Do atheists have doubts concerning their atheism?

Eric_PK

I can only speak for myself.

While I am not sure that there isn’t a god, I find it very very unlikely for evidence to arise that would convince me that the gods that religions posit exist.

One of the reasons I spent a fair amount of time discussion religious beliefs with both theists and atheists was to do see if there were areas that warranted more research.

What I found was that, for the most part, I knew a whole lot more about religion than the vast majority of theists I ran into, and that’s not been uncommon in the other atheists I’ve interacted with. I also found that the theistic arguments towards the existence of god were mostly about bolstering belief if you already believed.

So, no, I don’t have doubts, not in the sense of spending time thinking about whether I’m wrong.

See other questions Eric_PK has answered

SmartLX

Some atheists definitely have doubts concerning their atheism. I know this because there are those who stop being atheists. Author C.S. Lewis was a famous example. He became a born-again Christian apologist after 18 years of atheism, under the influence of J.R.R. Tolkien. It’s a pity, but it happens.

The non-existence of God is as impossible to prove as any negative, so no atheist can be absolutely certain. Even Richard Dawkins named a chapter in The God Delusion “Why there almost certainly is no God”. The probability of any deity existing is incredibly tiny and I dismiss it with no trouble, but I can’t truthfully say that it’s exactly zero.

Since intellectual honesty on this point prevents absolute certainty, an atheist would be more open to contrary arguments than someone who is irrationally certain in a belief. An honest atheist must therefore risk developing doubt, or be trapped into declaring certainty he/she cannot support with evidence.

I don’t fear doubt. Doubt forces us to examine our views as carefully as possible, and atheism stands up to this extremely well.

See other questions SmartLX has answered

RTambree

Atheists don’t doubt their position any more than theists doubt their position on Zeus, Thor or fairies.

You can’t absolutely prove that Zeus doesn’t exist, but it’s almost certain that he doesn’t, so there is no reason to have doubts.

Having said that, atheists should always be willing to change their minds if new evidence comes along, but since all the evidence uncovered in the last few hundred years points to a universe without a divine being, any lingering doubts have become fewer.

See other questions RTambree has answered