I find your argument a little hollow, MickV.

>>I once heard Australia’s most famous atheist, Philip Adams, asked what he believed in. He answered, “Nothing”.<<

This is exactly the point I was trying to get across. Using the position of one atheist to illuminate the position of all atheists is a nonsense. The only thing that joins them is their shared lack of belief in the existence of a deity.

I, for example, do not believe in "Nothing". But Adams and I are both atheists.

>>A theist believes there is a god. An atheist believes there is no god. You could argue neither are faiths<<

But I don't. Belief in God is undoubtedly a "faith", since there is no evidence of his existence. By definition, therefore, you need "faith" in order to hold that belief. Not believing in God is, patently, not a faith.

Kieran tries a neat sidestep with:

>>If an atheist believes there is no god then that is belief .... say no more.<<

Sophistry. "I do not believe in God" is the opposite of "I believe in God", and cannot be defined as "a belief" however many times you repeat it.

>>For example, I have no problems describing 20th Century communism as a faith position<<

That's your choice. Not mine. Communism is a political stance, one that strengthened its hold over its people by banning religious observance. It is categorically not a faith, since it is based upon atheism, which requires none.

>>Such willingness to explain your position and convince others is often a religious characteristic. If they truly believed in “Nothing” they would not be so passionate about it<<

There you go. Taking Adams' statement as being common to all atheists, and drawing a conclusion from it. Also, it is the case that very few atheists are so insecure in their atheism that they need to evangelize it. I have never recommended it to anyone, for instance, instead I just take potshots at the more egregious examples of religious nutterism that pop up here.

Especially when they are accompanied by anti-Islamic rants, as so often happens.

Quite so, Pericles. I'm an atheist too, but unlike you I regard the degree of credulity required to adhere to any religious faith as a kind of intellectual disability.

However, I have no need to preach this or to try and convert people to my way of thinking. But I do get some satisfaction out of lampooning the more ridiculous and hateful examples of religious intolerance that appear all too frequently on this and other forums.

If unbelief in gods is a faith, then logically, unbelief in the tooth fairy is a faith. disbelief in unicorns is a faith. not believing in father christmas is a faith.... goodness so many faiths -- the mind boggles.

ybgirp

Well said! Faith, as giving, or denying, intellectual assent to some odd unprovable proposition, is silly as you have pointed out so wittily.
Likewise, religion as faith in the above sense, is pretty silly.

True Christian Faith is to be found in the just and loving actions of a people informed by the complex of interacting symbols we associate with that religion. Jesus said "Love your neighbour" and in this one simple formula he combined Love and Justice into a guiding principle for all our actions. To the extent that our actions are consistent with loving our neighbour they are Faithful. Not all self-professed believers act in accordance with this guiding principle and the most common failure of faith is to be seen in the legalistic, judgemental behaviour of many evangelical and fundamentalist so-called Christians. Jesus most definitely did not say "Judge you neighbour". Some have more faith in Paul than in Jesus!

Pericles, if you believe something in the negative derived from some factual information then it is a decision you have arrived at and it becomes part of your belief. Similarly, if you cannot believe negatively of positively due to lack of factual information, it is also part of your present belief.

Belief isn't shaped by just looking only for positive trends and even if we define atheism as the absence of belief in deities, it is still belief.

Not so much a neat sidestep but it does see belief in a broader context. The term atheist is only relevant to people who believe in deities who all share a love of big bangs and going off like a firecracker.

What do you call the non-belief in other peoples gods?

Are you an athiest if you don't believe in a particular god or only if you don't believe in any of them?

At a guess all of us have a non-belief in the vast majority of gods (maybe some really dedicated panthiests around but I don't know any).

Hands up all those who reject completely somebody elses idea of god.

R0bert