Does atheism require faith?

Question

I have a feeling that many answers will prove my point, but I'll do my best not to jump to conclusions.

Please keep this in mind, as a rationalist I am still unconvinced that the physical world exists. Cogito, ergo sum. I am only a thinking thing for certain.

Answer 1

I believe that full on atheism requires faith. Faith that god does not exist. You can never be 100% sure of anything. The rest is faith.

However, FAITH can mean different things to different people. Doubtless, you will hear what you want to hear.

Answer 2

Does Atheism Require Faith?
Every once in a while you hear the old canard about atheism requiring "more faith" than just about any sort of theism - not merely general theism, but even specific instances of theism, like Christianity, with all of their attendant theological structures and added beliefs. How can any sensible person make such unsupportable and ridiculous claim?
Writing in Town Hall, David Limbaugh proves once again that he is not a very sensible person:

The authors [Christian apologists Norman Geisler and Frank Turek] show that Christian faith and reason are not mutually exclusive, but complementary and that there is an abundance of evidence for the truth of Christianity. Conversely, they show that it is impossible to be an atheist without a substantial amount of faith. They note, for example, that naturalistic biologists claim "that life generated spontaneously from nonliving chemicals by natural laws without any intelligent intervention." These scientists believe that a "one-celled animal known as an amoeba (or something like it) came together by spontaneous generation…" But we now know there is incredible complexity in "the message found in the DNA of a one-celled amoeba (a creature so small, several hundred could be lined up in an inch)."

Answer 3

No.

As for the physcial world, you know it exists through your senses. Of course the objection to this is that your senses are fallible. But then how would you know that without your senses? The position self-contradicts itself.

And if you think you are just a vat in a brain, and all the physical is an illusion, then this too becomes an incoherent position. If you are a vat in a brain, then you have never actually seen a vat or brain. This changes the meaning of "I am a vat in a brain" into, "I am a 'vat'-brain in a 'vat'-vat." But then you have never seen a 'vat'-brain or a 'vat'-vat, so it goes on forever.

And while Cogito, ergo sum may give you some certainty, it is only a fleeting one, for once you step outside of that moment you lose it. But it might be that one moment of certainty is all you need.

Answer 4

This depends on your rationality towards the idea of faith. Faith is meant in our culture to usually be a word for unquestioning belief in god and religion. So, in this case, an athiest would have no faith. However, faith could be seen as being a strong conviction, towards any belief system. Atheists, believe it or not, do have beliefs, so if a person wanted to play a symentics game they could say the athiest had faith since they had beliefs. The question would be more correct to ask if athiest have faith in "no-god." Once again, it is only a game of symantics, and really just ignores the issue. So, to conclude, your question is not a question on the actuality of faith, but on the labels we give ourselves to explain certain aspects of culture, I.E. religion and atheism.

Answer 5

I answered a similar question before.

Faith can exist without religion. We have faith from reading books that pass down knowledge without the need to reprove everything. We also have faith that our knowledge can be improved if we find things that disprove passed knowledge. These were shown in history of scientific discoveries where many scientists were not religious.

Answer 6

Aparently so. They also now have a book and a prophet whis name is Richard Dawkins. He's trying to start an orgnaized Atheism thing so I guess they'll eventually have a church and do titthing, since Dawkins is going for a tax exempt status, hence he's expecting Atheists to dig into their pockets and fund him.

Answer 7

It must require faith to put one's eternal fate in one's own understanding when the evidence and sense of a Creator is so resounding.

Answer 8

atheism requires faith to some degree, because it is impossible to prove a negative, however, it requires much less faith than traditional religions because there is more evidence mounting against the teachings of religions than there is against the non-existence of god

Answer 9

No, Atheism just requires a disbelief.

Answer 10

Disbelief is the logical default-you should rightly disbelieve in any phenomenon not supported by valid evidence so no faith is required.