, universality, or laughter.  It is likely that without the brain, this ability would be able to do nothing at all or would not even exist….The spirit is not a substance.  Rather, it is a function, a capacity, an act (the act of thinking, willing, imagining, making wisecracks.[56] 

Notwithstanding that he shows his species chauvinism in thinking that humans are “greater and superior” than/to other beings, he is not referring to some disembodied supernatural element at all but simply basic mind or imagination or will. He even asserts that there would be no spirit without the brain and in fact that it is not a “thing” at all, only the process or function of thinking, valuing, and so forth. In other words, he should have used other words than “spirit,” since there is nothing spiritual, and nothing supernatural or superhuman, about his point. At the same time, his point is fairly insulting, that atheists somehow struggle to have “spirit” (mind/will/imagination/truth/humor) without god—which is condescending twaddle. “Being an atheist by no means implies that I should castrate my soul!” he cries melodramatically.[57] No, monsieur Comte-Sponville, but it does imply that we should select our words carefully, avoid speaking Christian when that is not what we mean, put terms like “spirit” to the same test as “god(s),” and excise empty and ambiguous words from our vocabulary. 

Conclusion 1:

The Three Kinds of Belief 

We began this chapter by asserting that confusion about “belief” was at the root of many misunderstandings about atheism, even, as we have painfully exposed, among many atheists. In this first of two conclusions, we strive to impose some order on this most disorderly concept.

            “Belief” is commonly used by scholars and non-scholars alike to denote a proposition that one takes to be true. In fact, in many analyses, any proposition that one takes to be true is a “belief” (which complicates the bankrupt old adage that knowledge is justified true belief; what then is unjustified and/or untrue belief—just belief?). On that line of thinking, if atheism is propositional (i.e. “there is no such thing as god[s],” then it is a “belief.” But, as we discovered with the case of atheism itself, this approach to belief is both too narrow and too broad. It is too broad in considering all propositions as beliefs and too narrow in considering beliefs to be exclusively propositional.

            To tackle these conjoined problems, let us stipulate that not all propositions (statements that make a factual claim or a truth claim) are beliefs. If I say, “A circle is a geometric figure on which all points are equidistant from a center point” or “A bachelor is an unmarried man,” I am not expressing a belief; these are definitions. If I say, “Paris is the capital of France” or “The speed of light is 186,000 miles per second,” I am not expressing a belief; these are empirical facts. One could insist that one also “believes” the definitions or facts, but such an insistence adds nothing (besides, one could say that one also believes that one believes the definitions/facts, ad infinitum). In everyday usage, “belief” tends to inject or imply some degree of doubt or in substantiation; as I have done elsewhere, I define “belief” of this propositional sort (for there are other sorts, as we will shortly see) as holding a position or making a claim without sufficient evidence and logic or in the face of disconfirming evidence and logic.

            At the same time, many if not most commentators maintain that belief relates solely to truth claims. Eminent scholar of religion Wilfred Cantwell Smith, for instance, equated belief with “holding certain ideas” and presumably holding them as true.[58] However, if we inspect the (in)famous trope, “You don’t believe in God? Well, he believes in you,” we see the verb being used in two very different senses. The former, perhaps, is propositional: you do not think that God exists, or you reject the proposition “God exists” or “there is such a thing as God.” It would be silly to interpret the latter in that manner, as “God thinks that you exist.” This alerts us to the semantic range of the verb “believe” and the noun “belief.” In English (other languages may divide up the semantic space differently or, as anthropologists have discovered, not contain a concept like “believe/belief” at all), the words cover three quite distinct territories. The first, admittedly, is propositional; we can call it the “correctness” function of the words. The second has nothing directly to do with propositions or correctness; an example would be, “I believe in my wife” or “I believe my friend will meet me at the restaurant.” What this usage expresses is confidence; certainly, it presupposes that my wife and my friend (and the restaurant) exist, but that is not its main thrust. Rather, it conveys that I trust my wife and my friend. Often, when people say, “I believe in God,” they mean that they trust their god (presuming, of course, that he/she/it exists). Third, belief may express commitment, as in “I believe in America” or “I believe in freedom”; in this formulation, “I believe in God” means “I am committed to my god” or “I am on my god’s side.” Naturally, the three meanings can overlap or coincide—one can believe that a god exists, be confident in that god’s providence, and be committed to that god. On the other hand, the three meanings can detach: an ordinary Christian, for instance, may think it is correct that Satan exists, and even be confident in Satan’s (evil) nature and intentions, but not be personally committed to Satan. In passing, it is worth mentioning that this is maybe what Camus was saying in his quotation to open this chapter: he did not have confidence in or commitment to the Christian god, although he might be willing to grant the being’s reality.

            Along with equating belief with propositional statements, theists and atheists alike often separate belief from “faith.” Smith captured this approach clearly when he characterized faith as “deeper, richer, more personal” than propositional correctness; it constitutes involvement, even intense involvement. To “have faith” (since there is no verb form of faith) in something or someone is “to know it in personal committed fashion.”[59] Theologian Richard Niebuhr similarly idolized faith but more perceptively realized that it too has multiple meanings: “Now it means belief in a doctrine;… now confidence or trust; now piety in general or a historic religion.”[60] But if faith sometimes means belief, then the sharp division between them collapses. Instead, “faith” like belief can refer to propositional acceptance of a claim or doctrine, confidence or trust (as Niebuhr allowed), or commitment. In short, the semantic range of belief is identical to the semantic range of faith, and in any sentence in which “belief” can be sensibly used, “faith” could be sensibly substituted. (There are sentences like “I believe it is going to rain” in which “believe” is not really appropriate—the proper verb would be “predict”—so that “have faith” could not be sensibly substituted.) If there is any difference, it is that “faith” tends to be more emphatic than “belief,” more indicative of strong confidence and commitment, but here too “belief” could accomplish the same job.

            Crucially, this scrutiny of belief and faith sheds light on the functional equivalence of atheism and agnosticism. “Agnostics” may consider it wise or clever to “suspend judgment” on the question of the existence of god(s), but that attitude only addresses the first, “correctness” dimension of belief/faith. When a religion like Christianity instructs humanity to “believe in God,” it demands more than propositional assent; it explicitly asks that humans put trust in this being, commit to this being, worship and praise this being, love this being with all one’s heart and all one’s soul. While an “agnostic” is postponing propositional belief, she is failing or refusing to offer belief as confidence or commitment—and a god like the Christian god makes no distinction between agnostic or atheistic failure/refusal. 

Conclusion 2:

The Three Kinds of Atheism 

So, we arrive at the definition of atheism, having trod a stony path across many errors and inconsistencies. Like belief, there is indeed more than one kind or proper usage of atheism; there is a veritable zoology or ecology of atheism, although the typologies that have been offered by other scholars are often not typologies at all but more like descriptions of diverse styles of representation and interaction (such as negative and positive atheism, as noted earlier). On other occasions, analysts have truly conflated atheism with things that are not atheism, including agnosticism, skepticism, and heterodox theisms (e.g. deism, pantheism, etc.). (See Chapter 4)

            The rational course of action is, as with belief, to investigate how the term “atheism” is and has been used in practice. This means, firstly, going beyond etymological arguments (which attempt to settle the definition by appealing to the roots a- and theism, which at any rate could be interpreted as “no-god belief” or “no god-belief”) as well as beyond dictionary definitions and popular (mis)understandings. I inquire instead, what could atheism mean? Or, to put it otherwise, on the god(s) question, what different things can possibly be meant? I have previously proposed and propose again that there are three distinct meanings for “atheism” which are valid and are different from other terms like agnosticism and such. I will call these default or anthropological atheism, defamatory or accusatory atheism, and defensive or argumentative atheism.

            What, in other words, are the various ways to be “without god(s)”? The original, most basic, and across cultures and history the most common way is to have never been exposed to the concept to begin with. This is default/anthropological atheism, which we could also call natural atheism or, as previously encountered, implicit atheism. Many if not most of the societies and religions that have ever existed did not possess a concept of god(s) and certainly not one anything akin to the Christian tri-omni god. Granted, they may have believed in nature spirits, dead ancestors, supernatural forces, and various demonic or monstrous beings, but none of these entities approximated a god. Oppy recognizes this category too, preferring to call such people and societies “innocents” or “those who have never considered the question whether there are gods and who, for this reason, have no opinion on the matter. Typically, innocents are those who do not possess the concept of god.”[61]

Oppy does not exactly accept them as atheists but welcomes them into the class of “people who fail to believe that there are gods.” While I categorically reject the notion of “failure,” such people are in either case without god(s). Likewise, many philosophers of religion withhold the label “atheist” for godless-by-default individuals and societies, preferring to name them “non-theists,” but (1) this is pure semantics and (2) it offers no advantage analytically. These default-godless people and groups are still being construed in relation to god(s)—whether a-theist, non-theist, or, I might allow, pre-theist. Moreover, Oppy and the philosophers of religion make the same distinction that I do but merely label it differently. In the case of the latter, I feel that a primary motivation is to limit the population of atheists in the world. Baggini, I think, gets closer to the truth of the matter when he holds that atheism does not depend on (in his phraseology, is not “parasitic on”) theism. Consider, he suggests, “what would happen if everyone ceased to believe in God. If atheism were parasitic on religion, then surely it could not exist without religion. But in this imagined scenario, what we would have would not be the end of atheism but its triumph.”[62] I extend this example to embrace not just those who ceased to believe in god(s) but who never started to believe: those who have never learned or heard the concept of god(s)—for the concept must be heard and learned before it is “believed”—would not call themselves atheists, but they would be as god-less as any latter-day atheist. An apt analogy is smoking: in a society that had never invented or observed smoking, no one would smoke; they would not call themselves “non-smokers,” lacking the very word and idea of smoking, but they would be as smoke-less as a society that had collectively kicked the habit. Malik concurs that atheism “can potentially become an all-inclusive word for denial and absence of belief in God”; he does not “endorse this fusion,” though, contending that “lack of belief in God and the denial of God’s existence are two separate positions.”[63] I accept, and will expound below, that they are different, but they are different ways to be godless or a-theistic.

The second type of atheism is atheism only from a particular perspective, yet it is probably the most frequent pre-modern application of the term. I call it defamatory or accusatory atheism because it is not a brand that a person ordinarily avows of herself but one that others ascribe to her. As Onfray rightly observes, in ancient Greece and Rome ἄθεος (atheos) 

was an expression of severe censure and moral condemnation. Sometimes, indeed often, “wrong belief” was equated with “unbelief.” The accusation of atheist could be leveled not only at the man who did not believe in God, but at the man who did not worship the dominant deities of the moment, the local, socially prescribed forms of divinity. Even a person deeply committed to a god—if it was a foreign, unorthodox god—might find himself condemned as an atheist.[64] 

Historians of atheism consistently stress that “atheist” was a term of moral and often legal opprobrium, leveled at figures from Socrates (accused of impiety) and poet Diagoras of Melos (sentenced to death for ridiculing the Eleusinian Mysteries) to Christians in the pagan Roman Empire before the ascension of Constantine. Early Christians were routinely denounced as atheists by their Roman countrymen because those Christians did not believe in—and more importantly from the Roman point of view, did not respect, prostrate before, and sacrifice to—the local gods. They were thus “atheists” in Roman eyes because they were without and/or opposed to the gods that Romans considered real and vital, both spiritually and politically. Indeed, Christian disregard of Roman gods was less objectionable as heresy than as treason, that is, disobedience to the state. As Onfray reminds us, throughout history religion has been intimately enmeshed with government and more fundamentally with social order, and the charge of atheism “has served politically to thrust aside, label, or castigate individuals who believe differently”—although they still believe.[65]

            By the way, Islam envisions atheism or non-belief in a roughly similar manner. According to Kenan Sevinç, Thomas Coleman, and Ralph W. Hood, “Non-Muslims are considered ‘non-believers’ in that they do not have the Islamic faith,” although they may practice some other religion or worship some other god(s).[66] The Arabic word kafir or kufr (infidel, non-believer) derives from the root for “conceal/hide,” as the non-believer is understood to evade the truth of Islam, since no one is his right mind would deny its truth; the authors contend that “no existing term [in Arabic] corresponds directly to Western notions of atheism” because not believing in their god is inconceivable.[67]

            This brings us to the third type of atheism, the type with which most readers (and atheist thinkers) are acquainted. In a society where god-beliefs are not only present but pervasive and dominant, one does not have the luxury of default, natural, implicit atheism. In such a setting, non-belief in god(s) can take just one form—defensive or argumentative atheism. That is, godlessness means, or is achieved by, freeing oneself from the culturally-available, -prevailing, and -privileged god. Unlike default/anthropological atheism, which is pre-theistic, defensive/argumentative atheism is post-theistic, an atheism-after-god(s).

            This does not, however, as we have argued throughout the chapter, entail that atheism is a “belief” on par with theism, and again, modern familiar atheism is more than a rejection of the propositional claim of the existence of god(s) but an absence or withholding of confidence in and commitment to any such being(s). Cliteur, for all his other flaws, appreciates this: “The atheist is not convinced by the proofs of theism. This being the case, he does what every sensible person would do. He says, ‘I am not a theist.’”[68] This formulation may sound strange to some ears, so let us unpack it. The problem with many portrayals of atheists is that they depict atheists at the end of their thought process rather than during that process. We should recount the process itself something like the following. A person at some point in her life hears god-talk for the first time; it is manifestly true that no one is born with any knowledge of or beliefs about god(s) (or anything else). Either the first time the god-talk comes up or at some later date, after listening to multiple comments about god(s), the person says, “I hear nothing to persuade me that this god that I keep hearing about is real.” Perhaps the arguments for god(s) are found to be faulty and unconvincing (as they indeed are). Perhaps it is noticed that theistic predictions, like the efficacy of prayer or the end of the world, fail again and again. Perhaps knowledge of other religions and their god(s) reveals that the diverse gods are mutually contradictory and are merely cultural creations. By whatever road, the person concludes, “I see no merit in this god-talk. I am unconvinced by this god-talk. I dismiss this god-talk as undeserving of my attention.” Maybe the person learns the counter-arguments against god(s), maybe not; it is irrelevant. The one sure thing is that the person does not “believe” that there is no such thing as god(s), and she does not need to be or claim to be “certain” that there is no such thing as god(s). Instead, she turns her back on and walks away from god-talk as vacuous and vain.

            After discovering enough about the multitude of gods (and other alleged supernatural entities), after observing religious hypocrisy, after witnessing religious violence, after learning about scientific alternatives to theistic explanations, and so forth, the defensive/argumentative atheist may become firmer in her conviction that god-talk is pointless. She may say emphatic or exaggerated things like, “There are no gods” or “I know there are no gods.” She may become a public atheist, to Cliteur’s displeasure, or (horror!) an activist for official secularism and rationalism. All of this is beside the point and not the essence of contemporary post-theistic and anti-theistic atheism. The point, and the essence, is that despite or because of contemporary theism, she finds good reason to live godlessly and lives a good godless life.

            The mistake among both atheists and theists is to assume, since defensive/argumentative atheism is the kind that they encounter often or exclusively, that it is the only or real kind of atheism. Hopefully, we have dispelled this misconception. It would be like knowing only one language such as English (or worse only one dialect of the English language) and assuming that it is the only or “true” language, that no other dialects/languages exist, or just as falsely, that any other must be just like the one you know. Even more dismally, one may assume—as theists often do—that non-theists and a-theists must also think and speak in the same terms and categories that theists do (one common and regrettable example: if the only two possibilities are to believe in God or in Satan, atheists must believe in Satan). Tragically, this misperception is not unique to theists. What I mean is that contemporary Western defensive/argumentative atheism, precisely because it is defensive and argumentative and therefore locked in a struggle with its nemesis, Christian theism, is still far too theistic and Christian.

In one of his most insightful moments, Onfray asks us to wake from what he calls “Christian atheism,” an atheism that is still shaped if not haunted by Christianity and its god, and to work toward a genuinely atheistic atheism, one 

that encompasses more than negation of God and of a part of the values derived from him. It calls for a different episteme…. Atheistic atheism would place morality and politics on a new base, one that is not nihilist but post-Christian. Its aim is neither to reconstruct churches nor to destroy them, but to build elsewhere and in a different way, to build something else for those no longer willing to dwell intellectually in places that have already done long service.[69] 

When we have reached this state, we will not only be without god(s) or against god(s) but free of god(s).

---

[1] Camus, Notebooks 1951–1959.

[2] See Chapter 1, “12 Steps to Atheism,” in Natural Atheism.

[3] Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2. See also Stenger, God: The Failed Hypothesis, subtitled How Science Shows that God Does Not Exist.

[4] Hick, Philosophy of Religion, 5.

[5] Johnson, The Quest for God: A Personal Pilgrimage, 2.

[6] Aveling, “Atheism.”

[7]Zdybicka, “Atheism in The Universal Encyclopedia of Philosophy,”709.

[8]Zdybicka, “Atheism in The Universal Encyclopedia of Philosophy,”745.

[9]Zdybicka, “Atheism in The Universal Encyclopedia of Philosophy,”755.

[10] Baggini, Atheism: A Very Short Introduction, 3.

[11]Chalfant, “A Greimas Rectangle for a New New Atheism,” 322.

[12]Harbour, An Intelligent Person’s Guide to Atheism, 1.

[13] Le Poidevin, Arguing for Atheism: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion, xvii.

[14] Oppy,Atheism: The Basics, 6.

[15] Oppy, Atheism, 9.

[16]Bullivant, “Defining ‘Atheism,’” 13–14.

[17]Cliteur, “The Definition of Atheism,” 8.

[18]Cliteur, “The Definition of Atheism,” 2.

[19] Smith, Atheism: The Case Against God, 7.

[20]Bullivant, “Defining ‘Atheism,’” 11.

[21]Bullivant, “Defining ‘Atheism,’” 15. This is consistent with philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein’s theory that most complex, and many familiar, words or concepts such as “religion” or “game” are really a constellation of terms sharing a “family resemblance.”

[22]Bullivant, “Defining ‘Atheism,’” 15.

[23]Cliteur, “The Definition of Atheism,” 10.

[24] Le Poidevin, Arguing for Atheism, xvii.

[25]Bullivant, “Defining ‘Atheism,’” 15.

[26]Zdybicka, “Atheism in The Universal Encyclopedia of Philosophy,” 710.

[27]Cliteur, “The Definition of Atheism,” 15–16.

[28] McGrath, The Twilight of Atheism: The Rise and Fall of Disbelief in the Modern World, 220.

[29]Cliteur, “The Definition of Atheism,” 9.

[30] Walters, Atheism: A Guide for the Perplexed, 16–17.

[31]Cliteur, “The Definition of Atheism,” 3.

[32] Dawkins, The God Delusion, 31.

[33] Le Poidevin, Arguing for Atheism, xx.

[34]Milem, “Defining Atheism, Theism, and God,” 335.

[35]Bullivant, “Defining ‘Atheism,’” 19.

[36] Baggini, Atheism, 4.

[37] Oppy, Atheism, 158.

[38] Oppy, Atheism, 6.

[39]Cliteur, The Secular Outlook: In Defense of Moral and Political Secularism, 50.

[40]Cliteur, The Secular Outlook, 52.

[41] Dawkins, The God Delusion, 46–47.

[42] Le Poidevin, Agnosticism: A Very Short Introduction, 8.

[43] Walters, Atheism, 11.

[44] Malik, “Defining Atheism and the Burden of Proof,” 279.

[45]Chalfant, “A Greimas Rectangle for a New New Atheism,” 321.

[46] Dawkins, The God Delusion, 50–51.

[47] Huxley, “Agnosticism,” 245.

[48] de Botton, Religion for Atheists: A Non-Believer’s Guide to the Uses of Religion, 11–12.

[49] de Botton, Religion for Atheists, 11.

[50] de Botton, Religion for Atheists, 11.

[51] Comte-Sponville, The Little Book of Atheist Spirituality, 4.

[52] Comte-Sponville, The Little Book of Atheist Spirituality, 1.

[53] Comte-Sponville, The Little Book of Atheist Spirituality, 20.

[54] Comte-Sponville, The Little Book of Atheist Spirituality, 50.

[55] Comte-Sponville, The Little Book of Atheist Spirituality, 134.

[56] Comte-Sponville, The Little Book of Atheist Spirituality, 134–135.

[57] Comte-Sponville, The Little Book of Atheist Spirituality, 134.

[58]Smith, Faith and Belief, 12.

[59]Smith, Faith and Belief, 6, 12.

[60] Niebuhr, Faith on Earth: An Inquiry into the Structure of Human Faith, 4.

[61] Oppy, Atheism, 6.

[62] Baggini, Atheism, 9.

[63] Malik, “Defining Atheism and the Burden of Proof,” 284.

[64]Onfray, In Defense of Atheism, 15.

[65]Onfray, In Defense of Atheism, 15.

[66]Sevinç, Coleman, and Hood, “Non-Belief: An Islamic Perspective,” 2.

[67]Sevinç, Coleman, and Hood, “Non-Belief,” 2.

[68]Cliteur, The Secular Outlook, 38.

[69]Onfray, In Defense of Atheism, 56–57.