There are two camps of atheism, to my mind, and in which one you fall depends on your own personal bent, I imagine. And of course there are atheists who are just mainline, no-camp atheists in the same way that there are mainline Protestants who aren't fundamentalists or extremely liberal. No-camp atheists include people who don't believe in God not by choice but by default: they weren't raised religiously, they never really had any experience of religion that was transformative, they don't think about their beliefs or lack thereof, they don't care, or any combination thereof which has resulted in atheism without a choice made. I suspect a certain percentage of the church-going population of the world are secretly just atheists by default; they've always gone to church, but they don't really believe it.
We're also not going to discuss theological nihilists, who reject any sort of belief in anything. That would, on its face, seem to be atheism, but atheism isn't a lack of belief, it's a lack of belief in God. I don't know of too many people who truly don't believe in anything. Atheists are even now angrily clamoring that they don't believe, they know, but guess what atheists: you believe in atheism. It's not "faith" but it is a belief in the same way that every idea has its believers. Somewhere at the bottom of your logically-structured atheism is an axiom of some sort that you hold to be self-evident, but axioms are beliefs that we agree to hold in common so we can draw logical conclusions from them. You believe too.
So there are two camps of atheism that I've seen: the Non-Believers and the Can't-Believers. The Non-Believers hold a belief: God doesn't exist. Usually there are corollaries like "the world would be better off if we all stopped believing in God" but "the world would be better off if we all believed [blank]" is hardly unique to atheists. Non-Believers believe in Non, that is, a lack of God. Richard Dawkins et. al. would probably argue this point, but I'm just classifying them, not telling them what they have to believe.
Non-Belief can be beneficial; it promotes science, tries to dispel myth, and seeks truth. Its adherents are no less moral than anyone else, and they ask questions which should be asked. Many of them fall into the trap of confusing a belief in God with being religiously organized, and so they ascribe faults to non-atheists which should instead be ascribed to their churches/sects/creeds. It's too bad, because they do make decent points about religion and about belief, but by conflating the two, they leave themselves open to attacks on both. Religions will point out that the groups which have caused the most destruction in history were not religious; any fanatical adherents of causes can cause destruction, especially if the cause is inherently destructive, which most religions aren't. And believers will simply say that all the points of the Non-Believers should properly be ascribed to religions, and that belief in God itself is not the problem.
The other camp, the Can't-Believers, are a more interesting group. I would venture a guess that there are more "converts" here, although I have no numbers to support that guess and there are plenty of "converts" to Non-Belief. But Can't-Believers almost have to have previously been believers, or at least on the fence. This is the group that includes people whose faith has been destroyed, either by some tragedy or by coming from a restrictive faith into the open and finding that they can no longer believe at all. One might further classify by what a Can't-Believer doesn't believe in: God as a whole, a loving/caring God, a God who interacts with the world at all, a non-capricious God, etc. And some Can't-Believers still believe in God but have no faith; they may hate God or reject God or some other form of anti-God belief.
Can't-Believers may masquerade as believers in a way that Non-Believers don't. They may continue to be religious because it's habit, because it brings them comfort, for the community, or in hope that they might one day recover their lost faith. They tend to be less proselytizing than Non-Believers: you won't find too many best-sellers written by Can't-Believers for the very simple reason that they probably don't care if other people believe. If they do, then they're probably on their way to become a Non-Believer. I find myself in this camp when I visit atheism.
There's a terrible, heart-wrenching quality about being unable to believe, having one's faith destroyed. You had something and you've lost it, but you're not yet to the point where you necessarily think that you're better without it. Maybe that's a distinction that could be drawn as well: some atheists feel they're better that way, and others do not. There, I would safely classify myself as agnostic, because I don't know. I don't know if I'd be better with the belief or without it, because I exist in both places simultaneously.
There are days when I think that there can't possibly be a God because if there were, such a God would have to be a terrifying god in the style of the Aztecs and Assyrians, a god who would demand blood sacrifice or who would punish sinners. And I don't want to believe in a God like that. It's a strange feeling, believing that God must be a kind, forgiving, and just God, and yet believing that such a God can't exist. It's a belief in something that you hope is wrong. I don't know whether those who belong to religions where God is an angry, vengeful God feel the same way. I would expect that they don't; they believe in this God and all they want to do is to do whatever their religion says will keep this God happy with them. Theirs is a faith, a faith I don't envy but which is entirely different from my experience, which is a lack of faith. I lose faith in a kind, forgiving, just God. But I hope that I'm wrong, because I still believe that there could be one.
I don't know if that makes me an atheist on those days or not. I think it fits the bill: I stop believing in God because I believe God can't exist. But perhaps it should be more properly said to be a loss of faith in that in which I believe. Lack of faith doesn't make you an atheist. I'm not sure what it does make you; afiduciist isn't a word and it's not easy to spell or say, and apistisist is similarly difficult and sounds vaguely dirty. But while many times "faith" is equated with "religion," so someone who has lost faith would be said to be a-religious, I think "faith" is simpler than religion. If belief is the rock, faith is the hands that hold you to that rock, that keep you from being swept away in the storm. Without the rock, the hands are useless, but if the hands lose grip, the rock doesn't cease to exist; it simply doesn't help you when you're washed away. You might be washed back up on the same rock or another, and might then grab hold again, but those rocks do not appear and disappear.
So perhaps I don't have periods of atheism, but rather periods of loss of faith. That might or might not be more hopeful, depending on whether I think that belief in God is a bad thing. For the record, I don't; I think that many beliefs, like tools, can be used poorly or wrongly and can cause actions which are evil even if the belief itself doesn't support such an action. I reject the idea that belief in God must be incompatible with science, or that it must mean that I am unrealistic. In fact, in some periods where I lose faith, it's because I can't rationalize my faith with my realism, and realism often wins in such cases. But that is an issue with faith, not with belief.
On the other hand, I don't believe that morality requires a higher power. On days when I'm feeling almost atheistic, I might even say that a higher power is morality, and that God is simply the sum of existence. I'm fascinated with the question of why people are moral, in the absence of belief in God or with such belief. That, to me, is a question divorced from theist/atheist sparring. Atheists get asked the question a lot as if it's an indictment of atheism; I ask the question because I think answering it supports whatever structure a person has. But that's a question for another time.
I think it's beneficial, if sad, to lose one's faith. Not forever. But to get lost is a good way to see things one otherwise wouldn't have seen. Doubting Thomas gets a lot of flak because he didn't just trust Jesus, so Christians assume they are supposed to be blindly faithful as well. But questions and doubts are healthy and important. Debate strengthens both positions, and questions refine faith. Anyone who tells you not to question or doubt doesn't want you to look hard at what they're saying. Which means it's probably either wrong, or it's leading you somewhere you wouldn't go ordinarily.
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