I plan to post a more comprenshive roll-up of my Religious Labels survey’s “first week” (if you haven’t taken it yet — please do), but I wanted to open up discussion on what I am finding to be some rather surprising results.
A couple weeks ago I wrote a post entitled “Avampirism” in which I chided religious folks for calling atheism a “faith.” In that post I pointed out that only those who made faith-based statements could be accused of having a faith, and I used the example of someone claiming with absolute certainty that God does not exist as an example of an atheistic faith-based view. I even cited a quote by Richard Dawkins, the much heralded and ridiculed “New Atheist,” who said, “Reason alone could not propel one to total conviction that anything definitely does not exist.”
But alas, the preliminary results of my survey indicate that self-identified “Atheists” may be somewhat less attached to reason than I would have thought. Now the sample size is small, 112 Atheists, but of them just over 30% indicate there is a 0% chance of the existence of God. I am eager for more results to come in, but if this statistic holds firm, I will have to revise my position on the significance of a F-Aitheistic view.
Roger Norling
Brain Skarpowsky
Tyson Koska
Truth Is a Woman 
Maybe when you are an atheist its because its all too convoluted to be believed..isn’t that part of it? The whole, ‘proof’ thing? So, in essence a lot of people, imo, say they are atheist because there is simply lack of proof otherwise and therefore, its not a faith, but the lack of faith that makes you an atheist?
or is that what you already said?
I have never liked the term atheist but with the lack of something more accurate, when I pressed or asked, that is what I say.
People believe in all kinds of weird shit…maybe they have proof, maybe they just have ‘faith’, maybe its just what they were taught to accept so they just accept it.
Maybe that is the difference…I do not really accept that there is one entity responsible for the creation and oversight of the world BUT I fully accept that I might be wrong.
who knows?
xx
How is “faith” defined here? It was my understanding that having faith and believing in something are separate entities. I have met atheists, who do not believe there is One Creator because there is a lack of proof but do not shut out the idea that this may be wrong. I have also met atheists who are just as vehement, without proof, in absolute non-existance in God as I have met Christians who are vehement, without proof, in the absolute existance in God using the “because I know” mentality. I would wager to say that those who allow themselves to question allow themselves to accept they may be wrong to believe that God does or does not exist because we simply don’t know. Perhaps those who disinvite (a word?) questions from either school of thought are the “because I know” surveyees. And maybe those who were once vehement believers in God experienced tragedy so great it threw them to the opposite end of the spectrum and say now “God can not possibly exist or ‘this’ would not have happened.” No belief system precludes closed-mindedness.
I think the point is that the “because I know” people have faith that atheism might possibly be called a faith. Perhaps it would be more accurate to call the people who are 100% certain that there is no God “Atheists,” which could be called a faith with some accuracy, and the people who simply think God is highly improbable “Unbelievers,” which would not be considered a faith.
Also, Megan is correct in saying that “No belief system precludes closed-mindedness,” though I think that is because humanity as a whole is inclined toward close-mindedness more often than not.
“No belief system precludes closed-mindedness.”
Yup, spot on.
As for the label “atheist,” yes, we could take it to mean “those who are 100% sure,” but that is only 30% of the people (who have so far taken the survey)… plus A-THEIST really just means “not-theist,” it leaves many other things for one to “be”… damn these cursed labels!!!
So I was thinking about the Jenny McCarthy vs Amanda Peet schools of thoughts on child vaccines and I see a parallel to this religious quest. Right? Jenny McCarthy uses the fact that an incident occurred to her (her son diagnosed with Autism) and now speaks out against child vaccines “because she knows” there is a causal link between the two, she “feels it”. Not willing to accept questions to why and how she knows, SHE JUST DOES. While the other school of thought is Mrs. Peet saying not to just accept a feeling as proof positive, ask questions, investigate, look at the evidence. So it’s almost as if it’s not about how or why one believes in God or no God but how or why one believes anything. Can we ask questions as accept we may not know or can we not.
Remember, Socrates was considered the wisest man in all of Greece because of what he admitted he did NOT know…