Misconceptions about atheism

There is a common trend on twitter for theists to tweet something like 'Atheists believe...' and to then write something about atheists which is just simply not true. This picture gets tweeted quite often: 

Of course it's wrong after the second word. Atheism isn't the belief of anything let alone what's described above. I won't go into detail on what's wrong with the above (magically? That's very much the theist position isn't it?) but I will just point out that atheism has NO position on how the universe started, except to say we don't believe a god was responsible. And as I've described here not believing in something doesn't mean you believe the opposite is true. So I'm not going the list each thing about one by one and say atheists don't believe it. The entire thing is incorrect. 

Atheism is quite often associated with science and in particular the science of evolutionary biology. Atheism has no position on evolution. It does very much seem to be the case that atheism and evolution go hand in hand. The feeling I have from chatting with fellow atheists on twitter particularly is that the vast majority of atheists accept the fact of evolution. But it's not a 1 for 1 relationship. There are many theists that accept the fact of evolution, including over 10,000 clergy from The Clergy Letter Project. And there are also atheists that do NOT accept evolution. One notable group are the Raëlians. So although there does seem to be a strong correlation between atheists and the acceptance of evolution it is certainly not a case of atheism = evolution = atheism. 

The same can be said of Big Bang cosmology. Again experience suggests that atheists accept the Big Bang theory as the best current explanation for the beginning of the universe as we know it. And again it's a position that theists can accept just as easily as atheists. That the universe was started by the Big Bang is not an 'atheist' position it's a scientific position. It's something someone like Professor Lawrence Krauss can explain a lot better than I can (given that I can pretty much not explain it at all that's probably not a big stretch). 

Big Bang cosmology and the scientific theory of evolution are not a positions of 'faith' they're not something atheists or anyone else 'believes'. They are the conclusions reached by thorough scientific analyses of available data. People study these fields after years of schooling they then spend years doing research, including, for evolution at least, field work. Their work is reviewed by peers before being published in scientific journals and then being read and, importantly, scrutinized by other experts in that particular branch of science. It's NOT a case of Big Bang or God. It's NOT a case of Evolution or God. 

I've mentioned just two areas of science above but you can feel free to insert any other scientific field and the answer is the same - it is not an atheistic position. Atheists are not required to have a position, one way or another, on any of the sciences. 

Another common claim about atheists is that we have nothing to live for. As I've said before I'm an atheist - It doesn't mean I have nothing to live for, it means I have nothing to die for. I don't mean that I wouldn't die for my children, for example, I mean there's nothing for me AFTER death, there's no 'great power/lord/being' that I'm going to meet. I don't have any reason to think I'm heading to any kind of paradise or heaven. I don't think there's any virgins waiting for me and I don't think I'll be given my own planet to be god over. So this is what I mean when I say I have nothing to die for. For a longer post on atheists having nothing to live for, you can see my earlier post here. 

Atheists hate god - apparently. Hopefully you are already aware of the absolute absurdity here. To highlight it in a question - how can someone hate something in which they don't believe? It's not possible right? As soon as someone thinks there is a god to hate, that someone ceases to be an atheist. We may hate the 'concept' of god. We may hate what the idea of god does to people.We may hate the character 'god' like we do the bad guy in a movie. But hating a god or goddess itself as though there was something to actually hate? No atheist does this. 

We atheists also get accused of being Satanists. Now although the Church of Satan is actually atheistic organisation (IE it doesn't have a supernatural deity that it worships) there is, as with the above, no one-to-one relationship between Satanism and atheism. Yes, all the members are atheists but not all atheists are members. The members of the Church of Satan specify that they are not Devil worshipers, a group of people that pray to and revere the Devil - the nemesis of god from biblical and other theistic stories. Estimates put the number of Satanists in the UK at around 3,000. Given that there's nearly 10 million people in the UK with no religion, if you meet an atheist there, the chances of them being a Satanist is pretty slim.

There's no atheists in fox holes, did you know? One of the most common anti-atheism tweet that goes around. When I see someone tweet this I usually reply with a link to  the Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers.  Once I do that I get little push back. I had just one person argue that the military atheists were lying and they really did believe. Telling other people what they believe seems to be a common habit among some theists. The point is that not only are there atheists in fox holes (and in turbulent planes and on death beds) the tweet and the sentiment is completely disrespectful. It's again a theist putting their own thinking onto others. They see the world in a particular way and they expect others to agree with them. They also forget that even if their statement is true it doesn't prove a god or goddess exists. And they fail to consider that a decision made under extreme duress (let's face it, if you're taking refuge in a fox hole, it's not because a group of toddlers is watching the Care Bears nearby) is not necessarily going to be the most thought out, most analysed and reasonable decision someone could make. A person who thought their life was in grave danger was desperate enough to consider praying? So what? 

On a more philosophical level atheism gets called a world view. We get asked, as atheists, what our goal is, where we think society should head, and if we're so determined to get rid of god and faith, what are we going to replace it with. These are all fine questions to have but they are misplaced when being asked to an atheist because of atheism. Atheism is not a world view. Atheism doesn't guide how we think, it's a result of how we think. Although we do look at the world through an atheist's eyes there needs to be something on top of it to qualify as a world view as repeatedly stated, atheism is a single response to a single question. Similarly it's not an ideology, we're not here saying 'be atheists and live like this...'. Our ideologies differ. Personally I'm a big fan of what Martin Pribble wrote about Methodological Humanism. I can't help but think if the world embraced this idea everyone would be a lot better off, but that is of course one opinion among many. 

It may be a fault of a failing of atheism or atheists that we aren't organised, that we don't have common views outside of not believing in a god. It's a blog for another time but I do wonder sometimes about atheism becoming more of a societal movement and whether that would help or hinder. My first question to myself is always - Would it be exclusionary? But as above, that's a blog for another time.

We atheists get told we're hated, that we're going to burn in hell and yesterday I saw a tweet that read 'No offence, but if you're an atheist, you're disgusting'. You guessed it, from a Christian. I couldn't tell you why they think of us like this. When I was a Christian I never hated anyone - why so much hatred for us? If there was a one-to-one relationship between atheists and people that kick puppies, then maybe you could understand a certain level of dislike. But we're atheists, we're not animal kickers. I think it stems from misinformation and lack of understanding. People fear what they don't understand and fear leads to hate. 

One of the things I like to do on twitter is help educate people on what atheism really is and what atheists are really like. Hopefully the above can put some of the more common misconceptions to bed.