Do you believe in the Loch Ness Monster? Most people don't, but some do, call them Nessies. Now, Nessies do have evidence supporting their belief, there are photo's and eye witness accounts of the Monster and there is certainly no definitive proof that it does not exist. However most people have their reasons for not being convinced; they dispute the strength of the evidence and offer reasons why they find the Monsters existence unlikely. Now imagine that, even though there is no new evidence for the Monster, the number of Nessies grows untill they are a majority. Now the disbelievers are noteworthy because of their unusual lack of belief and they become known as Anessies. Do the Anessies require faith to maintain their disbelief? I don't think so, they may require faith to disbelieve in the Monster in principle no matter what the evidence, but if they agree to change their views if a certain type of evidence for the Monster comes along, no faith is required to disbelieve. The Anessies may suddenly have a name that describes their views but their beliefs are unchanged, why should faith suddenly be required?
We are all disbelievers in many things. Atheists simply include God as one of those things.
(The example is Julian Baggini's, not mine)
3 comments:
Yeah but they won't have it. Our irrational denial of their god is an act of faith which they regard as sheer lunacy.
I find it strange that so many religious people insist that atheism is a faith. Why would they do this? Most religious people seem to regard their faith as a wonderful thing - even better than believing something on the basis of evidence and experience. Surely they'd want to stop atheists from using the word.
Apart from this, surely describing atheism as a faith robs the word of all its value. If atheism is a faith then so is every belief or non-belief we have - not believing in the Loch Ness monster, believing the sky won't fall on heads tomorrow etc etc. Faith is really a pretty mundane thing then, isn't it?
it is odd.
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