The Sad Truth Of The Christian Mind

We can never know 100%

Theists seem to think that atheism is a belief. It is not. It is the absence of a belief in a god.

The word comes from the Latin “a”, meaning without, and “theos”, meaning god. The Merriam Webster definition of atheism is this: a lack of belief or a strong disbelief in the existence of a god or any gods (1). A lack of belief in a god is not somehow a statement of belief in a god. The term atheism simply answers one small question: Do you have a belief in a god? There are no other meanings of this term.

Theism is simply the “belief in the existence of a god or gods” (2). Generally it refers to a person who believes in one supreme god, as in the Abrahamic faiths: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Technically, that is called monotheism, from “mono”, meaning singular.

An absence of belief is not a belief. I’ve heard over and over from Christian and Muslim apologists that someone not having a belief in their god is having a belief that their god does not exist. This clearly illustrates their inability to comprehend the absence of a belief, which is all that atheism is. I can understand this confusion in people who are not used to the experience of an absence of belief, because I had never experienced an absence of belief until I was a teenager and I began to question my…