Can Atheism Co-exist With Faith?
Recently, there has been a huge furore over the use of the word “faith”, in my fledging atheist yahoo group, Atheisthaven. A fellow atheist from Singapore, Hanchen, equated Atheism with faith, stating that an atheist has faith that God does not exist. A war of words ensued, and Hanchen was being accused of being “an agnostic masquerading as an atheist”.
Perhaps, then, it would be enlightening to examine the word “faith” from Oxford’s point of view:
faith
• noun 1 complete trust or confidence. 2 strong belief in a religion. 3 a system of religious belief.
Faith, in its usual context, is a religious-affiliated trait, mostly upheld by religious theists who hold a strong belief in their respective deities. In that sense, faith can be justified as a “belief in things unseen”, since the existence of deities can neither be proved nor disproved by science or any other empiric evidence, and a belief in deities requires a belief in supernatural beings that can never be verified. In this context, faith and atheism are completely different entities, since atheism stems from the complete absence of belief, and does not borrow its existence from any form of organised religion.
Faith, in the context of complete trust and confidence, is pretty subjective, due to its very popular usage. For example, let’s just say I am buying a new laptop. I ask the dealer to demonstrate to me the various functions of the laptop, fiddle with it a little, and after a satisfactory review, I decide to buy it. Upon the purchase, I will keep the receipt, submit the warranty card to the manufacturer, and proceed to install the necessary software, assured with the knowledge that the laptop is in tip-top condition, but nonetheless keeping a close watch for any signs of malfunction.
Now, will I be silly enough to say, hey, I have complete faith in my dealer, that this laptop is going to function just fine, and therefore proceeds to purchase the model I am looking for without checking, and just to emphasize my great leap of faith, I proceed to dump the receipt and warranty card in the bin after the transaction is complete? Such a naive train of thought and action would delight many a unscrupulous businessman. In reality, such customers rarely exist, unless, of course, you are referring to the flock of a very large religious congregation (Hint: Think Pat Robertson).
In my opinion, trust and confidence are merely matters of statistics. For someone or something to be worthy of trust and confidence, there has to be a sound track record. No one will buy a car from a manufacturer which suffers from a poor reputation due to an appalling safety track record. By the same token, car buyers will favor manufacturers with an excellent technical and safety-conscience background.Trust and confidence are both entities that must be earned, and do not exist as givens. Complete trust and confidence usually coincides with a positive track record, and hence faith in this context seems somewhat askewed, unless, of course, you add a religious dimension to it.
Which brings us to the topic of contention: Can an atheist exhibit faith that there is no God? If an atheist banks his “faith” on the fact that science has neither proof nor data to substantiate the existence of Gods, and hence contributing to his/her atheistic creed, I see no contradiction here, since at the end of the day, the essence of atheism still remains: God can neither be proved nor disproved, hence the atheist is not inclined to believe in the existence of deities.
If an atheist has faith that God does not exist, and claims that he can prove it, then the atheist in question is perhaps driving into unfamiliar and treacherous ground, because science is quite silent with regards to the existence of deities, and no empirical methods exist to verify such a lofty claim.
In sum, whether the atheist harbours faith or no is not the issue of contention; the basic fundamentals of atheism lies in its default position of non-belief. Hence I do not deem it wise to deem any atheist a “masquerading agnostic”, simply because an atheist assumes a theist-related trait.
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February 18th, 2006 at 4:36 pm
atheism is the lack of belief in a supernatural god/dess(es). this lack of belief is based on reason and science. faith is a belief in a supernatural based on from what the survey says emotional need like (fear of the unknown), a self induced fantasy, superstition, loyalty to the people we love ..
February 20th, 2006 at 12:26 pm
A preposterous idea isn’t it?
February 20th, 2006 at 1:25 pm
If ever a ‘god’ that conforms to organized religion’s suggestions physically exists (daoist, hindu and jedi conceptions are far more reasonable to me), it would still be an irrelevant matter. Deities that demand any form of worship should be categorized as an egotistical entity. At most, respect is what is necessary, as how we should respect the cosmos in its entirety.
March 6th, 2006 at 10:16 pm
It would be well to ask the believer why he believes in X. It is the reasons and justification that make all the difference. “Faith in science”–a phrase I detest–would I presume mean that one believes in science because it’s been known to work and has had a track record attesting to its efficacy. Hence, there is justification for trusting in science. Faith in the religious context just doesn’t have that track record or evidence of veracity to boast of. On the contrary, there is no evidence it can point to. A supernaturalist has faith in the sense that s/he believes despite the paucity or absence of evidence.
As to atheism having faith, that assertion would make sense to me if it means that atheists are confident that their position is correct. Again the reasons/justification is what makes that position credible or untenable. In this case atheists are confident that nonbelief is a rational, credible, if not in fact the necessary position because there is no evidence for the supernatural claims/hypotheses. It just does not make sense to believe when there is no good reason to do so, particularly in something so extrarordinary and fantastical as supernatural realms and beings.
“Positive atheism” makes the claim that there are no gods. It is not just a lack of belief but a positive assertion that such phenomena in fact do not exist. If there is good justification for such a position then it would be tenable. (In practice most atheists I would think are positive atheists, even as we, strictly speaking, have to be agnostic about it.)
Certainly one of the problems is the liberal use of “faith.”
Personally, I would limit the word faith to belief that has little or no evidential support, to belief that is utterly disproportionate to the evidence.