Originally Posted by Quovatis
No, it's not. Atheism is the lack of a belief in a god, not the belief that there is no god. Note the difference. Faith means believing something without evidence. Atheism is the lack of belief, therefore it is not faith. Strong atheists (those that do claim there is no god), however, do have faith.
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It's true that atheism is a lack in belief of god, but that's just getting into semantics. A lack of belief just means believing that a claim is not true.
Believing that a claim is not true is the default position of a skeptical mind. If noteworthy evidence were supplied that there was a god, yet an atheist kept believing there was none, that would be faith. Until then, their belief that god doesn't exist it's just a strong belief founded on skepticism and the burden of proof.
It's like Russell's teapot. If I made a claim about an undetectable teapot orbiting the sun, you would be right and justified to believe I was wrong, even if there was no proof that I was wrong. I made the claim, and until I present some evidence to back it up, a lack of belief (semantics for believing the claim is false) is the default and reasonable position.
The only way you can truly be honestly 100% agnostic with no leanings towards theism or atheism is if you have some direct evidence for why there is a god and some equally compelling direct evidence for why there isn't. As far as I've seen, there is no such strong evidence either for a god or against a god. At best, there is strong evidence to doubt there needs to be a god for the universe to exist, but that's not direct evidence in and of itself.
Therefor, a person must either be an atheist because it's the default position of skepticism, or they must be a theist because they have some amount of faith to believe an unsubstantiated claim.
Nobody needs to commit to being an atheist or a theist 100%. You can still have that caveat that you don't know for certain and that your belief may change if more evidence is presented one way or the other. But everyone has a leaning one way or the other.
All agnostics either have a little faith that there may be a god despite the lack of evidence, or are technically atheists by default due to their skepticism.
Theism = making an unsubstantiated claim
Atheism = asking for some proof for that claim
Originally Posted by ItsTheSheppy
You don't know that there ISN'T a teapot orbiting the sun right now. You probably don't think there is, because such a thing would be unlikely, but you don't know. You didn't look. You haven't gone and searched. And even if you did, you could have missed it. You don't have Perfect Knowledge. You're not omniscient. It could be there. It's just unlikely... so unlikely you don't believe it's there, and will continue not believing it's there up to the point where someone demonstrates for you that it is.
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For a belief to not merely be faith, it doesn't have to have 100% knowledge. It just has to have the stronger reasoned position behind it.
One can't function without holding certain beliefs. We don't know that gravity won't suddenly fail us tomorrow, or that we aren't merely delusions in some Matrix like dream. But reason tells us that these possibilities are less likely based on what we have observed, so we believe that gravity will continue to work, and we believe that physical reality is as we have observed it to be.
Obviously there is always a chance that we are wrong, and future evidence may prove it to be so, but until then we hold reasoned beliefs about the universe.
I don't have faith that gravity will work tomorrow. I have seen evidence that it will probably work tomorrow. So I believe gravity will work tomorrow.
Just the same, I believe that there is no god. I don't have faith that there is no god. I believe it.
When you don't believe something, you believe it isn't true. You may not be sure, and it may be an extremely weak belief, but it is still a belief.
Language is just a way to help us define and understand the universe. It doesn't change who you are or what you believe if you are technically an atheistic agnostic. It's just a matter of what our culture has agreed that these words mean, and the philosophy behind the ideas.