People who say that the atheism is a religion often support their argument by saying that atheists come to their unreligious beliefs in the same way many theists get to their religious beliefs: by faith. “You cannot prove that there is no God -- you have to believe it,” says Laura Lond, an ex-atheist turned Christian novelist and essayist, expressing a viewpoint popular among people who call atheism a religion. “How do they know [that atheism is correct]? Right -- they don't. They just believe it.”[1]
Some atheists -- generally the soft/weak/negative atheists -- go along with Lond. “There is absolutely no testable way to prove that God does not exist, and almost no one argues this point. There is no way to prove a negative,” says Austin Young Michaels, who contributes to the blog Atheist Soapbox. “It is totally and completely unverifiable under any empirical experiment.” As a result, he says, “Claiming that no god exists is a faith-based claim.”[2]
Many unbelievers scoff at that idea. “To say that atheism requires faith is as dim-witted as saying that disbelief in pixies or leprechauns takes faith,” argues British atheist Geoff Mather.[3] Humanist philosopher Julian Baggini points out that atheists disbelieve because they don’t have faith[4]. As the website Atheists Frequently Asked Questions says, “[Most atheists] consider faith to mean gullibility. They highly regard intellectual honesty and prefer to wait until an assertion [like the existence of God] has been sufficiently demonstrated as true, before accepting it.”[5]
But Ray Comfort, a prominent minister, says that atheists have to have faith because the universe is so complex. “In the face of an incredibly intricate and ordered Nature, [atheists] believe that there is no evidence of intelligent design. That takes amazing faith.”[6] Some people who agree with Comfort go further. Conservative Christian political columnist Cal Thomas has said, “It takes more faith not to believe in God than to believe in Him.”[7]
There are various answers to the idea that you need faith to believe that all of our universe’s galaxies, natural laws, and interacting forces developed without God. Chapter 17 will cover them in detail. But a short answer is: Why couldn’t the universe have evolved on its own? The universe has been around for billions of years and covers a nearly infinite expanse. A lot of complex structures can grow in that much space and time, and there’s no proof that a deity made any of them.
But the “atheism requires faith” idea (let’s call it ARF) isn’t just an opinion. It is, in many cases, just plain wrong.
Many an ARFer “claims that [all] atheists are claiming to know with faith-based, dogmatic, absolute certainty that God does not exist,” says Staks Rosch, who hosts an atheist blog called Dangerous Talk. In other words, ARFers say that the viewpoint of hard/strong/positive atheists is the viewpoint of all atheists. “This is really just a false caricature or ‘straw man’ of what most atheists think,” Rosch says[8] In other words: Don’t buy it.
[1] Laura Lond, “Atheism: Godless Religion,” Associated Content website, January 25, 2008, http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/563945/atheism_godless_religion.html?cat=34
[2] Austin Young Michaels, “Is Atheism a Religion? (And Do Atheists Have Faith?), Atheist Soapbox blog, Decemer 16, 2010, http://www.atheistsoapbox.com/2010/12/is-atheism-religion-and-do-atheists.html
[3] Geoff Mather, GeoffMather website, no date (confirmed in e-mail to author, May 28, 2011
[5] Uncredited, “Do Atheists Have Faith?”, Atheists Frequently Asked Questions website, May 22, 2011, http://atheist-faq.com/do-atheists-have-faith
[6] Ray Comfort, “The Religion of Atheism,” Atheist Central blog, March 23, 2011, http://raycomfortfood.blogspot.com/2011/03/religion-of-atheism.html
[7] Cal Thomas, “The Atheist Wager,” On Faith website, December 28, 2006, http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/panelists/cal_thomas/2006/12/post_2.html
[8] Staks Rosch, “Atheism 101: Does It Take More Faith To Be an Atheist?”, Examiner.com website, July 17, 2009, http://www.examiner.com/atheism-in-philadelphia/atheism-101-does-it-take-more-faith-to-be-an-atheist
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