Athiesm is a faith?

Question

Whoa… I got in trouble for suggesting this one. If you hold beliefs in something that you can't prove or dis-prove, I'm sorry that's faith. Not believing in a supreme being is a faith in it's own. You have faith that a supreme being doesn't exist and that when we die, that's the end of us.

We could argue back and forth about proof or lack of proof, but that's not what I'm getting at and not what I want to get into. I just don't understand why saying that athiests have a faith is so troubling to some. Please explain if you disagree with my opinion.

Answer 1

I think that you do make an interesting point. Its like when my sister says "I'm doing nothing" and I say "Yes you are--- because doing nothing is something." It is the same thing essentially, however to over think "doing nothing" and making it something is a bit over the top-----

you get what i mean--- I think some people were offended because it made a word that was meant to be specific, into something that includes all! Yes it is faith but it is not "a faith"
----And I think you get what I mean.... right....
So When you said this statement where you looking for a faith or something? I mean, if you are an atheist (you didn't say) why would you care about atheism being a faith. ---- Sorry (I caught myself thinking along the same lines as the people that got angry at you)(that comment {not the question} was a bit narrow minded -- but i was only writing what i was thinking).{I was serious about the question}

All right man i hope you get why some people could have been offended (not really offende, but shocked) by your comment ---- Its nothing to get in trouble about though!



---I have a FAITH just if you were wondering. It starts with a "C"

Answer 2

Are you saying that "belief" and "faith" and entirely synonomous? How about "knowledge" and "belief"? Are they synonomous? What about "fact" and "knowledge"?

Language is imprecise, and each us attaches subtly different connotations to words. I think there is a spectrum of connotation expressed by the seqence of words faith, belief, knowledge, fact.

In the scientific method, a community of people work together cooperatively to advance knowledge. We try to establish facts -- bits of knowledge that are incontrovertible. From these we create hypotheses & theoretical frameworks for explaining how facts are related, and for making predictions. A powerful theory can tell us about "facts" before anyone has actually done an observation that would verify the fact.

I would say that scientists do sometimes have to resort to beliefs that are somewhat tenuous -- close to being just faith. This happens when a scientist is working in an area that spans across several fields of knowledge, and they need to rely on results in fields that they don't have expertise in. For example, an expert biologist probably has significant training in chemistry, but not at the level of a chemist. There may be times that a biologist has to "take on faith" the claims of expert chemists because they don't have the necessary training to fully understand how the claims were reached. However, whenever this happens, the chemist could in theory take the time to get the advanced training, and replicate the work. So, this kind of "faith" is really qualitatively different than religious faith.

Now, I think it is true that some atheists really just "take on faith" that there is no God. They haven't really invested the time to think through their belief. But most people like this who understand the difference between atheism and agnosticism would probably say that they are agnostic.

I personally am atheist with respect the the Hebrew Bible (the Old Testament). I have given a great deal of thought to it, and I think the best explanation for that book is that it is just the myths of the Hebrew tribes, handed down orally over a period of probably a thousand years or so, and then finally written down when the means to make semipermanent writings became available. I consider this a theory with predictive power. The theory explains agreat deal that is not answered well by the competing theory that the book is the "word of God".
So, my disbelief in the God of Abraham is not faith. It is beyond faith, and is closer to a theory of sociology/anthropology.

Answer 3

You are correct.

EVERYBODY has FAITH. The Christian, The Jew, The Muslim, and Especially the Atheist.

Faith leads to belief leads to opinion, which is nothing more than a personal view of that which is believed.

See Definitions below:

Faith: firm belief in something for which there is no proof synonym see BELIEF

Belief: a state or habit of mind in which trust or confidence is placed in some person or thing
synonym see OPINION

Opinion: a view, judgment, or appraisal formed in the mind about a particular matter. synonym see View

View: an opinion or judgment colored by the feeling or bias of its holder.


So, to say someone Else's faith is wrong and yours is right is only professing to everyone else that you have a biased opinion, for which you have no more proof than the next person.

When you insult someone Else's faith, you are ultimately throwing the same amount of insult to YOUR OWN Beliefs.

Think about it long enough and all of us will realize that the only thing which we can profess as Truth is that we have no 100% idea what truth really is.

Truth: a judgment, proposition, or idea that is true or accepted as true

Judgement: an opinion so pronounced

Of course this is my opinion only, as yours may differ.

Answer 4

Atheism is a 'faith' in the same sense that NOT collecting stamps is a hobby.

Your question exposes one of the distinguishing characteristics of most christians... the inability to discriminate subtle nuances in meaning.

Atheists simply find that the reasons to believe in god are not compelling. It is no different than not finding the reasons to believe in the Santa, Tooth Fairy and the Bogeyman not to be compelling. Would you say that someone who does not find a compelling reason to believe in the Bogeyman has 'faith' that the Bogeyman does not exist, such that non-belief in the Bogeyman is some kind of a religion, or belief system? That would be ridiculous, wouldn't it? Well, this is the same thing... atheists find belief in dieties to be ridiculous, too. Atheists are not that gullible... you are.

"I contend that we are both atheists.  I just believe in one fewer god than you do.  When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours." ~ Stephen Roberts

Answer 5

Atheism ( or the belief in the denial of God ) is a belief.

Now the question becomes is a belief a faith.

I would pull a Clinton and post that question and get back to you but by the time I did this question would be over and I would have lost any chance of winning the prize of : "Best Answer"

To give me a slim chance of getting the "Best Answer" designation I will say that it (Atheism) is a faith that is not recognized by the religious authorities.

Answer 6

I don't know what Athiesm is, but A-T-H-E-I-S-M is the antithesis of religion and faith. In as much as I was not around to see how everything came into being (and neither were you),I say, "I don't know ..... YET!" To assume that some god, my less than intellectual ancestors made up, instantaneously farted the universe into being, is absurd

Answer 7

I fully agree with you.You are not the first one. In very ancient Sankhya shastra there is averse which says "god cannot be proved'. Atheist is a person who believes that there is no god because he cannot be proved. It is absolutely correct belief because no one can prove god to another person.
God is self realization for which one has to follow the prescribed rules of ashtanga yog for many years.After all that he can realize god but can't prove it to others as God alone is the very thing which denies him

Answer 8

Let me see if I got this, if I claim any crazy thing is true without proof then you need faith, to not believe in it.
Now that's crazy.

Answer 9

I completely agree. To believe anything without irrefutable proof takes faith of one kind or another. Since macro-evolution has not been proven, believing in it takes faith.

Answer 10

It takes a lot of faith to be an athiest.