Reason's Greetings

Frequently today, the religious tend to challenge atheists with a typical statement as this:

“Atheism is still a belief. It is the belief that there is no God, not a lack of belief in a God.” 

This seems to be one of the most common misunderstandings and areas of heated discussion by both sides, with neither side tending to be able to back up their side with an argument. Usually this topic delves into who can “shout” their conviction louder, or who can come up with the more clever analogy. (Such as: Atheism is a belief like bald is a hair color. Calling atheism a religion is like calling not collecting stamps a hobby or not smoking a habit.) To which the other side will typically reply with a challenge that that is simply an analogy and does not actually make an adequate defense to the position that atheism is a lack of belief.

Well, I’m going to discuss this now, with the help of an analogy. Atheism is like the zero vector of physics. 

Now I will explain.

To refresh your memory, a vector in physics is defined to be a physical attribute describing something that acts with magnitude and direction. For example, force is a vector quantity. When you exert a force on an object, you apply a magnitude or strength of force, and you also exert it in a certain direction through space. Energy is not a vector; it is a scalar quantity since it describes a magnitude of energy, but there is no direction to energy. You cannot “shoot” energy through space. 

Now let me demonstrate an interesting kind of vector: the zero vector.

As you can see, this is indeed an odd case. At point P, there is no particular direction to the electric force. Also, the magnitude is defined to be a lack of any magnitude at all! And yet, since we are discussing an electric field at the point, it must be thought of as a vector.

Now, let’s switch our thoughts from the realm of space-time to a new plot. Let’s look at religion-truth.

In this realm, vectors inside religion-truth describe exact quantities. Directions of the vectors correspond to religious beliefs. (There could be an infinite number of possible religious beliefs just as much as in space-time there is pretty much an infinite number of directions you can exert a force with.) Magnitudes represent the conviction or strength of those religious beliefs being true. 

Further, points in this religion-truth plane correspond to self-aware entities, or people who are capable of thinking about the matter of religion and its philosophical concern about the truth. Therefore, you and I both must exist within the religion-truth plane. Further, when we discuss matters of religion and its correspondence to truth, we must take a “vector” position on the matter, since the matter is a vector quantity in our religion-truth plane.

Maybe by now you can guess where I’m going with this. As a person, I must therefore take a position on religion and its relationship to the truth. However, as an atheist, I do not hold any direction since I lack a religious belief. Since I lack a direction, I also lack a magnitude in any meaningful sense of the word. 

In the religion-truth plane, as an atheist, I am the zero-vector. This is where the conflict between the sides of the argument should be able to find where the misunderstanding is and resolve it. One side of the argument is arguing that because we must take a position that is vector-like, it is therefore a belief. The other side is arguing that since atheists lack direction and magnitude, they cannot be described as holding a belief. The confusion lies in our definition of what a belief is. 

Hopefully this analogy cleared that confusion. 

As an agnostic atheist, I know I can never test all the infinite number of possible religious beliefs for truth, so absolute knowledge about God and truth is not possible; not only that, but testing of the validity of religious beliefs by common conception is that we won’t know until after we die. So it lies in the realm of the unknown.

However, I am an atheist since I define my beliefs to be only those things for which I feel there is evidence, internal consistencies, and objective testing abilities. Since I think that there is no objective evidence, and no ability to objectively test the concept of God, I do not hold a belief in God; I have no direction in this religion-truth plane that our generation is currently very concerned about.

I hope this was a rational post that helped shed some light on the matter; feel free to reblog and express your thoughts. I’d be interested in knowing them.