Terminology of belief and nonbelief

Perhaps no term is a source of greater misunderstanding in religious debates than the word 'atheism' itself. When confusion or argument about the meaning of the word crops up, as it frequently does, then even turning to the dictionary is not helpful, since dictionaries -- by nature -- reflect all popular usage of a given word. One person will point to one definition and the other person will point to another, and another round of circular argument will ensue, and before you know it the sun's coming up.

So to avoid talking at cross-purposes when talking about atheism and agnosticism, it's necessary to first establish your definitions. If I've sent you the link to this entry during an online conversation, then that's exactly my reason for doing so, and I ask you to please read it to the end. I hope it will be an interesting standalone entry as well, though.

Agnosticism is the simplest of the terms to define. An agnostic draws no conclusions, and is either undecided, has no opinion, or considers the whole issue unresolvable or unimportant. Agnosticism isn't really a universal code to live by; agnostics are agnostic about a specific issue or issues (often not religious in nature). Hence the computing term 'platform agnostic' to describe some program (or user) that can work on a variety of platforms without preference.

Atheism is the absence of belief in a god or gods. Strictly speaking, it doesn't refer to religion; there are religions without gods. However, it's also come to mean an absence of belief in religions, an understandable mutation in meaning. Unlike the agnostic, the atheist comes down on one side of the fence, specifically not believing rather than lacking an opinion.

That's a subtle distinction and easy to overlook, because we're talking about the difference between two people who lack a belief. Let's try an example. Virtually everyone's seen The Matrix, right?

Consider the proposition that you are in the Matrix right now -- that your whole life is an artificial construct, and that in the real world you're lying inanimate in some pod full of goo, with the quality of life of a Trisha audience member. What's your opinion of this theory?

I'm guessing that -- despite the fact that the theory is impossible to prove or disprove -- you have an opinion on it. You probably react with some disbelief at the suggestion that you've lived your whole life in a machine-generated artificial reality. If you do, congratulations -- you're not a 'Matrix agnostic', you're a 'Matrix skeptic'. An analogous distinction separates religious agnosticism and atheism. A 'Matrix agnostic' would favour neither explanation; he would reserve all judgment, or just not give the issue any consideration. A 'Matrix skeptic' considers it, and chooses -- to some extent at least -- not to believe.

(Why is it intuitive to disbelieve the Matrix theory? Because although there may be nothing that indicates that it's false, there's also nothing that indicates that it's true. As Carl Sagan said, 'extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence'.)

(Why is it intuitive for adults to disbelieve the stories of Santa Claus? The fact that your parents probably admitted to putting the presents under the tree doesn't mean he isn't out there somewhere, right?)

(Why is it intuitive for atheists and skeptics to disbelieve old stories about divine miracles? Lots of people believe them, so there must be something in it, surely?)

I was being slightly manipulative earlier when I said that the definition of atheism was 'the absence of belief in a god or gods'. Actually, this is only one of the two main dictionary definitions of the word. Why did I do this? Because that first definition of atheism is, in my experience, almost always the one employed by atheists themselves. More than that, it's the original meaning of the word, right back to Greek. The second definition is not commonly intended, but I will cover it because it's not unusual for theists to erroneously assume that this is what is meant when somebody talks about atheism.

So-called Strong Atheism (as opposed to so-called Weak Atheism, which was described earlier) is the position held by somebody who claims to know for sure that there are no gods. Compelling arguments for Strong Atheism are pretty thin on the ground -- such an argument would have to conclusively disprove every possible god, and I doubt that's ever going to happen. There aren't many followers of Strong Atheism (they're out there, certainly, but I don't think I've ever personally encountered a single one).

Note that of all the positions mentioned here so far, Strong Atheism is the only one that is a belief. Each of the others are mere absence of belief. This is a frequent point of misunderstanding, but I hope that I can convince you that 'no belief in X' and 'belief in no X' are inequivalent. The absence of belief is not the belief of absence, nor is it any other kind of belief. Are you a believer in 'no fairies'? Of course not, you probably never even thought about it... you just don't believe in fairies. Not that it matters whether you thought about it before; you're probably not a believer in 'no Matrix' either.

It's interesting to think about the inversion of the Strong Atheist position: someone who believes they know, without any doubt, that their god exists. Logically it's just as extreme, but in some religions the position is so common that it's practically in the mainstream.

Anyway, why the need to set down these torturous definitions in the first place? Some people (including many theists) use the word atheism to mean only Strong Atheism. Possibly in reaction to this, some Weak Atheists describe themselves as agnostics! I think the second group of people are being unhelpful and the first group of people are just plain wrong. The etymology of the word atheism ('without god') forces a definition inclusive of Weak Atheism. As for Strong Atheism, there's a perfectly good alternate word we can use in its place, so we can ditch the Strong and Weak crap altogether.

I think it would be far easier to have these conversations without misunderstanding if we were much clearer in advance about our understanding of the vocabulary. So these are my definitions:

Absence of opinion, reservation of judgment, and/or the idea that something is unknowable, I will call agnosticism.
A lack of belief in all gods (i.e. Weak Atheism) I will call atheism.
The certain belief that there are no gods (i.e. Strong Atheism) I will call antitheism.

By these definitions, I am an atheist.

Of course, there's more to my views than that. But now we have some common semantic ground. Now we can talk.