An atheist is: One who doesn't believe in the existence of any god(s); simple, no? As such, it doesn't necessitate or promote one to be anything else. It doesn't even entail the claim that no god(s) definitely can be said not to exist, any more than 'theism' entails the opposite.


Now, perhaps the question on your mind as you read this is something like, "Why don't you believe God exists?" For me, answering that requires looking at how theistic philosophers & theologians & Scripture define & defend God. It is usually something like the following:

God (Yahweh) is a spaceless, timeless, omnipotent, omniscient & omnibenevolent being (the Greatest Conceivable Being or GCB) who is the uncaused Creator of the universe.


For starters, it sounds like nonsense to speak of something existing, yet takes up no space (non-spatial). Interaction with anything would seem to necessitate taking up space. And it gets worse with atemporal. It is an orthodox belief that God intentionally created the universe. But if God is "outside" time, this is nonsense since intention requires at least three distinct states within time: pre-action, acting, post action. In other words, God couldn't be "timeless" & act with intention.
Well, part of the reason for that mental jumble is that theologians are trying to protect free-will in a God-made universe. It basically goes something like this:

"If God is omniscient, then my actions are predetermined to happen, and if you believe I have a sort of libertarian free-will (the ability to have done otherwise than I did) then you have a contradiction."

By placing God outside spacetime, one can try to sidestep that issue since there is no "before" from God's perspective (though that ignores the fact the few philosophers believe a libertarian free-will even makes sense).


One popular philosophical argument for God's existence is called the Kālam Cosmological argument, which goes like so:

P1) That which begins to exist has a cause.

P2) The universe began to exist.

C) Therefore the universe has a cause.


There are problems with this in both philosophy and science. To me, the most pressing philosophical issue is the the phrase "begins to exist". Things that "begin to exist" have (so far as we know) always been an alteration of previously existing matetial. Take people: Alteration of a sperm and an egg cell which in turn were produced by their parents en masse via a chemical alteration, and so on. But this is devastating for an Abrahamic theologian, since the conclusion that follows is that which constitutes everything that exists has always existed in some form, which goes against the doctrine of "creatio ex nihilo" (creation from nothing), which itself doesn't make sense, since it entails the view of God acting upon nothing and producing something. So what would seem to nix the first premise is things are caused to exist by being altered to their present general state by other things material things.

The 2nd has issues as well. This argument relies on Big Bang cosmology, but makes a controversial claim which doesn't enjoy the majority of support from physicists. Since the Big Bang theory (BBT) just describes the expansion of the universe from an unknowable state, the BBT supports the above mentioned issue of material things having material causes. The last issue is both a philosophical and scientific issue, pertaining to time. But, since most of you are probably like "Lolwut? " right now, let it suffice to say that this argument necessitates what is called the "A-theory of time", which has the minority of support among philosophers (that doesn't make it false, of course) & experimental results seeming to support Einstein's Relativity theories, which the A-theory of time must insist only appears to be true, making Occam's Razor favor the "B-theory of time".

Lastly, it is often said that without God there can be no moral foundation. A 2500-year old rebuttal to this comes from Plato called the Euthyphro Dilemma:

"Is what is good, good because God commands it, or does God command it because it is good?"

If it's the first, God can command anything to be good and it will be; if the 2nd, the God is just the unnecessary messenger for what can already be discovered to be good.

The closest answer from theologians is that what is good, is good because it reflects God's "essential nature", i.e He IS the good. But that just puts it back: Is God's nature under his control or is it just what it is? Which just brings the argument back.

None of that even remotely demonstrates that no sort of god(s) could exist. What it does is provide (a small) case against the possibility of the existence of certains kinds of gods. Atheists have a good case to make, & enjoy 73-ish% of support among philosophers which would seem to confirm that.

That's basically all I had to say. No threats, no insults, but explanations as to why. I've no problem with contrary beliefs: makes things more interesting usually. (;