Atheism Defined

The following definition of atheism is drawn from a 1959 lawsuit initiated by a family who challenged prayer recitation in a public school. Murray v. Curlett was a landmark in American jurisprudence on behalf of our First Amendment rights.

“Your petitioners are Atheists, and they define their lifestyle as follows. An Atheist loves himself and his fellow man instead of a god. An Atheist accepts that heaven is something for which we should work now, here on earth, for all men together to enjoy. An Atheist accepts that he can get no help through prayer, but that he must find in himself the inner conviction and strength to meet life, to grapple with it, to subdue it and to enjoy it. An Atheist accepts that only in a knowledge of himself and a knowledge of his fellow man can he find the understanding that will help to reach a life of fulfillment.”

Atheism may also be defined as the mental attitude that unreservedly accepts the supremacy of reason and aims at establishing a lifestyle and ethical outlook verifiable by experience and scientific method, independent of all arbitrary assumptions of authority and creeds.

But I opt for something far more basic…and honest.

You Say Potato

While we could debate for days what each of the terms below truly mean, this is how I use them within the context of this website:

A theist is someone who believes in the existence of a named personal god or gods, like the Judeo-Christian god (Yahweh), the Islamic god (Allah), the Hindu creator god (Brahma) or any of their polytheistic avatars (e.g. Vishnu, Shiva, Ganesha). This is just a partial list of theistic gods from the three largest world religions. There are in fact MANY more who are recognized around the world.

A deist is someone who believes in the existence of an impersonal god. This is a god of no particular name who remains uninvolved and disinterested in our lives. He created the universe and left us to our own devices. He neither judges nor punishes, nor rewards.

An atheist falls into one of two categories:

• A strong atheist declares that there are no gods.
• A weak atheist declares that they do not believe in any god.

At the end of the day all that matters is the black and white nature of belief. Belief is binary. When it comes to god, you either believe or you don’t. Period. There are no other options. If you’re unsure or you question or you doubt, then you don’t believe – and that makes you an atheist. End of discussion. (This is discussed in greater detail here.)

An agnostic (the most misused word in this discussion) is someone who believes that the nature of god cannot be known, irrespective of their personal theism.

Agnosticism asks the question: Can god be known? But this doesn’t address your position on whether or not there is a god. Therefore, a theist can also be agnostic, and many are. This is the only intellectually honest way to believe in any god. Having said this, since few know and use the proper meaning of the word, I’ll cave and from here on use the word agnostic to refer to someone who questions the existence of god.

I won’t address the term non-theist anywhere else on this site because the people who label themselves as such destroy all meaning of the prefix non. These people are an annoying logical contradiction of their own insistence. Non-theists are theists who want to define and embrace god on their own terms. And the only thing “non” about them are the precepts and explicit rules and practices that they choose reject for matters of convenience. Theistically, they want to have their cake and eat it too.

I won’t open the debate over the terms humanist and secular humanist because I’m taking a defiant position of arrogance on this one. Both are atheists. Period. Secular humanists don’t make too much of a stink over it and embrace the term as essentially being synonymous with atheist, but humanists are generally full of dodge-the-question shit. (Take a whiff of it here.)

At any rate, I have no problem with either term and I understand why they opt for the label. My only peeve here are the disingenuous (and wholly unnecessary) arguments they spew to qualify and justify the terms. There are, however, religious humanists who are the most egregious of bet-hedging cowards. I won’t get into it here because it’s not terribly relevant, but there’s some serious cake eating with these hypocrites.

Let’s move on.

“All thinking men are atheists.” – Ernest Hemingway, from A Farewell to Arms