What Is Positive Atheism?

"You can't tell the players without a scorecard." That's what vendors used to shout at major league baseball games to sell programs. The same could be said about the broad atheist community. The terms have multiplied, so you need a guide to keep them straight. 

On side side we have what have been variously called negative atheists, soft atheists, and weak atheists. These are atheists who do not believe in God or gods, mostly because they have yet to see convincing evidence. (When I write God I'm including any sort of supernatural thing.) But they won't say they believe no God exists. Some on this side call themselves skeptical atheists. I would call them evidentialist atheists.

On the other side we have, correspondingly, positive atheists, hard atheists, or strong atheists. They not only do not believe in God, they believe no such thing exists. They go beyond a-theism, mere nonbelief. (See Wikipedia's scorecard.)

Things get a little confusing because one of America's most prominent voices of atheism, the Atheist Community of Austin (ACA), uses the term positive atheism in its self-description: 

"The Atheist Community of Austin is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization dedicated to promoting positive atheism and the separation of church and state."

What's the problem? The problem is that according to ACA president and The Atheist Experience host Matt Dillahunty, positive atheism in this usage does not mean believing that God does not exist." Dillahunty indicates that by positive atheism, the ACA means its members do volunteer work in their communities. It might have used the term constructive atheism and avoided the confusion, but that was not to be.

Maybe we need a new term for the old positive atheism. How about affirmative atheism? This sort of atheism is defined by the affirmative conviction that no God exists. That works for me.

Of course, this blog is called The Logical Atheist. How does that fit in? It is a subset up positive, or affirmative, atheism because its no-God belief is rooted in logic rather than a mere lack of empirical evidence. The very idea of the supernatural is a logical contradiction, like square circle, and contradictions do not exist; they can't be thought of, described, or talked about. Therefore, one does not demand proof. When someone proffers a logically absurd proposition one simply dismisses it. (What could the popular phrase living God mean when it supposedly refers to a life outside of existence? It's not what we mean by living in any other context, so it's not really the same word. So what does the word mean?) 

Other affirmative atheists may have different reason for believing no God exists. As I've pointed out in other posts, all adults affirmatively believe that Santa Claus does not exist even though one could construe Santa Claus in a way that involves no logical contradiction. An affirmative atheist could hold a no-God belief on similar grounds. The case might go like this: the idea of God is so implausible and so much time has gone by without any convincing evidence having been produced that we are reasonably entitled to say there is no God. That would be fine, unless it ignores the logical objection to the supernatural, which takes precedence.

Consider this your scorecard.