Faith in Atheism

It seems like one of the things I am constantly hearing is that it takes more faith to be an atheist than it does to be a Christian. What I can't understand is where people come up with ideas like this? Does anyone really believe that it takes more faith to be an atheist than it takes to be a member of a religion? Is it just some argument that is supposed to make people feel better about their own faith? Is there some other reason for the argument that I have missed? If there is, I wish someone would tell me.

I suspect that many people that make this claim are thinking in terms of the number of questions answered by the things we believe. But when the answer is to slather a heaping helping of "god-did-it" on top of any question that you can't answer, it might sound like that doesn't take much faith, but I submit that it takes an incredible amount of faith, just not much in the way of education or understanding.

Let's start out with something simple like the color of the sky. Why is the sky blue? I don't know many people that have actually performed the experiments necessary to authoritatively state the reasons that the sky is blue, but if you simply say that god-did-it, that is a statement of faith. Now let's look at something different. If we ask why the grass is green, again not many people have done the experiments to be able to state from experience why the grass is green, but if we say god-did-it, then I submit that we have made a separate claim on faith. It isn't just one god-did-it faith claim, but two.

But what about the science involved in telling the color of the sky and the color of grass? Both of these answers are tied together. There is underlying science that answers these questions. If one answer is wrong, it casts doubt on the other answers. There is a scientific theory built up about reflected and absorbed light, different wavelengths of light, how they combine, and how we perceive those combinations as different colors. Does that mean that we put our faith in science? Perhaps, but not science as something that is simply poured into our heads, but science as a process of knowing. It is an understanding that science is the best system ever envisioned to provide us with answers about how things work. Science makes predictions that can be tested and verified or falsified.

So what does the Christian Bible do with its mistakes? Absolutely nothing. There is no god saying 'Oops, I got that wrong. Somebody needs to fix that entry.'

Now I have to ask, where does atheism fit in to all of this? While I can only speak for myself, I have to say that once I decided that the bible contained too much incorrect information to be the word of God, I began to doubt the entire god theory. To me, it seems that the entire theory has become so cumbersome that there is no way to salvage it. Any possible ways I could see to salvage it are explicitly ruled out by the words in the Christian Bible. So, what, am I supposed to make up another religion? Since I know it would be false, there is no point in doing that.

But back to my question of faith. Does it require faith to say that there are questions that we don't have the answers to yet? Not really. That is merely a statement of fact. Does it require faith to accept science? Only if we aren't willing to get the education and put in the work to verify scientific results for ourselves. Does it require faith to not believe in any god or gods? Only if there is proof of those god or gods.

So one final question. Is there proof of a god or gods? Not that I have ever been able to find.