What is this about?

This FAQ is intended to explain what atheism is, and what it is not, to believers of all faiths. It is about understanding atheism.

It is NOT intended to convince, disseminate or otherwise convert anyone to atheism. What you believe in is really your own private matter, and I have no business or interest in influencing you. This FAQ is NOT about helping anyone choose a belief over another, but if you are undecided and looking for information, this FAQ may at least help you make an informed decision whether to adopt or reject atheism.

Why did you write this FAQ?

As an atheist, I have often run across theists (believers) who had misconceptions about atheism; some believe that it is a dogma, just like any other faith. Others believe that it is nihilism or even satanism under a different name. Most are just genuinely wondering why someone would willfully choose not to believe in any deity. After several such encounters, I decided to put together a FAQ to address their misconceptions and answer their very valid questions.

Nota bene: this FAQ contains several occurrences of the lowercase spelling of “god”. This is not meant to disrespect the Christian God, the Muslim God, or any other god. It is simply used to refer to any deity in general (i.e. any non-descript god from the thousands of religions, cults and periods in human history). When referring to a particular deity, such as the Christian God, the FAQ uses a respectful, capitalized spelling as in “God”. In addition, the singular “god” can refer to the multiple deities that polytheists believe in, or to the half-god or god-like entities that exist in some myths and religions.

1. So what IS atheism?

Literally, atheism means “without god”. It is formed from the prefix “a“, which means “without”, and “theos“, which means “god” in ancient Greek. Interestingly, this is an ambiguous definition, which is accountable for much of the misunderstanding over what atheism really is. Indeed, “without a god” can be interpreted in two significantly different ways (we will try to bridge them later):

1. The lack of belief in god; in this case, the atheist is much like a “blank page” — in the same state as a newborn with regards to the lack of any particular faith. This is typical of atheists who are not hostile to the idea of a god, but lack either the intrinsic faith of believers or the factual knowledge that god exists. They cannot bring themselves to believe without factual, observable and non-refutable evidence (we will see why later), and therefore remain in a default state of “suspension of faith”. This is why they are often called agnostics — literally, “without knowledge” (note that one can be an agnostic in areas other than religion, based on that definition; if you’re undecided because you don’t know, then you most likely qualify as an agnostic).
2. The belief that god does not exist; in this case, the atheist makes an active non-religious claim. This position can be construed as illogical, because there is epistemologically no way of proving that a particular god does not exist (we will explain this later, and see how this position can still logically hold water). Some atheists place themselves in that second category, and because they actually hold a belief (the one that god doesn’t exist), they are sometimes more vocal and militant than their agnostic counterparts. As a result, it is understandable that many believers make the wrong generalization that all atheists are actively refuting the idea of a god.

So, next time you meet an atheist, do not just assume that he actively refutes your God — he may very well be merely undecided, and waiting for non-faith-based (i.e. rational) arguments to start believing.

2. So what about agnosticism?

As we saw earlier, agnostics are simply people “without knowledge”; in the context of faith, they do not not know whether god exists. Technically, they are not alone in this; nobody knows either (believers of all faiths included); for there is no factual, observable and non-refutable evidence of the existence of god. So what’s the difference between an agnostic and a person of faith? Precisely that — faith. Faith is the mental acceptance of, and confidence in, a claim as truth without proof to support it. Agnostics not only lack the knowledge that god exists (just like everybody else), they also lack the faith that believers need in order to believe in a particular god.

Interestingly, there are many other “flavors” of agnosticism. Weak agnostics simply observe that they lack enough knowledge about god to make a decision; strong agnostics not only claim that they don’t have the knowledge, but that they never will because knowledge is unreachable; agnostic theists (also called spiritual agnostics) believe that a god exists, but they don’t know which one; apathetic (or pragmatic) agnostics claim that the very question of god’s existence is irrelevant, because god does not appear to intervene in the physical world anyway; ignostics reserve their decision until a more meaningful definition of god (i.e. one not based on broad assumptions) is offered; etc.

3. So why not just adopt faith in god, even in the lack of knowledge?

From a believer’s perspective, it is sometimes quite baffling that agnostics and other atheists would not just choose to have faith, and therefore become believers, regardless of the lack of evidence that god exists (after all, god is all about faith). Faith, as it happens, proves to be a very difficult thing to acquire; in other words, either you have it (generally through a religious upbringing), or you don’t (generally through a non-religious and/or more rational upbringing). A few atheists may even claim that they would “want to believe”; to them, it would be awesome if there was some yet-undiscovered conscious force in the Universe which was responsible for all of nature. But “wanting to believe” or “choosing to believe” is not enough to actually believe. An atheist may pretend to believe, and even go through the rituals (e.g. praying, going to church or a mosque, etc.), but will not become a believer through these alone (this is a fatal flaw in Pascal’s wager, by the way — more on that later).

Lack of faith, and difficulty to choose faith over disbelief, is naturally a foreign concept for many believers. So let’s do a little thought experiment that is widely used when discussing atheism: pink unicorns (we will be reusing them throughout this FAQ). It may sound silly, and it actually is (on purpose). The idea is not to mock religions, but to invent a belief that nobody -believers and atheists alike- takes seriously (the existence of pink unicorns), and try to believe in it. Can you, no matter how hard you try? Of course not; you have not been raised with the belief that pink unicorns exist, and it is therefore very difficult for you now to decide to believe in them. You can pretend to, claim that you do, and perform the associated rituals, but that will not make you a true believer in pink unicorns.

Atheists can believe in god no more than believers can believe in pink unicorns. No matter how hard they try, faith does not work that way.

Side note: interestingly, some atheists become believers at some point in their life, i.e. they suddenly gain faith even though they have not acquired any new knowledge about god’s existence. This is usually the result of a major life-changing event, either traumatic (e.g. near-death experience, loss of a loved one) or ecstatic (e.g. birth of a child, an unexpected healing). This only goes to prove that some atheists can ultimately be receptive to faith, given the right circumstances.

4. So if not through faith, can knowledge turn atheists into believers?

Technically, if someone had knowledge (i.e. factual, observable and non-refutable evidence) that god exists, they would not be believers (remember, faith is belief without proof to support it). They would be the ultimate converts – the gnostics, a.k.a “those who know”. There are religious claims that gnostics existed; for example, many gods are said to have had magical interventions in our physical world, such as miracles. People witnessing these miracles, such as the multiplication of fish and loaves of bread in the Christian religion, would immediately gain knowledge of the existence of the associated god and ditch faith or undecidedness altogether in exchange for certainty.

Unfortunately, there is no factual, observable and non-refutable evidence available to this day that god exists, which means that atheists cannot use knowledge to follow a particular god.

5. But what about religious scriptures? Isn’t that knowledge?

No, no matter how sacred in the eyes of believers, scriptures are books written by fellow humans to explain the history and tenets of a particular faith. The fact that it was consigned into a book and passed on to us is irrelevant to whether that history is true or made up. After all, thousands of books have been written, either fiction or non-fiction; their existence as books is not by itself evidence of what they claim. Religious texts tell us about other people seeing evidence of a god, but it does not actually present us with the evidence (they may also provide spiritual and moral guidance, which can be useful but is not evidence of a god either).

Again, let’s use the pink-unicorn thought experiment. If a zoologist came back from Borneo with a written account of his encounter with pink unicorns, this would not constitute the type of evidence needed to take pink unicorns seriously. However, if the zoologist came back with a live pink unicorn, or the exact location where anyone could go to see pink unicorns for themselves, nobody could hold the default position that pink unicorns do not exist anymore.

6. Isn’t atheism the same as nihilism?

Just like atheism, nihilism spans several flavors, but none of them actually matches any definition of atheism. They are just different concepts. Broadly speaking, nihilists claim that nothing meaningful can be said about anything, because there is no objective solid ground on which to build not only faith, but also values, morals or purpose. Atheists claim either that they do not have enough knowledge about god to make an educated decision, or that god does not exist. That does not preclude seeing values, morals or purpose of things and lives as valid and meaningful.

7. How can one be moral without a faith?

Atheism does not promote immorality; atheists simply rely on their common sense and secular education rather than religious teachings for deciding what is moral and what is not. Most atheists are moral human beings, because they have integrated one important rule of thumb (which also happens to be a fundamental tenet of many religions): do to others what you would like to be done to you (sometimes expressed negatively: do not do to others what you would not like to be done to you). Keep in mind that this is an unwritten rule — there is no atheist’s equivalent to religious scriptures that tells atheists how to behave (i.e. there is no “Atheist Bible”). It is, however, in everyone’s interest, therefore including the atheists’, that we all treat each others with consideration.

Of course, there are exceptions and notably immoral atheists, just like there are notably immoral theists; this shows that immorality is a matter of character and upbringing, not of faith or lack thereof.

So, morality outside of faith is not only possible, it is actually such a vast subject that the “golden rule” stated above does not even begin to do it justice. I will not expand on it, because this FAQ is about atheism more than it is about ethics, but I encourage any person of faith to read more about secular humanism to understand the depth of historical thinking about morality in the absence of faith.

8. Atheism is just an easier and/or lazier position than faith.

One could think that those who subscribe to atheism do so because it is easier, or because they have not given faith much thought and have chosen a materialistic worldview (i.e. one that explains the world through natural, physical processes) over a spiritual one (i.e. one that involves one or more spiritual entity) out of intellectual laziness. Let’s explore both assumptions in that order.

From a believer’s perspective, the assumption that atheism is easier than faith is understandable. Having faith requires, at minimum, suspension of disbelief, which leaves the believer vulnerable to rational criticism and sometimes outright mockery and intolerance (including from believers of other faiths!). It also requires following a number of rituals that can be more or less taxing depending on the religion; for example, Islam requires Muslims to pray five times a day, go to the mosque on a regular basis, fast in daytime during the entire month of Ramadan, do a lifetime pilgrimage to Mecca, etc. Lastly, some faiths imply following a stringent code of conduct that forbids many earthly pleasures. Atheists do not share this burden, which could explain why they choose atheism over faith.

In reality, being an atheist has little to do with making a choice, whether easy or difficult. As explained earlier, atheists cannot choose to believe, no matter how hard they try; no more that believers can choose to believe in pink unicorns (see “So why not just adopt faith, even in the lack of knowledge?” above).

From an atheist’s perspective, the lack of faith is not easy either. Atheists cannot find comfort and solace in the belief that a supernatural being is looking out for them; that they will be anything but worm food after they die; that there is eternal afterlife bliss to reward their good behavior; that they will ultimately be rejoined with their loved ones, etc. They are essentially alone with their fellow humans in a vast, cold universe; their life is the only one they have; and they still share the burden of having to abide by a moral code of conduct (see “How can one be moral without a faith?”).

As for the second assumption (that of atheism being the by-default choice of the intellectually lazy), not believing in a god does not equate being intellectually disengaged from spiritual matters. Many atheists keep themselves awake just as much as theists on questions such as the meaning of life, read books on spirituality and philosophy, enjoy discussions with theists, and even spend hours writing websites on what it means to be an atheist. What the alleged “intellectual laziness” of the atheists refers to is, in fact, the specific notion of apatheism. As the name implies, it is characterized by a general apathy, or disinterest, towards the question of whether or not god exists, and towards god itself. Interestingly, apatheism can be a trait of both (intellectually lazy) atheists, but also of believers who define themselves as such when asked, but do not participate in religious rituals or take the time to reflect upon their god and faith.

So, atheism is not an easier position than faith, and intellectual and spiritual laziness is a trait that can be shared by some atheists and believers alike.

9. Can atheists disprove the existence of God?

Epistemologically, no; there is no known way of proving that a particular god does not exist. Unless we can come up with some unforeseen reduction ad absurdum argument, disproving god would require at the very least to analyze each and every Planck-length space in the entire universe for evidence of supernatural behavior, in the three spatial dimensions, the fourth one (monitoring over time) plus the unobservable six or seven remaining ones. Furthermore, because we do not know what shape or form a god would take, we would not even know what to look for. God might assume the form of a carbon atom, or a burst of gamma rays, an anvil-shaped blue sponge with zebra stripes, or the entire universe including ourselves. There is just no way to disprove, either logically or physically, the existence of god.

This, however, does not amount to a refutation of atheism. Consider the pink-unicorn thought experiment we used earlier: nobody can disprove the existence of pink unicorns either, and for the same reasons (even though we have an idea of what a pink unicorn might look like). This does not mean that not believing in pink unicorns is irrational, nor that believing in pink unicorns is rational — in fact, not being able to disprove something that cannot, by definition, be disproven, does not give any insight at all on whether this something exists or not.

So, atheism cannot disprove the existence of God, and that does not make atheism weaker just like it does not make faith stronger. Both propositions are just not logically connected.

10. If atheists cannot disprove the existence of god, then how can they rationally believe that god does not exist?

We’ve already dealt with the agnostic position: agnostics do not refuse to believe, they merely remain undecided because they lack evidence of god’s existence or non-existence. Other atheists, however, actively refute the idea of a god. How is that logical since they cannot disprove its existence?

This counter-intuitive position has perhaps best been explained by using the teapot analogy, which was invented by British philosopher Bertrand Russell. It goes like this:

If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is an intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time.

Bertrand Russell: Is There a God?, 1952

Or, to reuse our previous analogy: I can claim that pink unicorns exist, but the fact that you cannot disprove their existence does not make my claim any truer (or weaker). Because we haven’t been brought up to believe in pink unicorns, we all agree that their existence is not very likely; anyone thinking otherwise (a believer) is seen as oddly irrational. However, if we had been brought up to believe in pink unicorns, backed up by centuries of oral and written tradition, we would probably believe in them, and those who didn’t (the atheists) would be singled out.

From a logical perspective, the orbiting teapot or the pink unicorn can be explained in one of two ways: either they exist (which requires a lot of additional extraordinary claims to support this, such as a intelligent creator of space teapots, or the invisibility of pink unicorns which have never been seen on earth), or they don’t (which doesn’t require any additional mental gymnastics). This is where the law of parsimony (also known as Occam’s Razor) comes in: when two competing hypotheses fit the observations equally well, choose the one that makes the fewest assumptions. Why? Because each additional assumption adds to the overall unlikelihood of the hypothesis, and therefore weakens it.

Many atheists apply Occam’s Razor principle equally to space teapots, pink unicorns, and god: you can either rely on the simple, observable laws of physics to explain the universe, or you can choose the more complex set of assumptions that god exists, that it defies the laws of physics, that it has always existed, that it is invisible and immaterial, etc. In other words, while atheists cannot (from an epistemological perspective) prove that there is no god, they can make the reasonable assumption that the existence of god, just like that of space teapots and pink unicorns, is less likely than its non-existence.

11. I’ve heard about the Flying Spaghetti Monster. It is intended to mock god?

No — the Flying Spaghetti Monster is one of those purposely ludicrous inventions (along with the space teapot and the invisible pink unicorn) commonly used to explain why it is probabilistically sound to favor atheism over agnosticism (see question #11). Nobody can take a flying-spaghetti-and-meatball-monster deity seriously, however a true agnostic should, in all logic, give it just as much credit as any other belief or non-belief in a deity (since all are equally scientifically plausible and cannot be disproven). However, Occam’ razor tells us that, because the non-existence of a flying spaghetti monster is more likely than its existence (in that it requires less assumptions to explain), a rational person should favor non-belief in the flying spaghetti monster over belief in it. By analogy, non-belief in any other deity holds a higher likelihood of truth than belief.

12. Okay, so atheists don’t believe in god. But why do they have to be so vocal about it?

First of all, not all atheists are vocal about their position. Many are quiet people who just want to go through their day without causing a fuss, and keep their atheism to themselves. You might even know some of them and not be aware that they are atheists. Theists (believers in a god) are very similar in that respect; many are discreet about their belief, while others will actively engage others on the topic of religion and seek to confront different beliefs. Same goes for politics, social agenda issues, and preferences over football teams. It really is a function of how opinionated people are and it is not specific to religion.

There is, however, a rational argument for atheists to hold a more militant standpoint, i.e. refusing a conciliatory standpoint that gives equal respect to belief and disbelief in god. This is a reductio ad absurdum argument which British biologist Richard Dawkins presented like this:

if agnosticism demands giving equal respect to the belief and disbelief in a supreme being, then it must also give equal respect to belief in an orbiting teapot, since the existence of an orbiting teapot is just as plausible scientifically as the existence of a supreme being.

Of course, giving credit to the belief in a space teapot (or invisible pink unicorns) does not sound very serious, but from the logical perspective above, giving credit to the belief in god does not either. This is why militant atheists refute the conciliatory approach of agnostics who try and appease the debate by giving equal respect and attention to both theist and non-theist opinions (bear in mind, militant atheists normally do not disrespect the believers – only the beliefs themselves. While theists may seem a little bit odd and silly to them for carrying an odd and silly belief, this does not constitute a cause for ad hominem attacks).