Atheism

Classification

Position level

specific

Domains

Philosophy of Religion

Overview

Atheism as a position, rather than as a bare absence of belief, holds that the arguments for God's existence fail and that nothing about the universe calls for one. Cosmological arguments that trace causes back to a first cause face the question of why that cause should itself need no explanation; design arguments face the availability of unguided processes that produce order without anyone ordering it.

The positive case usually runs through evil rather than through the failure of the theistic arguments alone: the amount and the distribution of suffering, much of it falling on creatures incapable of being improved by it, is offered as evidence against a being both able and willing to prevent it.

Position on

• The Existence of God

  Holds that the arguments for a first cause or designer fail, or that natural explanations of the universe's order and origin are sufficient without positing God.

Incompatible positions

• Theism

  Question scope: The Existence of God

References

• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Atheism and Agnosticism
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Part I, Question 2, Article 3 (the Five Ways)