The Different Shades Of Atheism

Atheism is the belief that there is no god or divine being. Simple, right? Before I started researching this topic, I thought it was so and that the classification would only be complicated for non-atheists. However, I realized that nothing could be further from the truth. Today, we will talk about the nuances of atheism.

There are different forms of atheism. “Non-believers” are not the same all over the world,  nor do they all follow the same form of atheism.

I think this difference is related to atheists’ fear that they will end up like some believers. While it may sound offensive, it is more of a rejection of any kind of dogmatic or extreme position.

Nevertheless, atheists, at times, fall into the category of religious fundamentalism. In general, the overriding goal of atheism is to establish a secular society, where believing in a religion is like believing in Santa Claus. In other words, a belief without any scientific basis. 

However, that does not automatically mean that it is something negative, as long as we categorize it as this: A belief. A secular state is a state where this kind of comparison is allowed, although there is always a risk of offending someone. In a religious community, a person may be executed for expressing such an idea.

Atheism: A nuanced form of non-belief

Philosophers, such as Antony Flew and Michael Martin, concretized some of the nuances of atheism. They differentiate between positive atheism (strong) and negative atheism (weak).

• Positive atheism is the conscious confirmation that there are no gods.
• Negative atheism is not a belief that there are no gods, but rather a lack of faith.

Thus, positive atheism is a general term that is also used to describe atheists who accept this statement as true: “God does not exist”. One could say that positive atheism has taken the time to confirm that God does not exist by proof.

On the other hand, negative atheists can say; “I do not believe in god” because they may not consider it an idea to be countered.

In agnosticism, on the other hand, it’s all about uncertainty. Proponents of agnosticism do not know whether God exists or not because they say that humans do not have the knowledge to confirm or deny his existence.

Many people believe that agnosticism is a form of atheism for cowards. This is because they believe that one should believe in something rational or not.

One cannot argue against the fact that we have rational means to differentiate between the real and the imaginary (such as fairies and mermaids). However, it does not seem that we can still openly deny the non-existence of God in the real world.

The separation of the different meanings of the word may help you better understand the different kinds of justifications that exist within the scope of atheistic beliefs. An argument may work to justify one form of atheism, but does not work for another.

Social stigma, political pressure and intolerance make it difficult to estimate the number of atheists in the world. It could be billions!

Justification of atheism

Another of the nuances of atheism is how differently people justify it. There is a lot of controversy surrounding the information available, what it entails and how it should be integrated. Moreover, there are meta-epistemological concerns about the role of arguments, reasoning, belief, and religiosity in human life.

Atheists have argued that it does not make sense for a person to believe in a supernatural being because they have no evidence to the contrary. In that regard, they argue that it would also be unreasonable to think one has cancer because one does not have evidence to the contrary.

Is it logical to debate about God?

Let’s look at other approaches to atheism. A group of arguments is what experts, sometimes, call deductive atheological exercises. They reach the conclusion that the existence of God is impossible.

Another group of important and influential arguments falls into the inductive atheological category. These probabilistic arguments bring the natural world into play, as well as generalized suffering, non-belief, as well as biological and cosmological discoveries.

Another approach is non-cognitivism atheism, which denies the idea that God is meaningful or has any prepositional content that can be evaluated according to truth or falsehood. Instead, religious acts are more a complication of emotions or an expression of spiritual passion.

On the other hand, inductive and deductive approaches are cognitivist in the sense that they accept that affirmations about God are meaningful and can be labeled as either true or false.

Conclusion

The question of whether God exists or not is spread among positions related to biology, physics, metaphysics, philosophical science, ethics, philosophical language, and epistemology. The reasonableness of atheism depends on the general adaptation of an entire conceptual and explanatory description of the world.

On a personal level, I think God can be something different for any person. I am not interested in the religious idea of ​​God as it does not solve my existential problems. In other words, it is, more than anything else, a personal and subjective decision. In any undeveloped society, both positions should be able to coexist.