Is Atheism a Belief System or “The Result of Critical Thinking?”
Recently I have seen a surge of memes over the internet and quotes from people like Ricky Gervais (English comedian/actor) that atheism is not a faith or religious system, but merely the result of critical and rational thinking. Naturally given my position on this blog I was puzzled by this statement. I would like to take a few minutes of your time to ramble a bit over some of my avenues of thought that I have pursued to provide an answer to this statement. So to begin, one should probably start with a fundamental assumption, being the definition of atheism. From the Greek “atheos” meaning “without gods”. So by this framework, one would assume that atheism means literally no God or gods. Atheism to me is the belief that the Christian God or any other gods exist. Also by this anyone who claims that monotheists are atheists many times over with the exception of the God of their choice I argue is making an erroneous statement by way of categorical error