WELCOME
First of all, greetings to redwards. Welcome to ChristianForums.com generally, and welcome to the Bridge Builders sub-forum specifically. You are not going to find too many atheists in this section primarily because it is nestled well within a Christian environment (Congregation/Faith Groups/Bridge Builders). Since the general theme in these environments are theologically ecumenical, there is not much of interest to atheists, although I'm sure they are welcome.
Secondly, I have a bone to pick on the atheism/agnosticism issuenot with redwards personally but rather as a general rant. I need to get something off my chest.
ATHEISM: It's Not Complicated
It's really not as difficult as people tend to make it. Honestly. I don't understand the apparent fetish for obfuscation (despite its general instrumentality in subterfuge, which does make sense). And I'm not referring to anybody here specifically, understand, but surely anyone who has their finger on the pulse of philosophical polemics should be familiar with the frustrating persistence of gratuitous obfuscation in the language.
Like the term 'atheist'. I was formerly an atheist myself and, let me tell you, it's honestly not that difficult to understand. Perhaps too much stigma and pejorative rhetoric has been attached to it over the decades but truly, in the final analysis, it's very simple to understand what an atheist is. The term is derived from the Greek root theos and prefixed by a negating article; since theos is the term for 'God', its negation means "ungodly" (Gk. atheos) and "ungodliness" (Gk. atheotes).
Therefore an atheist is, very simply, someone who is godlessi.e., someone who consciously views the world and lives their life "without God" or as though God does not exist. "If I had to bet on whether there is a God or not, I would bet that there is not," writes Michael Shermer in How We Believe (1999). "Indeed, I live my life as if there was not a God." This attitude is exhibited either implicitly (weak atheism, they have not settled the question) or explicitly (strong atheism, they have settled the question).
Consider some parallels. If something is amoral then it is 'without morality'. If something is asymmetric then it is 'without symmetry'. If something is atypical then it is 'without typicality'. So any etymological appeal to the Greek will provide only that 'atheist' means "without God."
ATHEISM: Where the Complication Began
This is not complicated. I blame the likes of George Smith, Antony Flew, and Michael Martin for complicating the issue by asserting a new definition of atheism to strengthen the attempt at averting the burden of proof. This new definition of atheism, as "absence of God-belief," essentially began with George H. Smith (Atheism: The Case Against God, 1979) and was further popularized by Antony Flew (The Presumption of Atheism, 1984) and others such as Gordon Stein (An Anthology of Atheism and Rationalism, 1980), Michael Martin (Atheism: A Philosophical Justification, 1990), and Douglas Krueger (What is Atheism? A Short Introduction, 1998) and so forth. Martin in his book, like Smith and others, made an appeal to the original Greek and tried to conclude that "from this standpoint an atheist would simply be someone without a belief in God."
But nowhere within the etymology can there be found the Greek word pistos (belief). Every attempt to fraudulently import the 'belief' property into the etymological analysis is intellectually irresponsible. It might succeed as a newly minted philosophical creed but neither etymology nor history will support it. Despite its popularity, this new definition is illegitimate and conflicts with the historically rich definition of atheism as "godless" or the conscious rejection of theism, as explained in the Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Etymological Dictionary of English Language, Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, Oxford Companion to Philosophy, and so forth. Michael Shermer recognized this in his book How We Believe (1999), as does Paul Edwards, Kai Nielsen, and Ernest Nagel, who wrote in A Defence of Atheism (1965) that "atheism is not to be identified with sheer unbelief . . . Thus, a child who has received no religious instruction and has never heard about God, is not an atheistfor he is not denying any theistic claims."
AGNOSTICISM: It Doesn't Stand Alone
There has been an additional level of complication added by the popularity of thinking that agnosticism is some kind of third option, so to speak, in an arena otherwise dominated by theists and atheists. It is usually proposed by people who don't want to acknowledge that the world really is drawn in contrasts of black and white, people who want a gray area in which to hide. But in the name of good and proper thinking, it is not a third option. It is actually a subset of both theism and atheism: one can be an agnostic theist just as one can be an agnostic atheist.
What is an agnostic theist? The answer is dramatically obvious: a Deist (or its mystic cousin, a fideist). They consciously accept the existence of a God (theist) but, it is said, they don't know whether he exists or not (agnostic). Contrast this with an agnostic atheist. They consciously reject the existence of God (atheist) but, it is said, they don't know whether he exists or not (agnostic). Often times agnosticism is used as a synonym for 'weak atheism' but this is ultimately erroneous. Although 'atheism' is compatible with agnosticism, it is not equivalent to it because 'theism' is equally compatible with agnosticism. Ergo, by identifying as simply an agnostic, one has not identified where they stand on the question of God's existence, whether they are an atheist or theist. The world is stubbornly black and white.
One may be an 'agnostic theist' or an 'agnostic atheist' because agnosticism regards the condition of one's knowledge (Gk. gnosis) whereas theism and atheism describe the condition of one's relationship with respect to God. For example, an 'agnostic atheist' is someone who says that he doesn't know whether or not God exists but lives his life as though God doesn't, while an 'agnostic theist' is someone who also admits that he doesn't know whether or not God exists but lives his life as though God does. These distinctions are characterized by the significant difference between 'belief' propositions (doxastic) and 'knowledge' propositions (epistemic). Both atheism and theism regard the beliefs we confess, while agnosticism regards the epistemic weakness thereof.
No questions from me, thanks.
