A Reflection on the Content of Atheism
I should hope to elucidate the basic definition of atheism for you, but this is by no means an exhaustive endeavor. It is being done with the hope that in considering atheism for yourself, you will have a concrete understanding of that which you vacillate in your mind.
Now, for some reason, people just assume atheism means this or that, but we all [should] know that atheism is by no means a philosophy nor is it a system of thought.
To be “atheist” really says nothing about what you do believe, but only states that you do not consider “God” or gods to be the substrate of all reality.
It’s a peculiar thing for believers to face someone who says, “Aha! I’m an atheist,” because atheists usually are unaware that “atheism” is a term which only bears content in the face of a theism. Not to cast their intelligence in any negative light, but “atheism” really is a unique term. It eludes even some of the most learned of philosophers.
So let it be granted that assumptions of theism are not present: Well, now an atheist has said absolutely nothing. It really should be the job of atheists to properly explain what atheism is, and then go further to explain what they personally believe. After all this skull drudgery, it is of utmost importance to explain even further that: Atheism is not humanism; Atheism is not spiritualism; Atheism is not Naturalism; Atheism is not Materialism, and so on.
Atheism is a rather contextual stance. It cannot exist on its own. In my personal day-to-day thought, I make it easy on myself by considering atheism to be an “argumentative stance.” That is, outside of the realm of argumentation, atheism really is nothing to talk about. You can’t have an “atheist’s values” or an “atheist’s worldview.” You can have atheistic values or atheistic worldviews, yes, for it is such that these values or worldviews would be described as existing without the shaky axiom of God’s existence. But in these philosophies, it would be folly to describe them by a main characteristic of being atheistic.
Now these concepts or worldviews, as stated previously, are compatible with atheism, but they are by no means equivalent. For instance, Karl Marx, the chief author of dialectic Communism, was an atheist because he was a materialist (he saw no necessity in religion and no use for the postulate of God’s existence or role in his dialectic materialism), but to attack him for his “atheism,” which is what was predominately done, obscures the arguments he held for materialism, and it sets a potential for straw men arguments against atheists who are not materialists. So rather than considering his materialistic philosophy purely, one could easily find himself or herself making tangential arguments against atheism; and it should be noted that although atheistic, Marx himself saw atheism too as a completely useless term. But this is all because he was so caught up in his somewhat prophetic Communistic idealism.
Once we discern and understand “atheism” as different from the clutter of actual worldviews and philosophies, we can properly address the arguments which fall under it. After successfully doing this, I believe all of our faiths, whatever their flavor, can be enriched or critically assessed, for we have better understood the true standing of this concept which perpetually nicks at their heels.