Atheism is not Faith

I am not going to argue here that God does not exist. I am not going to argue here that a belief in God is irrational. All I will do is to show that it is a rational position to accept the non-existence of God. This means that it is a position that can be sustained without having to resort to believing there is no God.

Firstly, let me make it clear that I do not require proof, I require evidence. It is very difficult to prove anything. One way some people try to rebut this argument is to try and point out that I do not know my wife loves me, I only believe she does. The thrust of this argument is that I cannot prove my wife loves me, so I accept her love on faith. I would disagree strongly to this. I would agree that I do not know she loves me, but I can say that I have evidence to confirm the fact. We are married, we have three children, my wife says that she loves me. This does not prove she loves me, but it is strong evidence of the fact. So, I can accept the proposition that my wife loves me without resorting to faith. This shows clearly the difference between proof and evidence, and the fact that it is reasonable to accept a position based on evidence even though it would be impossible to prove it.

I will show here that the idea that it requires as much faith to be an atheist as it does to be a believer is fallacious. I hope to point out that it is not necessary to have faith in somethings non-existence. Firstly, what do I accept as true?

1. Logic and the Laws of Thought are self evident.
   Traditionally these are:
   1) 'What is, is' (called the law of identity) and
   2) 'Nothing both is and is not' (the law of non-contradiction);
   and sometimes also
   3) The law of excluded middle.
   (Taken, in this instance, from this site, an excellent resource for definitions: Xrefer.com)
2. Sense data and myself exist.
   This is a reasonable position to take due to Descartes famous I think therefore I am (Cogito Ergo Sum) argument.
   Descartes decided to remove from his thought all that he could not be sure of.  In the end he came down to the conclusion that it is possible that an evil demon could be projecting his sense data onto him.  If that was the case, he could not be sure of of what the sense data were telling him.
    In fact, the only thing he did know was that there was something that was thinking about whether something exists.  So, he came up with the 'I think therefore I am' argument.
   This means, in simple terms, that in order to doubt there must be a doubter.
3. Sense data can be used to build up an empirical view of the world.
4. Reason is based on applying logic and the laws of thought to the sense data.

So, we can apply reason to the question of the existence of things without requiring faith or assumptions.

If somebody makes the claim that something happened or something exists, the burden of proof lies with the claimant. The burden of proof never falls on the person who says the thing did not happen or does not exist. That can be made clear by a couple of examples. I do not accept the existence of leprechauns. It would be impossible for me to prove leprechauns don't exist. It is a totally reasonable position to say that leprechauns don't exist. This view would become unreasonable only if I held the dogmatic position "Nothing could convince me that leprechauns exist" If my claim about their non-existence is open to change if somebody produces evidence then it is reasonable to take that position. Note that it is a reasonable, not faith based position.

As a second example, I could deny the truth of the Bible because there is another Bible in existence that contradicts it totally. If asked for evidence, I could just make the claim that it exists until it is proven it doesn't exist. This is of course, impossible, and if I actually used this argument in a debate I would get laughed at. The trouble is, this is the level of argument that atheists have to face when arguing with believers. If we cannot disprove God's existence, we must accept the real possibility of his existence and make decisions based on that. The obvious point is that if one cannot disprove the counter-Bible exists, one must accept the real possibility that it does exist and make decisions based on that.

So, the burden of proof lies on the believer in God, not on the person denying his existence. That means to accpet the non- existence of God is based on reasonable grounds, not faith based ones.