Atheism as faith
You define athiesm as “To assume that you know with no amount of uncertainty how The Universe was created”. Atheism has nothing to do with that. Atheists simply say, “due to a complete lack of evidence, I do not believe in deities.” That’s it. Nothing more. There’s certainly nothing about atheism that asserts an understanding of how the universe was created. In fact, there’s nothing about atheism that involves having an opinion about the universe at all. However, it’s likely that most atheists do believe the latest scientific evidence of the creation of the universe.If someone was raised in the middle of nowhere and never encountered anyone who believed in god, he’d be an atheist simply by virtue of never having heard of the “guy”. This person is no different than I am, in that neither of us have seen evidence of god and therefor are not compelled to believe in its existence. That’s fact, not faith.
That is incorrect. There is a difference between believing in no God and not believing in God. I actively believe that there is no God. Someone who had never heard of God would not be an Atheist because they would not have an opinion on the matter.
I also take fault with your assertion that there is a complete lack of evidence for Theism as well. While I don’t think that the evidence is credible enough to sway my belief, there’s certainly no lack of it.
I think the confusion here is that what Justin is arguing for is anti-theism, which does require a kind of belief. However, a-theism simply means “absense of belief in deities”.
I think often questions of theology boil down to the quibbling of semantics.
