Most atheists would claim the former lack of belief, in my experience. For example, me. I don’t believe in the gods that I have heard other people suggest, hence I am an atheist. I don’t claim to have the knowledge that would enable me to definitively assert that there are no gods. It’s an important difference.
It’s a poor definition that excludes many people who should correctly be defined as atheists.
Why is that better?
Graham Oppy. Did you read @BruceS post where he cited the definition we are talking about?
Maybe it’s simply that our experiences differ, but I would be surprised if most people who call themselves atheists would answer the question “do you believe that there are no gods?” in the negative, in order to clarify that they only lack belief that gods exist.
I don’t think you need to have definitive knowledge, in order to answer “do you believe that there are no gods?” in the affirmative. You just need to have that belief. (Ideally for good reasons, but it’s a pretty high bar to require complete certainty.)
To say they should be correctly defined as atheists assumes your definition is correct, and so it begs the question to use this as an argument against a different definition.
I might as well add that Oppy’s definition is backed up from another good source, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on atheism and agnosticism… also written by an atheist philosopher.
I think the difference between agnostics and atheists can be clarified by, as you say, “thinking like a scientist”: It seems to me that atheism is a statement about your prior probability, while agnosticism is a statement about the inability of data to update your prior probability, i.e. total agnosticism claims that there is no data that can make your posterior different from your prior.
It seems to me that this is the more rigorous equivalent of:
I guess they do. I hear relatively few atheists, very few really, make the “strong” claim that no gods exist (even Richard Dawkins hedges this claim in his book). Even your question above is unusual. “Do you believe in gods?” is typical. Clarification isn’t needed for the statement “I don’t believe in gods” unless someone specifically brings up the strong atheist position. If asked that question, I would definitely clarify my position.
The question then is what you are basing that belief on. It’s difficult to prove a negative, and seemingly impossible in this situation.
I’m telling you how most atheists feel about it; it’s not like I made up the definition. I would ask you why you think simply not believing in gods excludes one from being defined as an atheist.
I think of it more as a continuum with 0% “I don’t know” at one end and 100% “I do know, so there” at the other. There are other variations; some 0% agnostics also deny that it would be possible in principle to have any data that would move you from 0%. But I think the continuum covers most.
I agree that it’s a continuum. I think that both theism and gnosticism is a continuum. Theism is a continuum because the prior of whether there is a god or not is an arbitrary probability density. Agnosticism is a continuum because some could, for example claim that only weak evidence exist, while some claim that, as you said,
Why would you assume I was speaking about you, and not about the hypothetical you offered?
It’s just your affect. Also, that wasn’t helpful.
Worst definition in the history of the world. I hated it as an atheist and I hate it now. Really it seems to be a definition designed to avoid atheism’s burden of proof. Atheism is a positive claim that there are no gods.
Decent article on the horrible “lack of belief” definition of atheism. A definition no serious atheist philosopher of religion endorses:
Paul Draper’s (atheist) very recent contribution to the SEP:
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/atheism-agnosticism/
“Atheism” is typically defined in terms of “theism”. Theism, in turn, is best understood as a proposition—something that is either true or false. It is often defined as “the belief that God exists”, but here “belief” means “something believed”. It refers to the propositional content of belief, not to the attitude or psychological state of believing. This is why it makes sense to say that theism is true or false and to argue for or against theism. If, however, “atheism” is defined in terms of theism and theism is the proposition that God exists and not the psychological condition of believing that there is a God, then it follows that atheism is not the absence of the psychological condition of believing that God exists (more on this below). The “a-” in “atheism” must be understood as negation instead of absence, as “not” instead of “without”. Therefore, in philosophy at least, atheism should be construed as the proposition that God does not exist (or, more broadly, the proposition that there are no gods).”
It seems a lot simpler than that to me. I’m not aware of any gods existing anywhere. What I do see is people claiming that gods exist. I don’t believe these claims for various reasons. Why should I have to go an extra step and claim that no gods exist? That’s not avoiding the burden of proof; it’s putting it where it properly lies–on people making the claim that gods exist.
Those who want to make the positive claim can so so, but people who don’t believe in gods are atheists, plain and simple.
Those work too. From a philosophical viewpoint, the difference in our approaches concerns where we put the emphasis in the statement “X believes that God does not exist”. For my definition, atheism focuses on the proposition “God exists” and so is a metaphysical issue. For yours, the focus is on the psychological attitude of belief.
For both of us, agnosticism is a question of knowledge and justification. That means the issue is the proposition “God exists” since knowledge in this situation is knowledge that. (I think for you the issue cannot be about the belief portion of JTB since that is already covered by your definition of atheism). For both of us, the agnostic says neither side meets the required epistemic standard for justification; that is, neither “God exists” nor “God does not exist” can be justified.
As SEP points out, just as one can be an agnostic atheist under your definitions, so can one be an agnostic theist, if one theism is based on fideism, that is the belief that God’s existence is not a question of reason, but of faith. It seems to me that your definition of atheism also becomes a matter that is outside of reason: how do you reason to holding that psychological attitude of non-belief without using the usual metaphysical arguments that are already covered in the definition of agnosticism? I could not find the arguments for holding that psychological attitude at your linked site on atheism.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/atheism-agnosticism/
ETA:
Another way one could be both an agnostic and an atheist is by changing the metaphysical proposition each refers to.
One could be an atheist about a personal God but an agnostic about an impersonal God.
As others like @PdotdQ have pointed out, this approach is captured by Bayesian Epistemology.
If the discussions could be construed as being about some real-valued parameter is some model, then a good Bayesian would simply quote the posterior and eschew any hypothesis testing about the parameter’s value.
But I don’t think the issue of God’s existence can be construed as a parameter estimation. It’s an existence issue. For me, an analogy would be the study of the Higgs boson: the question is whether it exists, not eg what its mass is.
If your Bayesian probabilities are subjective (which is how I take PdotQ’s approach). then it would come down to your betting behavior. Would you take the bet for or against God’s existence? Or would you refuse to bet at all? That’s how theism, atheism, agnosticism could be distinguished for a subjective Bayesian. Of course, your utility function might enter into that behavior which would bring us into Pascal’s territory.
If your Bayesian probabilities were objective in the sense of being the betting behavior of an ideal rational agent, then you would in addition be trying to convince others of the correctness of your arguments underlying your estimate and your utility function.
Good to see someone else linking to SEP!
It is a better definition because there are atheists like myself who lack a belief in gods but do not take the further step of also claiming that gods don’t exist.
Humans are fallible.
You are assuming that atheism has to be justified. It doesn’t. If a person doesn’t believe in gods for whatever reason, justified or not, then they are an atheist. The term “atheist” is simply a descriptor, not a philosophy or epistemology.
One could not believe in a personal or impersonal god and be an atheist, and also be agnostic about both. One could also be a gnostic with respect to both, claiming that we can know if gods exist, and also be an atheist.
I define theism as a belief in gods. Atheism would then be a=without, so without a belief in gods.
Words don’t have to mean exactly what their etymology suggests. I take theism to be the proposition that some God exists, a=negation, so atheism is the proposition that God does not exist.
You call yourself an atheist because you use the “atheism=lack of belief in gods” definition rather than the “atheism=belief or proposition that gods do not exist” definition. The basic disagreement in this thread comes about because both definitions are in use. The latter definition (Oppy’s and Draper’s) is more common in philosophical circles.
The latter definition is also better when the topic of discussion is whether or not gods exist, because then theism and atheism represent the two direct answers to that question, as Draper says in his SEP article. The former definition, your preferred one, may be more useful when the topic of discussion is what people believe - but even then, I prefer the latter definition as it allows us to make more fine-grained distinctions.
I’m not so concerned with what people believe as I am with what is true, so I prefer the latter definition.