this post was submitted on 03 Apr 2026
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You can’t have faith in the non-existence of something. That is the default state of all concepts.
It has nothing to do with faith in a deity.
It’s a belief that no such thing could exist without having any actual confirmation.
No. That’s not how anything works. The maker of a claim must provide the proof.
Take the Invisible Pink Unicorn, which is standing right behind you right now. You are not an anti-unicornist because you think I’m full of shit.
Is the claim not that “no god exists”?
If it weren’t, it’d just be agnosticism?
What a strange world it would be if I had to go around claiming that various things didn’t exist.
So . . . What do atheists claim?
Nothing, that’s literally the point.
That's agnosticism not atheism. The definition of atheism is literally in the word a-theism, the opposite of theism. A theist believes there's at least one deity, an atheist believes the opposite, that there are no deities. An agnostic, in a sense, believes nothing. There's no proof God exists, there's no proof God doesn't exist so an agnostic makes no claims about God. By rejecting the the possibility of a God you're making a claim and without proof that claim becomes faith.
That’s not what agnosticism means. Agnostic means that they believe there is no way of knowing whether or not god exists. In contrast, atheists reject the claim outright.
Also it’s absolutely ridiculous to say that rejecting a claim is the same as making a claim. This doesn’t hold up to even the most basic of philosophical rigor.
You are claiming that rejecting a claim needs no proof to be true. Alright, I'll reject your claim. What now?
Now you’re getting it! This is the part where I get to provide evidence for my claim.
I recommend you start with this summary: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burden_of_proof_(philosophy) Essentially, the concept of “burden of proof” is so universal, it spans Philosophy, Mathematics, Law, and general human discourse.
See also the scientific method which requires that a hypothesis must be falsifiable, otherwise it is useless as a conjecture. Again, this concept is so fundamental it shows up across all disciplines that require rigorous standards of truth.
To go further, any sort of scientific study requires a null hypothesis which is the “default” state for the argument. In the case of this argument, the null hypothesis is “god does not exist”, and the burden of proof lies on the people claiming that there exist one or more gods.
All this together goes to say that it’s fundamentally dishonest to hold religious views to a different standard of evidence than we do everything else. Normally people do because they are ignorant, not because they are hypocrites. But as you learn more about philosophy, logical fallacies and cognitive biases, you start seeing those problems in the arguments pop up everywhere.
So all non verbal intelligence is atheist. Hm. Well that’ll certainly pump up those numbers.
Most atheists are agnostic atheists that do not accept the proposition that a god or gods exist. They make no claims.
Theist: There is a god. (claim)
Atheist : I'm not convinced. (Rejection of the claim)
Because society is so heavily influenced by god belief, there exists a term for those that reject the god claim. Most do not believe bigfoot exists, but there's no special "abigfootist" word for the same exact position about not believing in a god. And people don't go yelling at "abigfootists" to prove bigfoot does not exist.
There are some atheists that claim there is no god, and that would absolutely require evidence.
I thought they were different, i.e.
atheist:
And agnostic:
It's true that all beliefs are a leap of faith to some degree. I would have difficulty stating a belief that "there is no fly in this room" simply because I have not detected it. I am fly-agnostic.
It is also however true, that we can dismiss without proof anything that is alleged without proof. If you tell me there is a fly but I cannot find it, I need not subscribe to fly-agnosticism to presume you were mistaken!