The positive and the negative

Is there really much difference between “not believing God exists” and “believing God does not exist”?

I didn’t think so either but apparently the former is negative atheism, and the latter positive atheism.

The negative atheist is obliged only to defend her non-belief on the basis that she refutes the reasons given for believing God exists. So she might answer the question “Why don’t you believe in God?” with a simple “I don’t believe there is a sufficient reason, or reasons, to believe in God”, or more obtusely “Why do you believe in God?”. She might go on then to refute specific reasons a believer might give for believing God exists. For example, a believer might say that they believe God exists because the Bible says so. The negative atheist responds that the Bible is just a book written by a number of Jews several thousand years ago, and just because they say God exists therein lies no more evidence for that claim than does there in Bertrand Russell’s claim that there exists a teapot in orbit between Earth and Mars lie any evidence that there is in fact such a teapot.

The negative atheist also has access to the “extraordinary claims” argument. The claim that Jesus Christ was the first and only person in human history to be stone cold dead, and then subsequently not be dead but to be alive and walking amongst and talking with other humans is an extraordinary claim, in the sense that it requires an complete re-writing of the laws of the universe as we understand them at present. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. An old book written several decades after the claimed event, with no other corroborating physical evidence, is not extraordinary evidence for this extraordinary claim. I’d venture to say it’s not even strong evidence.

In answer to the question “Why do you believe God doesn’t exist?” I’m tempted to suggest that the positive atheist might ask as equally obtusely as his negative cousin above, “Why don’t you believe God doesn’t exist?”. For the negative atheist, the obtuse reply is actually a valid point. The positive atheist however, like the negative atheist’s believer opponent above, is actually claiming to hold a belief. As such the burden of proof is on him.

I think in an everyday sense, when most people think of an atheist, they presume positive atheism, and indeed I think it is the more heroic position. It is however liable to be subject to the charge that one cannot prove the non-existence of God, and though one can then go on to talk about probabilities, as does Dawkins (whose book The God Delusion was primarily an attempt at positive atheism), I think, again in an everyday sense, one’s argument is fatally wounded by that charge. That the believer’s case is as equally wounded by the complimentary charge, is no comfort.