There are far too many people labouring under the
misapprehension that either atheism is a world view (it isn't) or that atheists
derive their world view from their atheism (which I don't think they do, but I
guess I can be convinced that some might, if any atheists can argue that case
from personal experience).
Here's my position. I'm generally a sceptical and
evidential type of person. The first means that I don't immediately
accept anything as true, whether that be what someone tells me (irrespective of
the medium: voice, writing, video ... I might be a little unsettled by
telepathy, given that is something I consider to not exist). I have
evidence to support such scepticism given that I know people to hold false beliefs,
to misunderstand situations, to be susceptible to illusions and delusions and
to misrepresent the truth (whatever "the truth" may be). The
second merely means that I go where the (compelling) evidence leads, and if
there is no evidence, I don't go anywhere. If evidence points towards a
number of options, then I might move towards those options, but I don't choose
one of them and go all the way with it (at least not based on that one point of
evidence).
This scepticism and evidentialism is what lies behind my
world view: that people are often deluded, that claims without compelling
evidence are almost always erroneous (and even more so when there have been
thousands of years in which compelling evidence could have been collated if it
in fact existed) and that good intentions are not sufficient. (That's not
the entirety of my world view, but the currently relevant
elements are there.) Out of that falls my overt and explicit atheism, as
opposed to the neutral atheism that I had from birth.
Do other atheists recognise something of their position in
this?
Do any theists comprehend the difference between this
position and the concept that an atheist's world view might be driven by their
atheism?
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