On Atheism

Atheism is the position of not believing in the existence of the phenomena that religious people call God, gods, or higher beings of various kinds. In the mind of the atheist, the being “God” is merely the idea of God, not a real entity, because it has not been possible to demonstrate under the conditions of science that such a being exists. (The same applies to elves, trolls, ghosts, heaven, unicorns, miracles, a soul that lives an afterlife, and so forth.)

To demonstrate existence, for example, more than one individual would need to observe such a being at the same time, or its existence would need to be measurable with instruments if it lies beyond the senses. Such observations must be repeatable at another time, in another place, and by other people, regardless of whether they “believe” or not.

The claim that a “divine being” exists is inherently implausible, since it has no material reality, and because there have been so many different descriptions of it throughout human history. No believer has been able to present the unbeliever with direct and unequivocal (“hard”) evidence of its existence. Concepts of God are shrouded in mystery and are therefore often said to be supernatural, that is, beyond sensory perception. Moreover, ideas of gods have appeared and disappeared over thousands of years in human history, making it unlikely that the particular “God” of today is any more real than the many ancient gods—of countless forms—in which no one now believes.

Because human beings possess a rich imagination and are capable of creating various mental worlds and imaginary beings, the burden of proof lies with the person asserting the “idea of God,” not with the listener. It does not matter that the being “God” is said to have been witnessed centuries or millennia ago; if such a being still exists, it should still be demonstrable today. This means that the believer cannot legitimately argue to the non-believer that “since you cannot disprove my idea of God, God must exist.” This is known as reversing the burden of proof or an inverted burden of proof.

“To prove something so extraordinary requires extraordinarily strong evidence,” argued the science communicator Carl Sagan. Such evidence has not been presented, and therefore a large number of people with critical scientific thinking are atheists.

Agnosticism is the view of not believing in concepts of God but also not considering them disproven. Agnostics among the non-religious therefore appear either not to have encountered the argument about the inverted burden of proof or not to have been convinced by it.

Agnosticism was more common during the twentieth century than it is today. After a cultural wave of discussion and education about atheism spread through the Western world in the early twenty-first century, many agnostics moved toward a more definite atheism. Sometimes believers who lose their faith move through a period of agnosticism before reaching a settled atheistic position.

Agnosticism can sometimes be confused with skepticism, but the latter concerns doubt about whether things can be proven as knowledge at all and has various forms that will not be discussed here.

Atheism as Harm Reduction

Atheism is part of humanism and of the thinking of naturalists about existence. Atheism—like disbelief in various imagined beings—is part of the effort to preserve an accurate understanding of reality and thereby strengthen realism and a rational foundation for assumptions about the world.

For example, it is protective not to base medicine on “the proclamations of the gods” or morality on “the commands of God,” because there is no demonstrable epistemic reliability or moral legitimacy in claims derived from the supposed words of imaginary beings. Millions of people throughout human history have suffered greatly from organizing their lives around such beliefs. Wars have been fought to pit one god against another (and their supposed dominion), and people have been executed for “heresy” merely for showing a small degree of independent thought. It also distorts value judgments, for example, when one places “God” above one’s own life.

Atheism is therefore a harm-reducing outlook, but it otherwise has little or nothing directly to do with morality or value judgments. Being free from religion does not guarantee sound ethical reasoning, although atheism reduces the likelihood of certain harmful conclusions. For that, a constructive secular ethics—such as that embraced within humanism—is required.