Not believing in something does NOT mean you believe that
opposite is true.
Of course I get told often that this is not correct. I get
told that because I do not believe there is a god, I must necessarily believe
there is NO god. I recently had someone block me on twitter because I was
trying to show them this isn’t true.
It seems The Theist [i]
is so determined to make atheism a belief or ‘faith’ on its own that they’re
prepared to simply make stuff up about it. It’s an interesting strategy to
reply to ‘Your faith makes no sense’ with ‘...yeah well you have faith too!’
rather than actually presenting an argument defending the reason for having
faith. It’s almost as though they recognise that their position is so weak that
it can’t be defended so their only alternative is to drag atheism down to the
faith level, because then suddenly ‘we’re all the same’.
But that’s not the purpose of this post. This post will
demonstrate that the statement - ‘If you don’t believe something, you believe
the opposite is true’ – is false.
The existence of god is binary (but not necessarily a 50/50
chance). Either god[ii]
exists, or god does not. Another binary possibility is the flipping of a
standard coin. A coin has an obverse side and a reverse side. These are pretty
much universally known as Heads and Tails.
If I flip a coin, catch it, and place it on the back of my
hand, it is going to be either Heads side up, or Tails side up. They are the
only possibilities.
So imagine I flip the coin, catch it, place it on the back
of my other hand and keep the coin hidden from your view in the traditional
style. But rather than ask you to guess before I immediately reveal the result,
I simply tell you that the coin is heads.
Would you believe me? I hope you respond with ‘of course
not’. Why would you? I’ve kept the result hidden not only from you, but also
from myself. I have no way of knowing which way the coin has landed and neither
do you. So the logical and only reasonable response is to say no, you don’t
believe me. Of course I could claim to ‘know’ that the coin has landed heads
up. I could say that I was foretold that it would happen that way. I could say
that I’ve got a really old book that tells me about coins landing heads. Hey,
you might even just find I have a trustworthy look about me and that you just
‘want’ to believe me, or you may even feel that the consequence of believing me
and being wrong is so small that you’re simply happy to say you believe me. But
none of these things would give you good enough reason to believe me.
Now let’s agree you’ve said, and with good reason, that you
don’t believe me that the coin is heads. The next question is – does that mean
you necessarily believe the coin is tails? Again the right response is - of
course not. Nothing you have said indicates that you believe coin is tails. All
you’ve said is what you do NOT believe,
not what you do believe. Sound familiar?
The god/no god debate is the same. The claim is that god
exists (the coin has landed heads) – and then the question: do you believe me?
With no satisfactory reason to think the claim is true (despite any assertions
the claimant might make), the answer is no, I do not believe that god exists (I
do not believe the coin is heads). Does that mean I believe god does NOT exist
(that the coin has landed tails)? No it does not. It simply means the claimant
has not provided sufficient evidence to make their claim believable. Take note –
‘Their’ claim. Their claim is ‘A god exists’. This claim says nothing about god
NOT existing. And since the claim says nothing about god not existing, the
response of ‘no, I don’t believe you’ says nothing about my stance on god not
existing.
Bottom line is – my lack of belief in the claims that there
is a god does NOT mean I believe there is no god.
[i] This
is a term I’m going to use for a generic amalgamation of the theists I
encounter, mainly on twitter. When I use this term I’m not saying this applies
to ALL theists or that what I’m writing about in one post applies to the same
theist I was writing about in a previous post. It’s a way I’m going to say
‘Some of the theists I’ve encountered’ but in fewer words.
[ii] I
was indoctrinated into Catholicism as an infant before coming back to atheism
later on in life and I live in a western democracy that’s population is largely
Christian so when I think ‘god’ I’m thinking Yahweh – god of the Christians and
the Jews (l admire Richard Dawkins’ description of the Old Testament god). But
I use the term generically. Like ‘The Theist’ I’m using ‘god’ as a short way to
say ‘gods or goddesses’.
