Digital Bits Skeptic

By Sebastian J
Article ID: 1225

Introduction

If you visit religious or sceptical debate forums, then you may have come across terms such as “negative atheism” or “weak atheism”. Likewise, you may have read some Internet personality profess that she does not deny the existence of God; instead, she does not believe that God exists or that she lacks a belief in God. You may have asked yourself: “What the heck is the difference?!” Well, casually speaking, there is often no difference between denying a proposition and not believing a proposition. In fact, we often use the positions of denial and not believing a proposition as saying one and the same thing. Alas, this usage is not an accurate reflection of contemporary belief logic. The purpose of this article is to help explain why. I also examine some criticisms of negative atheism, and appropriate responses.

I do not mean to portray this article as a complete primer on negative atheism.  I leave a great amount of room for expansion from other authors. Also, parts of this article may be controversial to other thinkers.

The difference between positive and negative atheism

We should begin by examining two claims:

• 1. The Negative Atheist: I don’t believe God exists.
• 2. The Positive Atheist: I believe God does not (or cannot) exist.

Statement (2) is the claim of the positive atheist. The positive atheist is making claim to two different arenas: her belief state and existence. The positive atheist is declaring what she believes and is also stating a claim concerning God’s existence.

So, what about the negative atheist? Well, the negative atheist is also making a belief claim; the negative atheist speaks of her state of unbelief concerning God’s existence. But, the negative atheist makes a claim only to her belief state. That is, the negative atheist makes no existential claim regarding God’s existence.

To help grasp the difference between negative and positive atheism, I will introduce some logic:

• 1. The Negative Atheist: I don’t believe God exists= ~B:G
• 2. The Positive Atheist: I believe God does not (or cannot) exist= B:~G

If you don’t understand the logic, don’t fret. I will explain it all. The “B” stands for “I believe that”. The “G” stands for “God Exists”. The “~” symbol is called a tilde or a negation.  For any variable that follows the “~” symbol, we are to read that the following variable has been negated. For instance, as I said, B stands for “I believe that”. The logic found within the negative atheist claim (1) has the “~” symbol before the B. Therefore, we read the statement as saying “I don’t believe that”. Likewise, the “~” symbol is found before the G within the claim of the positive atheist. G stands for “God exists.” Thus, ~G stands for “God does not exist”.

So, what does the logic show us? Well, we see two different but similar claims. The tilde (~) is placed differently within the two logical statements. For the negative atheist, the tilde is placed before the B. Contrariwise the tilde is before the G within the positive atheist claim. The two claims are not logically equivalent. (i)

Some objections to negative atheism

1. False: Negative atheism and agnosticism are the same positions

There are some philosophers like William Craig who assert that negative atheism and agnosticism are one in the same position. This assertion is false and probably rests on a misconception between knowledge and belief.  Allow me to explain: recall that I’ve stated negative atheism is only a claim to a perceived belief state. It’s a position wherein one lacks a belief in God or does not believe in God. In subtle contrast, agnosticism is a claim concerning both knowledge and God. Indeed, as philosopher J. G. Schurman stated “[t]he Agnostic is one who holds that he has no knowledge of God, or, indeed, that the human mind is incapable of reaching a knowledge of God.” (ii). It is noteworthy to accentuate that Schurman’s definition of an “Agnostic” is not some recent appraisal or cultural novelty of the so-called “New Atheist” movement; instead, the quote from Schurman dates back to 1895. The same idea is found in earlier texts of T.H. Huxley, about 26 years earlier than the Schurman quote.

The division between knowledge and mere belief is a bit too complex for our purposes, but it’s enough to say that knowing something is true usually requires a great sense of certainty.  In contrast, mere belief does not require any such certainty or justification. In fact, knowledge is conventionally thought to be just one of the subsets of belief (iii). Hence, it does not follow that the denial of knowledge is the denial of belief.

2. False: Negative Atheism and Strong Atheism are the Same Positions

I will allow an exposition of this objection to come straight from the horse’s mouth:

…not to concede the legitimacy of the concept of a necessary existent (negative atheism) is already to adopt the only alternative: necessary nonexistence. (I rule out as a viable option the obviously self-contradictory notion of a contingently nonexisting necessary existent.) Thus negative atheism and positive atheism reduce logically to the one contention that, because the very concept of God is illegitimate, the reality of God is necessarily nonexistent. (iv)

This “necessary existent” is alleged to be God. Since God is said to be a necessary existent and if God exists, then God necessarily exists. The necessary existence of God means that God must exist in all possible circumstances. It is to say that God could not non-exist; it is to say that the non-existence of God is impossible. So, the objector’s point is that since negative atheists do not concede the “legitimacy of the concept of a necessary existent [God]“, then negative atheists adopt the position that is only suitable for those who actively deny existence of God. For, even if a person grants that it is necessary that God exists, then they must grant God’s necessary existence.

The immediate problem that I see with this objection is that it misconstrues the negative atheist position. For, the lack of belief in God or refusal to concede with a “legitimacy of the concept of necessary being” states nothing about the “legitimacy of the concept”. Negative atheism does not state that God does not exist; negative atheism does not say God could not exist in any possible world, and negative atheism does not say God could exist in any possible world. Rather, negative atheism is only a claim about their state of unbelief.

The negative atheist could justify their unbelief through having no good reason to believe that God exists, and yet their position would be distinct from positive atheism (denying God’s existence). When there are no good reasons to believe that God exists (and hence we should not believe God that exists) is not the same thing as saying that God does not (v) or cannot exist.

3. True: Negative atheism says nothing about whether God exists or not

This objection is correct. To simply state that you lack belief in God says nothing about whether God exists or not. Accordingly, in response to the negative atheist claim, a theist could just accept their non-belief and ask: Well, does God exist or not?

Personally, I fail to see the attraction of this objection. Perhaps it is intended to exclude the negative atheist from discourse concerning God’s existence. If the objection aims for such exclusion, then I am prepared to partially agree: negative atheism has no place in discourse of God’s actual existence.  Yet, the objection wouldn’t exclude the negative atheist from all surrounding discourses of God’s existence. The negative atheist could just maintain that there is no good reason to assume God exists, and neither are there any good evidential or pragmatic reasons to believe that God exists. Thus, negative atheism may be justified because there would be no good reason to believe that God exists. In this sense, talk of negative atheism would revolve around the discourse of possible belief states to be held concerning God’s existence.

---

(i) As logician Harry Gensler states: “If you don’t believe that A is true (you refrain from believing A), then you needn’t believe that A is false; maybe you take no position on A…” Harry J. Gensler, Introduction to Logic, (Routledge: London and New York), 207.(ii) Agnosticism Author(s): J. G. Schurman Source: The Philosophical Review, Vol. 4, No. 3, (May, 1895), pp. 241-263 Published by: Duke University Press on behalf of Philosophical Review Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2175565.  Accessed: 30/04/2008 18:57(iii) As philosopher Eric Schwitzgebel states: “Most contemporary treatments of knowledge are modifications or qualifications of the traditional analysis and consequently also treat knowledge as a species of belief.” http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/belief/#2.6

(iv) Review: Antony Flew’s “The Presumption of Atheism” Author(s): George L. Goodwin Reviewed work(s): The Presumption of Atheism and Other Philosophical Essays on God, Freedom and Immortality by Antony Flew Source: The Journal of Religion, Vol. 57, No. 4, (Oct., 1977), pp. 406-414 Published by: The University of Chicago Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1201764 Accessed: 30/04/2008 19:45

(v) Of course, this is not always true. Let us imagine that it was determined that if God existed, then we’d see good evidence for God’s existence. Accordingly, if we saw no good evidence for God’s existence, then that lack of good evidence is at least evidence for God’s non-existence and maybe even sufficient reason for positive atheism.

Other articles related to this topic:

• Atheism in Hinduism
• Pascal’s Wager: gambling with an immoral god
• If you can’t prove God doesn’t exist, why not believe?
• Christopher Hitchens debates Peter Hitchens: Hitchens vs. Hitchens video and writeup
• In the name of Bob, Google and the Flying Spaghetti Monster: gods and religions that matter