belief, faithLet’s define faith narrowly as belief in the absence of argument or evidence.
Some theists believe in God despite knowing that there is no objectively convincing evidence. Does disbelief require the same sort of faith?
Let’s define faith narrowly as belief in the absence of argument or evidence.
Taking atheism to mean a lack of belief in god; a lack of belief is not a belief - so the answer is no.
We could instead define atheism as an “active” belief in the statement “god does not exist”.
There literally can never be any proof for this belief, since the claim that god exists is a supernatural claim, and not falsifiable. You cannot prove there is no god, because you cannot prove a negative.
The “faith” that is required is the same kind which is needed to believe that the world does not disappear when you are asleep.
So, given the right definitions of “faith” and “atheism” you could say “atheism requires faith”. However, the meaning of “faith” has to be changed so much from what people normally consider it to mean, the sentence has lost its meaning.
When evidence is a requirement for belief, faith leaves the equation. So, no atheism does not require faith.
2 points:
Faith is not simply belief in the absence of evidence. That’s just belief. No one really calls a belief “Faith” unless and until it flies in the face of existing evidence (i.e. it’s not really Faith if it hasn’t been “tested”). Faith is in reality the explicit rejection of evidence to protect a belief which one considers too important to let go of.
Atheism is not even a belief. Inasmuch as atheism is viewed in its narrow sense, it is simply the rejection of a belief, not a belief itself. Metaphysical naturalism IS a belief, and many if not all atheists are also metaphysical naturalists. But it’s important not to mistake one for the other. Atheism is the statement that one does not believe in a personal (theistic) god. By extension, it often means that one does not believe there is any sort of god. But it says nothing about what the person actually believes about the world. Naturalism does.
So no. Atheism is neither a Faith, nor is it even a belief. It’s a description of lack of belief.
This is how I answer those talking about evidence:
I think it may require faith, depending on your “default”. In some parts of the world / communities, it is standard not to believe in God / a god and therefore being a theist requires some argument or experience to believe differently than those around you. And vice versa for an atheist in a theist environment.
So, what is your default belief before you need evidence to change your mind?
This is commonly used to split atheists into two broad categories, negative atheism, and positive atheism, or "strong" and "weak".
Paraphrased from Negative and positive atheism on Wikipedia:
Positive (or strong/hard) atheism maintains that "there is at least one god" is a false statement. Believing in something that cannot be proven (you can't prove the non-existence of something) does require faith (as per "faith" def 2(b)1 in Merriam-Webster: "firm belief in something for which there is no proof").
Negative (weak, soft) atheism refers to any other type of non-theism, wherein a person does not believe any deities exist, but does not claim that same statement is false.
No.
(Apparently the answer has to be a minimum of 15 characters, but any other words are really superfluous in this instance.)
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