I had the privilege — okay, not really — of having a recent conversation on a Facebook friend’s wall about atheism. A participant (who wasn’t my friend) raised the common “It takes faith to be an atheist” canard, and my SIWOTI syndrome kicked in and I couldn’t help but jump in to counter that claim.

As I suspected when I read the comment, the issue was largely one of definitions. A fair amount of ink and pixels have been spilled over trying to say just what defines atheism, and I have never bothered to write about the topic because I tend to presume that my audience will have a pretty good idea of what atheists mean by that label.

But in the midst of explaining to this random stranger on Facebook why it wasn’t particularly helpful to say that atheism is based on faith even if you mean that as a compliment (and this person did), I realized that there might be some use in at least touching on the issue.

So here we go, in three parts:

What Atheists Generally Mean (I Think)

Defining atheism can be a bit of a tricky subject, in large part because of different usages but also because of some philosophical nitpicking.

I won’t go into all of it, but the crux is this: Is atheism the denial of theism (e.g. “no god or gods exist”) or a lack of belief in theism — or both?

This distinction may seem tedious and insignificant, but it’s the difference between a positive claim and the rejection of a positive claim, and that tends to affect the philosophical burden of proof one has in defending their position. Atheism-as-denial is a more difficult position to defend than atheism-as-rejection.

The situation gets even stickier when you get into issues of agnosticism vs. gnosticism or hard vs. soft atheism.

In my experience, atheists tend to go with the “rejection” definition for themselves, particularly since it is a broader term, encompassing both dismissal of theism and its outright denial. (After all, if one denies theism, that also entails a lack of belief in it.)

This is not a definition without its problems. My colleague Dan Fincke has written before about the pitfalls of characterizing atheism as a lack of belief and in fact draws a distinction between adeism and atheism that I think can be fairly useful.

And in fact that distinction draws out one of the other problems with defining atheism: In many ways, it is contingent on how we define theism. Anyone who’s talked to a sufficient number of theists will know that finding consensus on that definition is a can of worms all its own. Indeed, I have a friend who is adamantly ignostic — that is, of the opinion that the whole project of defining “god” is futile.

But while I think these are all complicated matters that I will attempt to oversimplify in a moment in my own personal definition, I think it’s fair to say that a good working definition of atheism is at least “lacking belief in a god or gods.” (We’ll leave aside for now the question of how there are atheists who say they believe in God.)

What I Generally Mean (I’m Pretty Sure)

Enough about the general definition, though. That allows us to generalize about atheism as a concept, but I did say I was going to talk about what I particularly mean when I call myself an atheist.

So here goes:

Of all the conceptions of deity I have heard, there is none that meets these conditions:

Its existence is sufficiently likely based on the available evidence; Its attributes are internally self-consistent and compatible with said evidence; and Its definition is sufficiently distinct from clearly non-deific entities or concepts.

Criterion (1) addresses the most common objection of atheists: whether the theist meets their burden of proof when advocating for a particular view of god¹ (regardless of how broad or narrow that conception is). I’m not of the opinion that theists never provide evidence for their god-claims, but I do think that no theist has both provided sufficient evidence and adequately addressed the ways in which certain facts (like the existence of gratuitous suffering) are more likely given naturalism than given theism.

(This criterion does presume that such a deity would leave behind evidence, to which the theist might protest that a sufficiently powerful deity could make it such that no evidence remained. A deity so intent on hiding her existence would be either unconcerned with whether I believe in her or interested in rewarding belief without sufficient evidence, and I find neither horn of that dilemma particularly compelling given the extraordinary nature of the claim.)

Criterion (2) addresses the way in which some conceptions can be ruled out either without even looking at the evidence or by finding an inherent contradiction between the attributes ascribed to a particular deity and some particular fact. The Trinitarian deity of orthodox Christianity would be an example of the former; the “tri-omni” (omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent) deity of classical theism an example of the latter.

Criterion (3) is one that probably seems unnecessary, but I have found that there are some slippery theists who will argue for some rather idiosyncratic definitions of god, like the Tillichian “ground of being” or “the whole of existence.” The word “god” is imbued with a hell of a lot of baggage, and I’m not inclined to give too much weight to transmogrifying the mundane into the divine. I mean, if you want to say you believe in God and that God is Jerry Garcia, knock yourself out, but it’s not going to shatter my worldview or anything.

At this stage, no one’s provided me with any conception of deity (and the requisite evidence) that meets these criteria. If someone ever does, I probably won’t call myself an atheist anymore.

What It Matters to Me

My deconversion is a little strange in one way: When I deconverted, I became virtually label-less.

I’ve heard other people talk about how they sort of walk themselves through stages: from a specific religion to a vague theism to deism to agnosticism to atheism, or something like it. (Sometimes there are other more spiritual waypoints.) This didn’t happen for me. When I stopped believing, the only label I felt comfortable accepting immediately was “non-believer.” When I came out to my mother a few weeks later, I didn’t say the “A word.”

To be honest, it was that horrible conversation with her that was partially the impetus for accepting the self-identification as “atheist.”

My relationship with my mother has improved since that conversation over four years ago, and I even recently saw a glimmer of recognition from her that hammering away at going to church or reading the Bible or trying in some way to believe again would only hurt our relationship, and that recognition is worth noting (and celebrating!). But at the beginning, it was traumatic for both of us. She never expected to get the phone call she got from me — and in fairness, I never expected to make it — and she said things that I think (and hope) she regrets now.

I sometimes tell people that I didn’t really have an “angry atheist” stage, but the truth is that I did. It was just very condensed, and I had to work hard to mitigate its effects so that it wouldn’t adversely my newly-mixed marriage.

My mother’s response genuinely made me angry. And that made me realize that identifying as an atheist rather than using a softer term like “agnostic” or “humanist” was partially about making a statement.

Being an atheist isn’t some kind of virtual middle finger to all the theists and religious people out there, though. It’s about making a very clear delineation between the positions and worldview I now hold and the ones I was raised with, the ones I previously fought to justify, the ones that I held until they were simply no longer tenable. It’s about recognizing that I did in fact cross a significant bridge in my life, one that many people may not think possible and one which can feel quite liberating.

Not everyone needs to make that statement. Some people might be a sort of de facto atheist just because they don’t really care or have never found anything worth pursuing in the claims of theists. That’s okay, too.

For me, though, it’s about signaling that if the God Question is important enough, I know which side I come down on, and I’m willing to say so to others.

Maybe that question shouldn’t be important and some day won’t be. Maybe at that point self-identifying as an atheist would seem like a weird vestige of a bygone era.

So be it, but in the meantime, “atheist” both represents my views and functions as a flag to others. As long as it keeps doing that, I’ll keep calling myself an atheist.

Images (modified) via Pixabay and Wikimedia Commons

¹ Note here that I am using the generic usage, so I am not capitalizing “god” in these cases. See here for more explanation. ^