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| > > > Frequently Advanced Arguments Against Atheism | |
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The arguments against atheism are generally very weak and usually completely vacuous. But religious believers and atheophobes keep bringing them up. So here some of the frequently recurring arguments are listed, discussed and refuted. See also atheophobia.
Atheism is just a religion like any other. To believe that God does not exist is an act of faith.
If atheism is a religion then baldness is a hair colour and health is a disease.(*)
Atheism involves no belief, no dogma, no faith. It is simply the absence of theism.
The atheist refrains from swallowing the utterly baseless beliefs of the various theisms
(such as Christianity, Islam and Judaism).
If an individual does not believe in astrology, it that a matter of faith?
Does this unbelief constitute a religion, the religion of "anastrology"?
If I claim to be the messiah and you do not believe me, is your non-belief a religion?
(* Furthermore:
"If atheism were a faith, then not playing hockey would be a winter sport."
Manon Boner-Gaillard, quoted in Là-haut, il n'y a rien)
It is impossible to prove the non-existence of God. Thus atheism is unfounded.
It is impossible to prove the non-existence of the tooth fairy. It is also impossible to prove the non-existence of the
invisible pink unicorn or of the flying spaghetti monster,
but that absence of proof does not in any way constitute a proof of the existence of these fantastic creatures.
The more extraordinary a hypothesis is, the less symmetry there is between the potential truth or falseness of that hypothesis.
The impossibility of proving either the truth or falsehood of a proposition does not imply that it has a 50% probability of being true.
The burden of proof is on the person who believes in the existence of some extraordinary being. Thus it is the Christian or the Moslem
who must prove the existence of his or her hypothetical "God". The non-believer is under no obligation to provide a
proof of non-existence.
(See the fallacy of the mean.)
Religion is necessary for morality. Without God, there would be no divine authority to decide between good and evil.
Good and evil have nothing to do with any god. Morality is a human phenomenon, the product of our evolution as a social species.
Morality is the search for a balance between the interests of the individual and those of the group to which the individual belongs.
Christian or Muslim morality, like that of all theistic religions, is essentially infantile, because it
depends on the authority of a paternal figure. But atheistic morality—that is, humanism— is
based on the potential of human beings to mature morally, to assume ethical principles and respect them, not out of fear of some god,
but rather because they recognize the value of these principles for their quality of life.
(See morality.)
If God does not exist, then "good" and "evil", "virtue" and "vice", "true" and "false" lose all meaning.
For good and evil, virtue and vice, see the discussion of morality in the previous paragraph.
As for the concepts "true" et "false", they have nothing to do with any god. The assertion that
"The speed of light in a vacuum is constant" is true, whereas the statement that
"Pauline Marois is president of the United States" is false, and no god is required in order to reach these conclusions.
Truth and falsehood can be determined by observing the real world and by respecting the basic rules of logic.
And if that determination is difficult to do in some cases, appealing to some god gets us nowhere.
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