• surewhynotlem@lemmy.world
    3·
    1 day ago

    Atheism doesn’t make any positive claims. It doesn’t claim to know there is no god. That’s anti-theist.

    Atheism makes the negative claim of: none of your god claims has sufficient evidence, therefore I don’t believe them.

    Now, individual atheists themselves can say and do whatever. That’s on them.

    • Enkrod@feddit.org
      11·
      7 hours ago

      Mhmmm… not quite. To claim there is no god is gnostic (or strong) atheism.

      Anti-Theism is the conviction that belief in a deity or religion is foolish and overall something bad for society.

      • surewhynotlem@lemmy.world
        1·
        7 hours ago

        Can you link me to something authoritative that shows that atheism makes the Positive Claim that “there is no god”? I’ve never seen that, and it seems wrong.

        Here’s my counter reference:

        https://www.atheists.org/activism/resources/about-atheism/

        "Atheism is not an affirmative belief that there is no god nor does it answer any other question about what a person believes. It is simply a rejection of the assertion that there are gods. "

        • Enkrod@feddit.org
          1·
          7 hours ago

          It’s not just about atheism in this, it’s about the gnosticism in combination.

          Gnostic Theism = I am convinced by the claim there is a god. And I know my conviction is correct.

          Agnostic theism = I’m convinced by the claim there is a god, but I don’t know if I’m right about that.

          Agnostic atheism = I’m not convinced by the claim there is a god, and I don’t know if I’m right about that.

          Gnostic atheism = I’m not convinced there is a god. And I know my (negative) conviction is correct.

          Gnostic atheism is often also called positive, strong or hard atheism.

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_and_positive_atheism

          I’m a strong atheist myself, following this reasoning:

          The “no arguments argument” for atheism:

          • (1) The absence of good reasons to believe that God exists is itself a good reason to believe that God does not exist.
          • (2) There is no good reason to believe that God exists.

          It follows from (1) and (2) that

          • (3) There is good reason to believe that God does not exist.