What do Atheist Believe?

[Jacob Samuelson]

I don't think there is any difference between atheists and theists in regard to what they believe and don't, except when God(s)/supernatural is used as the most likely explanation.

Atheists in general have no issue with things not being explainable and will often refer to theists using the God of gap argument to fill in stuff that atheists for instance have no problem simply saying that we do not know.

But just as theists will draw logical conclusions about things not related or believed to be related to the supernatural, so do atheists but simply extend this to these things as well and will demand proof for the supernatural.

In other words, Atheist simply do not accept the Scriptures as evidence of testimony of God while theist would. Not that they wouldn't accept any evidence, just the ones presented. Now I get that, which is kind of why I asked the question. Theist are able to create a grounded explanation for why things are and the genuinely adept ones are able to attach as many scientific truths to it in support. Atheists seem to hear the explanation and dismiss it as if there is a better or more logical alternative. Now I understand Atheists not being fans of political religious arguments where a Church historically would prohibit a natural scientific understanding of the world (theist were generally more affected by these prohibitions), but avoiding an explanation doesn't necessarily benefit truth. If atheists are still able to believe in something based on logic, and theism was born from making logical sense of this world, I personally don't see how atheism can operate cognitively. If it is simply disagreeing with others of who or what god is out there based on what make sense to you or the facts presented, that isn't atheism, that is just another form of theism. Right? I know tons of Christians that don't believe I believe in the same Jesus as they do because of evidences in the Bible, just because they don't call me Christian doesn't change what I feel is more logical to believe. From what I am hearing from a lot of proclaimed atheist is much of the same. It is that there is no way of disproving God, but there is a way to explain the universe outside of a book where people claimed to see God. Whether God exists or not, I'm going with the logically better explanation. I don't know how one could justify that being atheism?

 

[Jacob Samuelson]

I'm an atheist. The answer is different depending on which atheist you speak to.

I believe many things. I believe that I exist. I believe there was dawn this morning and will be dawn again tomorrow. I believe the earth is a sphere, that the moon orbits the earth, that the earth orbits the sun, and so on. These all have logical arguments/"proofs" to support them, yes. Each of these is a belief that is justified by the data that I have available to me, being the most likely conclusions that can be extrapolated from the relevant facts.

I don't expect everything to be explainable, but I only believe in what I think I can concretely prove. I don't think that my proofs are absolute, unchanging truth, though. I am amenable to change my position in the face of new information or superior logic. However, I try my hardest to not believe in anything without a logical reason to do so based on my knowledge.

The word for this that I've heard is "apistevism" but I've also heard it referred to as "faithlessness" and "scientific skepticism." Personally, though, I see it as an extension of modern rationalism, which is my epistemology.

I'm not a rationalist due to being an atheist, though. I am an atheist due to being a rationalist. My rationalism lead me to adopt the position of gnostic atheism. Atheism is just one small facet of my larger worldview, in the same way that theism is only a small part of Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, etc.

Thank you for your answer, I guess what I have found most inciteful in this question is this accepted spectrum of Atheism. It is as if to most answering there are different shades of black or white, which aren't options I considered. To me, Atheism in its word composition is 'Not Belief of God'. The word would logically have to have been invented after theism, since you cannot not have something that wasn't there to begin with. So I always thought atheism and theism could only be black and white definitions. You either have a belief in God or you don't. Plain and simple. Yet like most concepts that don't quite make sense, I can see why the definition had to evolve so that it could better represent a group of people that while they claimed to not believe in God, had the need to address to what extent they don't believe. I suppose you could say this with theists, but from what I am gathering is there isn't a completely black just as there isn't a completely white definition of God. It seems to me that Atheism is merely a theory like the concept of 0. and God is a theory like the concept of infinity and we as finite minded humans are somewhere in between the paradoxes. No person can entirely remove their belief in God but no one can say they have a perfect belief in God, unless you accept of course Jesus Christ, who theoretically personified and exemplified God perfectly. Besides the point, as for you and me, I would like to think we are the same substance but at different parts of the spectrum. We both are able to believe. We both don't expect everything to be explainable, you just think your answer is more rationale than mine, not removing the concept of infinity from the formula. I see the same barrier between theists as well. While I would say atheism is a misnomer, I do think there is truth digestible for everyone in their own way in their own time. It is a part of growing, which is natural and observable in humans. It is what makes up the existence that you believe in.

 

[Ella S.]

Thank you for your answer, I guess what I have found most inciteful in this question is this accepted spectrum of Atheism. It is as if to most answering there are different shades of black or white, which aren't options I considered. To me, Atheism in its word composition is 'Not Belief of God'. The word would logically have to have been invented after theism, since you cannot not have something that wasn't there to begin with. So I always thought atheism and theism could only be black and white definitions. You either have a belief in God or you don't. Plain and simple. Yet like most concepts that don't quite make sense, I can see why the definition had to evolve so that it could better represent a group of people that while they claimed to not believe in God, had the need to address to what extent they don't believe. I suppose you could say this with theists, but from what I am gathering is there isn't a completely black just as there isn't a completely white definition of God. It seems to me that Atheism is merely a theory like the concept of 0. and God is a theory like the concept of infinity and we as finite minded humans are somewhere in between the paradoxes. No person can entirely remove their belief in God but no one can say they have a perfect belief in God, unless you accept of course Jesus Christ, who theoretically personified and exemplified God perfectly. Besides the point, as for you and me, I would like to think we are the same substance but at different parts of the spectrum. We both are able to believe. We both don't expect everything to be explainable, you just think your answer is more rationale than mine, not removing the concept of infinity from the formula. I see the same barrier between theists as well. While I would say atheism is a misnomer, I do think there is truth digestible for everyone in their own way in their own time. It is a part of growing, which is natural and observable in humans. It is what makes up the existence that you believe in.

If I'm being honest with you, I do believe that it is a simple, Boolean value. You are a theist if you believe that "theism" is true, which is a specific belief that the world was created by an omnimax, immanent, and transcendent God. You are an atheist if you believe that theism is false.

This is what the terms used to refer to in philosophy, and still do in most academic contexts. I only pay lip service to the idea of agnostic atheism. I don't think it's a coherent concept. I think it encompasses two groups: "gnostic" atheists who don't want to admit that they have a positive claim because they want to dodge the burden of proof and "agnostics" who think that theism is equally likely to be true or false.

It shouldn't be a complicated question. People have just misused these terms so frequently that they've started to lose their original specificity.

 

[Ella S.]

If I'm being honest with you, I do believe that it is a simple, Boolean value. You are a theist if you believe that "theism" is true, which is a specific belief that the world was created by an omnimax, immanent, and transcendent God. You are an atheist if you believe that theism is false.

This is what the terms used to refer to in philosophy, and still do in most academic contexts. I only pay lip service to the idea of agnostic atheism. I don't think it's a coherent concept. I think it encompasses two groups: "gnostic" atheists who don't want to admit that they have a positive claim because they want to dodge the burden of proof and "agnostics" who think that theism is equally likely to be true or false.

It shouldn't be a complicated question. People have just misused these terms so frequently that they've started to lose their original specificity.

To add onto this, if you believe in a transcendent God but not an immanent one, you are not a theist. You are a Deist. If you believe in an immanent God but not a transcendent one, you are not a theist. You are a pantheist. If you believe in a God who is immanent and transcendent but not omnipotent and omnibenevolent, then you are a monolatrist, not a theist. If you believe the world was created by more than one god, then you are not a theist. You are a polytheist.

I get why agnostics take on the label of atheist, because they aren't convinced enough by the truth of theism to act as if it were true in their everyday lives, making them sort of pragmatic or de facto atheists. There are also agnostic "theists," who do act as if theism is true despite believing that they don't have any good reasons for believing it is or because they're skeptical about the claim that theism is false. So there is a difference between these two kinds of agnostics.

I just don't think it makes sense to be calling agnostics "atheists," because they technically aren't since they don't believe that theism is false. The word for merely lacking theism is "non-theism," not atheism.

 

[Nimos]

Atheists seem to hear the explanation and dismiss it as if there is a better or more logical alternative.

That is why I wrote that atheists generally have no problem with the statement "I don't know", because we don't dismiss theist's explanations simply because they are founded in religion. The same holds true for natural explanations when scientists talk about the multiverse as a possible explanation, we look at this the same way, it is a theory for which we have no proof. Therefore the answer to whether that is true or not is "We don't know". Where most atheists will object in regards to religion, compared to a scientific theory such as the multiverse is because religious claims often come with a lot of rules and truth claims, whereas the multiverse theory doesn't have any impact on people and the scientists are open in regards to it simply being a theory and nothing else.

If atheists are still able to believe in something based on logic, and theism was born from making logical sense of this world, I personally don't see how atheism can operate cognitively. If it is simply disagreeing with others of who or what god is out there based on what make sense to you or the facts presented, that isn't atheism, that is just another form of theism. Right?

Well, this is where the big difference is because I don't think theists apply the same logical rules to their belief in God as they do other things. For instance, a Christian will have no issue dismissing Odin and Thor as being made up, whereas God and Jesus are definitely true. For atheists, there is no difference. Jesus might have existed which is no issue for most atheists, the issue occurs the moment it is claimed that he rose from the dead and all the other supernatural things he did, for which there is absolutely no evidence. Therefore from a logical point of view to the atheist, it is equally likely that Jesus is the son of God that did these things as Odin and Thor exist, the proof for these things is equally weak.

To me, this is the double standard or dilemma that religious people do not seem to apply when it comes to their beliefs compared to what atheists do. So it's not another form of theism, the rules are the same regardless of the claim being made, whether it's scientific or religious, that doesn't mean that we can't hold the position that we believe something is more likely than something else, but I doubt you will find an atheist claiming that for instance, the multiverse is true.

I know tons of Christians that don't believe I believe in the same Jesus as they do because of evidences in the Bible, just because they don't call me Christian doesn't change what I feel is more logical to believe.

That is fairly common for religious discussions and illustrates my point above fine I think. Where Christians, Muslims and JW can argue whether Jesus was a prophet, God, or simply the son of God, atheists ask for evidence for him even being divine in the first place, because it doesn't really matter whether he is one or the other, if he hasn't been proven to be divine in the first place.

Atheists can give their opinion about it, purely based on what the scriptures say, but doesn't really change anything for us, because we again see no evidence for him being what he claimed to begin with. So in that case, I would probably say that you would get the most neutral opinion from an atheist because we have nothing invested in it.

It is that there is no way of disproving God, but there is a way to explain the universe outside of a book where people claimed to see God.

It doesn't really make sense to disprove anything. It's about a lack of evidence. Meaning the burden of proof is on the person making the claim. And you can find atheists that will claim that God doesn't exist and the burden of proof is on them, but for most atheists (including myself), my claim is simply that I don't see any proof of God from the evidence that theists present.

So one has to be careful which type of atheist one speaks with and whether they make the claim or not. Because I think most atheists hold the same position as I do. Because disproving God is nearly impossible and is simply not worth trying. It would be like me asking you to disprove that unicorns don't exist. Unless you made the claim that they do, there is no burden of proof on you, so simply saying that you are not convinced by the evidence that they do is a perfectly rational position.

Whether God exists or not, I'm going with the logically better explanation. I don't know how one could justify that being atheism?

Not 100% sure what you mean, if you mean that God exists is the most logical explanation? If that is the case, then compare it to my example above with the unicorn, why would you assume unicorns exist if you have not been presented with proof of them, in which case the most rational position you can take is that they do most likely not exist until such proof has been presented to you.

 

[Nakosis]

So the natural human mind produces something not natural. How does that work?

Dreams.
While dreams are natural, what you experience in a dream doesn't have to be natural.
The subconscious mind creates independent of conscious awareness. It can take everything that it learns through physical perception and combine it in unnatural ways which can be experienced while dreaming.

If the dream is significant enough, even though unnatural, it can affect our conscious thinking.
I can imagine like having a dream about a tree talking to you. So you start to believe tree have spirits living in them.
We spend up to a third of our life in an unconscious state. Plenty of chances for the subconscious mind to create all kinds of unnatural experiences while we sleep.

 

[lewisnotmiller]

It seems to me that Atheists are most concerned with proof. Not only that they typically want it handed to them on a silver platter served by an angel from heaven. I mean don't get me wrong, all of us would probably love for that to happen, but what I am curious to know is: Is there anything that Atheist believe in? I mean, does an atheist live life expecting everything to be explainable.... factual.... proven? Is there anything, metaphysical or physical, that they actually believe in or do they just rely on their concrete proof and knowledge? If they do believe in something... anything? Why? I'm curious.

Atheists are not a homogenous group in the way you're suggesting here. Some believe in aliens, some believe in ghosts, some believe in justice and love, some believe in the healing powers of crystals, and some believe that they only believe in 'proven facts'.
You'd need to ask individual atheists what they believe.

I believe 'Atheists' should actually be 'atheists', without the capital letter at the front. There ya go. That's one for ya.

 

[F1fan]

It seems to me that Atheists are most concerned with proof. Not only that they typically want it handed to them on a silver platter served by an angel from heaven. I mean don't get me wrong, all of us would probably love for that to happen, but what I am curious to know is: Is there anything that Atheist believe in? I mean, does an atheist live life expecting everything to be explainable.... factual.... proven? Is there anything, metaphysical or physical, that they actually believe in or do they just rely on their concrete proof and knowledge? If they do believe in something... anything? Why? I'm curious.

What do atheists believe? Well this atheist believes OJ killed his ex-wife Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman. Why do I believe this? Well the evidence is quite extensive and quite convincing. As for God, well I don't think he had anything do with it, as to help commit murder you would have to be an existing being and there is very dubious evidence than any of the thousands of gods exist.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Dreams.
While dreams are natural, what you experience in a dream doesn't have to be natural.
The subconscious mind creates independent of conscious awareness. It can take everything that it learns through physical perception and combine it in unnatural ways which can be experienced while dreaming.

If the dream is significant enough, even though unnatural, it can affect our conscious thinking.
I can imagine like having a dream about a tree talking to you. So you start to believe tree have spirits living in them.
We spend up to a third of our life in an unconscious state. Plenty of chances for the subconscious mind to create all kinds of unnatural experiences while we sleep.

So my brain is natural. My brain causes my mind to do something unnatural and that can cause my natural brain to do something.
Okay, explain with evidence how we can observe that?

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

@Jacob Samuelson Notice something. Some of the posters can't agree on what makes atheism atheism. Further they can't agree on how knowledge works.
In general the categories of atheism and theism are in effect useless, because they tell us nothing about the rest of a given human.
Example, my wife is a theist. But she is also a woke, liberal and weak socialist. Where as I have actually met right wing atheists.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Atheists are not a homogenous group in the way you're suggesting here. Some believe in aliens, some believe in ghosts, some believe in justice and love, some believe in the healing powers of crystals, and some believe that they only believe in 'proven facts'.
You'd need to ask individual atheists what they believe.

I believe 'Atheists' should actually be 'atheists', without the capital letter at the front. There ya go. That's one for ya.

:Winner:

 

[Ella S.]

@Jacob Samuelson Notice something. Some of the posters can't agree on what makes atheism atheism. Further they can't agree on how knowledge works.
In general the categories of atheism and theism are in effect useless, because they tell us nothing about the rest of a given human.
Example, my wife is a theist. But she is also a woke, liberal and weak socialist. Where as I have actually met right wing atheists.

Interestingly, I tend to associate atheism with the right-wing. In part this is because of all of those "skeptic" YouTubers like Sargon of Akkad, thunderf00t, and Amazing Atheist blowing up with the "anti-SJW" trend that's now turned into the "anti-woke" trend. As well as Richard Dawkins, eventually.

It's also due to the fact that Objectivists, LaVeyan Satanists, Machiavellians, and social Darwinists all tend to be both atheist and right-wing.

I used to be in a bubble of right-wing philosophies, though. For the longest time, I didn't even know that there were atheist leftists. I grew up being taught that leftists were nominal Christians who didn't really know what the Bible said, so I just thought they were all Christian for the longest time.

Color me surprised when I found out that liberals are neither leftist nor Christian. That's how little I knew about what they actually believed, because I grew up in a conservative echo-chamber where even the atheists were conservative.

 

[ratiocinator]

Interestingly, I tend to associate atheism with the right-wing. In part this is because of all of those "skeptic" YouTubers like Sargon of Akkad, thunderf00t, and Amazing Atheist blowing up with the "anti-SJW" trend that's now turned into the "anti-woke" trend. As well as Richard Dawkins, eventually.

Wow. That's surprising. I guess the truth is that atheism doesn't really align with a political view, but my experience is almost the opposite. I'd associate theists with the political right - just look at the USA. Not that I've ever really understood that as the ideals I associate with Christianity would be a better fit for the left, as far as I can see.

Myself, and other atheists I know all tend to the left.

 

[ratiocinator]

As many have pointed out atheists (no idea why you'd use 'Atheist') are not a group with a set of beliefs, so I can only speak for myself.

It seems to me that Atheists are most concerned with proof. Not only that they typically want it handed to them on a silver platter served by an angel from heaven.

No, just some sort of credible reason to take any idea of god(s) at all seriously would be a good start. Something I've never found and no theists seem able to provide.

I mean, does an atheist live life expecting everything to be explainable.... factual.... proven?

No, I'm happy enough to say that I don't know a lot of things because there is not enough evidence to decide. Like many, I'm an agnostic atheist. They aren't different. The agnostic is because I can't know for sure (100% certainty) and the atheist because I don't believe in any god(s) because I have no reason to take the various god-concepts at all seriously.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Interestingly, I tend to associate atheism with the right-wing. In part this is because of all of those "skeptic" YouTubers like Sargon of Akkad, thunderf00t, and Amazing Atheist blowing up with the "anti-SJW" trend that's now turned into the "anti-woke" trend. As well as Richard Dawkins, eventually.

It's also due to the fact that Objectivists, LaVeyan Satanists, Machiavellians, and social Darwinists all tend to be both atheist and right-wing.

I used to be in a bubble of right-wing philosophies, though. For the longest time, I didn't even know that there were atheist leftists. I grew up being taught that leftists were nominal Christians who didn't really know what the Bible said, so I just thought they were all Christian for the longest time.

Color me surprised when I found out that liberals are neither leftist nor Christian. That's how little I knew about what they actually believed, because I grew up in a conservative echo-chamber where even the atheists were conservative.

No, we have a least a fair group of left wing atheists and also religious people here.

 

[HonestJoe]

If you were to consider God to be a variable in which has no rational definition...

If you're declaring something has "no rational definition", any question of evidence, proof or even belief becomes meaningless. How could you even say that a thing might exist if you can't even define it?

What specific expectations are you looking for?

I don't have any specific expectations around the various clams about different gods, I have exactly the same expectations as for literally any other hypothesis, claim or belief. One of the major difficulties in this area is that many believers declare that their god alone is somehow special or separate from everything else, so the standard principles of logic don't need to apply.

Why doesn't the Earth and its vast variety of species and intricacies meet your expectations, where it would most non-atheists?

Exactly the same reason that Christians don't accept the Greek creation myth of the Earth Mother Gaia being born of Chaos. Clearly something must have caused Earth (and the wider universe) to come to exist but there is no reason to assume that was anything sentient, no reason to assume such a sentience must be a god and certainly no reason to assume it was the specific god of any particular religion, faith or belief.

The simple bottom line to me is that we don't know (and quite possibly never will) so why would I want to, or even be able to, come to accept any specific belief as the definitive and unquestionable truth?

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

If you're declaring something has "no rational definition", any question of evidence, proof or even belief becomes meaningless. How could you even say that a thing might exist if you can't even define it?

...

You have to differentiate between proof and existence.
I use the following difference. Something may exist that is unknown to humans. That it is unknown means it has no proof, but that doesn't meant it doesn't exist.

 

[ChristineM]

Why believe when facts speak for itself?

Are you using belief as if they do not or might not exist? Or are you using it like you trust in their integrity as people? Do you believe your children will always be your children or your husband will always be your husband? Or are their roles finite? Believing the sun will rise on the morning is a great belief, especially since we know the sun could instantaneously send a solar flare that would wipe out the whole world before we would even see it happen. So if your belief is built on verifiable evidence that these things will or will not happen, why is not simply truth? Why say you believe in something when it is a known fact? And if it is not a known fact? What makes you prefer a unknown fact over the other?

I know and believe my children and husband exists and i can see the sun.

So yes atheists do have believe. And disbelief.

What has the future got to do with the current price of eggs?

So yes, in the future the sun will blitz our planet, either with a solar flare (tentative belief) or by going red giant and swallowing it, factual so believe it. By that time humans probably won't exist anyway so don't worry about it.

And what makes you question another's believe, a person you know nothing about. Seems rather arrogant to me

 

[HonestJoe]

You have to differentiate between proof and existence.

In general, certainly (and it is theists who more often seem to fall foul of that). In the context of a claim that something with "no rational definition" exists though, the difference is moot.

I use the following difference. Something may exist that is unknown to humans. That it is unknown means it has no proof, but that doesn't meant it doesn't exist.

I agree, and as I've already said, I'm not declaring that anything definitively doesn't exists and nor is that an aspect of atheism in general. Theistic beliefs often do make such statements, be that directly ("ours is the one and only True God") or indirectly by asserting things that happen to directly contradict other beliefs.

If something is proposed to exist for which there is no clear proof, I will consider what evidence there is to reach a conclusion. That conclusion will often be "I don't know", though sometimes you're facing a binary decision on the basis of the proposal and so have to work on a balance of evidence and risks process. If a proposal has little or no evidence, no well defined hypothesis or indeed, "no rational definition", it's not going to be able to pass a balance of evidence test, let alone enough to make a definitive statement of belief.

 

[Audie]

It seems to me that Atheists are most concerned with proof. Not only that they typically want it handed to them on a silver platter served by an angel from heaven. I mean don't get me wrong, all of us would probably love for that to happen, but what I am curious to know is: Is there anything that Atheist believe in? I mean, does an atheist live life expecting everything to be explainable.... factual.... proven? Is there anything, metaphysical or physical, that they actually believe in or do they just rely on their concrete proof and knowledge? If they do believe in something... anything? Why? I'm curious.

Who cares about getting you wrong?
If you were concerned about not getting it
wrong about people who don't believe things
someone made up and trues to pass as fact- you might not start your post with something you made up about them.