The prevalence of atheists in scientific fields is sometimes touted as a reason to take atheism more seriously. Scientists aren't necessarily more reliable when it comes to religious issues, but scientists in fields like physics and biology do know what they are talking about when it comes to whether there is any evidence in such fields for the existence of gods. Is it possible, however, to cite such scientists in an argument against atheism?

Zachary Young writes:

Do take note that atheism is not even the lack of belief in a god, but the belief of NO god. It is the reinforcement of the negative absolute statement. Hence there is a world of difference between an atheist and a freethinker.

How can a human with finite intellect confidently presume information that might be beyond their logic? ...No self respectable scientist would dare to declare that he has discovered every species of animal on earth, and neither would he be so quick as to dismiss the possible discovery of new species. Hence how is it possible that they are inconsistent with their work ethic when dealing with religious matters; jumping to the conclusion of there being no god? ...Thus the core belief of atheism of there being no god at best can only be considered as a hypothesis. Somewhere along the way, some misled soul took it for a truth and created a religion based on it.

Zachary Young's "argument" is filled with errors, myths, and mistakes. I've linked to refutations of his errors and have to wonder why Young didn't bother to research the subject before writing about it. I feel confident in saying that he didn't do any research because just about any major site or book about atheism would have provided the facts that contradict his errors. Reading books by anti-atheist apologists, by the way, doesn't count as "research" any more than simply reading a couple of books by atheists about Christianity would count as sufficient research about Christian beliefs.

The above is not an isolated case of Zachary Young basing an argument on a misrepresentation of key concepts:

There is no such thing as faithlessness.

We all put our faith in something or someone. It may be reason, it may be Christ, it may be gods, it may be material things. However make no mistakes about this; faith is inseparable from human living.

People tend to have the misconception that faith is something religious or have an exclusive usage for the supernatural aspects. UTTER RUBBISH! Faith is defined as believing in what we do not see.

The truth is, faith is defined in several different, related ways in English — contrary to what Zachary Young would have his readers believe, there is no single, one-size-fits-all definition. Faith can be defined as having trust in someone, like having faith in one's spouse. Faith can also be defined as belief that isn't based on proof, like having faith that the car brakes will work. What's critical here, though, is faith in the religious context.

In Christianity, for example, faith is clearly defined by Paul: "Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen." In this sense, it is undeniably possible to be "faithless." Zachary Young may have some difficulty understanding how or why a person may lack faith in Paul's sense, but there's simply no question that few if any atheists have such faith in or about anything.

Atheists can and do have faith in the other senses, but that's clearly not the same has having faith in Paul's sense — unfortunately, many Christians blithely commit the fallacy of equivocation by treating all senses as the same. This is analogous to pointing out how Christians and Buddhists both have religions, and then concluding that they basically believe the same things. That's obviously absurd, but for some reason some religious theists don't see the absurdity in their equivocation of the word faith.

Once again we can see just how important it is to be absolutely clear about the meanings of the key terms in our arguments. When we aren't clear on what words means, we become susceptible to all sorts of rudimentary errors that just shouldn't be committed. If we're going to construct clear, well-reasoned, and logical arguments, then good, reliable definitions have to be our starting point. If we ignore this, we might as well not bother trying because we're unlikely to get very far.

 

Update: Zachary Young responds, in a fashion:

they insisted that my definition was that of the strong atheism, not that of weak atheism, hence it would not stand against the majority atheistic movement. ...at least seed of doubts have been casting with regards about strong atheism since no one seem to bothered saying anything in defense. Perhaps they are right after all; it is the minority. Well, strong atheism down.

It is unnecessary to "defend" strong atheism because if Zachary Young thinks that he can rebut atheism generally by focusing only a narrow subset of atheism, it's simply not necessary to go any further than point this out. Going further entails assuming that he knows enough about atheism to make a deeper discussion worthwhile — but not only doesn't he, but he never cared enough to do even a little research.

The fact of the matter is, Zachary Young is not only incorrect about the nature of atheism, he is also incorrect in thinking that it's impossible to make negative absolute statements. Strong atheism can be difficult to successfully defend, but it's not impossible. What this means is that Zachary Young is not only ignorant of the basics of atheism, but of the basics of philosophy as well.

At least he acknowledges he made a mistake in the original post, though. That's progress.