What is an Atheist?

Don wrote a comment that I thought deserved its own post. Here’s the comment:

I don’t have a comment as of yet, but I do have a question. You have described yourself as a “Jewish athiest”. I know exactly what you mean by “Jewish”, but what do you mean by “athiest”? Which one of the following statements would you say describes your position?
     a. I am somewhat confident that there is no God.
     b. I am very confident that there is no God.
     c. I have a feeling that there is no God.
     d. I don’t think there is a God.
     e. There may be a God, but I am not convinced.
     f. I absolutely know that there is no God.
If none of these statements describes your position, could you put it in your own words? Please keep in mind that this is a very emmotionally charged issue, and that emmotion must not be a factor when applying pure logic.
In a purely mathematical sense, if the statement (f.) does not describe your position, then logically you are open to the possibility that there is a God. If you feel that this is a trick, then you have exited pure logic, and entered an emmotion. Whether or not this is a trick is irrelevant. The reasoning that I have presented is precise and logical.
I would most definately enjoy hearing a response. Thanks.

Let’s ignore the subtext(s) for now and first take a quick look at what is meant by an atheist. Typically most times I’ve seen a description from self-identified atheists (ie. those who call themselves atheists), it goes something like this: “one who lacks a belief in a god or gods”. This would make it the opposite of theist and would also make virtually all who call themselves agnostics into atheists as well. If you don’t know whether something is true you can’t have a belief in its existance, so you lack this specific belief*. This broad definition of an atheist is the one I think is most useful and this is what I mean when I use the word.

Now, this leads to 2 interesting things: (1) from the above, we can see that this definition can lead to some overlaps, for instance an agnostic who is an atheist and (2) sometimes people can assume a stronger definition of atheism (eg. the positive belief that a god/gods do not exist) in order to try and make the position seem less defensible. Both are relevant to answering the question above. Because I (and probably most atheists) can answer yes to pretty much all the statements. Let’s see:

• I am somewhat confident that there is no God – “somewhat confident” is pretty subjective but it sets a low bar so I’d say yes. This is separate to a lack of belief in a deity since it is a positive belief that there’s [probably] no deity, but since all our beliefs are qualified with something like “probably” I don’t have a problem answering yes to this one.
• I am very confident that there is no God – a bit tougher since “very confident” is stronger, and subjective too. If say 80% confidence is the bar to pass then maybe I can answer yes, but it’s a bit hard to judge how confident you are to that degree of accuracy.
• I have a feeling that there is no God – well certainly if I have some confidence say over 50% then you could classify it as a feeling. The only alternative is having an intuitive “feeling” that there is a god but then believing the opposite based on reasoned argument, but I don’t think this is what I’ve got.
• I don’t think there is a God – yes, as this is the same as the definition I wrote out above.
• There may be a God, but I am not convinced – yes since this is exactly the same as the one above.
• I absolutely know that there is no God – this is probably the only one that I’d say no to. However, it may be a red herring since I almost never see anyone claiming absolute knowledge of anything (except some rare cases of religious belief).

Now, the subtext seems to be getting me to say that I’m “open” to the possibility of a god — which I don’t think matters that much. The problem may be in the supposed difference between not thinking there is a god and saying there might be but you’re not convinced. When people talk about belief, they are talking about their own reasons for saying something’s true or false, and this may or may not be related to reality. For all statements we make there’s a gap between what we can say with justification and what’s really out there, since we could always be inside a computer simulations or some such place.

If you’re an atheist, did you get a different answer to any of the questions to me? (Obviously for a theist they would all be different). More good stuff on the topic in a recent Blag Hag post, but hopefully this addresses how sometimes the categories can get mixed up when dealing with non-exclusive definitions.

*Of course there are be agnostic theists, but in most situations when someone says “agnostic”, this is not what they mean.