Yes, Virginia, Atheists Have a Worldview – National Catholic Register

The most dangerous philosophy is the unacknowledged one.

I recently observed on my blog:

Atheist critics are constantly informing us lowly, ignorant Christians that atheism itself is, alas, not a formulated position, but only the absence of a position (belief in God). Its not a worldview, etc. I wish I had a dime for every time Ive heard that. Its not true, but we hear it all the time.

Lo and behold, on the very next day an atheist on a prominent Christian-bashing atheist website, addressed this very topic and stated that an atheist is one who is not a theist. But he denied that atheism was itself a belief. No one doubts that that is the literal meaning of the word. It doesnt follow, however, that the atheist believes nothing in a positive sense, or that he or she possesses no worldview or sets of beliefs (which is my topic).

They certainly do as virtually all sentient human beings do, whether they acknowledge it or not. Someone wisely said: The most dangerous philosophy is the unacknowledged one. Briefly stated, almost all atheists are empiricists, positivists, philosophical materialists, methodological naturalists, enraptured with science as supposedly the sole valid epistemology making it essentially their religion (scientism) all of which are objectively identifiable positions, that can be discussed and either embraced or dismissed.

So its not so much that we are saying that there is an atheist worldview per se. Rather, we make the observation (from long personal experience, if one is an apologist like myself) that every self-described atheist will overwhelmingly tend to possess a particular worldview (whatever they call it or dont call it) that is an amalgam of many specific, identifiable things that themselves are worldviews or philosophies or ways of life.

Whatever one thinks of the above analysis, it remains highly likely that atheists will hold to one or more the (usually clustered) belief-systems outlined above. And they will often be blind to the fact that they are doing so, and will talk in terms of their simply following science and/or reason (with the implication that the non-atheist usually does not do either or is fundamentally irrational or naive or gullible simply because they reject atheism).

Im not discussing a mere word (atheism); Im talking about what atheists do in fact believe, and asserting that atheists hold to beliefs and belief-systems (usually quite predictable ones at that). In other words: atheists are just as likely to hold worldviews as anyone else.

The same atheist went on to decry the title atheist itself and lament that its widespread use was a game with language. This is downright comical; as if atheists dont massively choose to call themselves this name? They could reject it if they like. Theyre free to do so. No one is forcing them at gunpoint to use this name for themselves. They could use agnostic (and many do, but it is a less certain and less dogmatic outlook), or they could use a word like humanist (which a number of them also do). But the fact remains that lots and lots of atheists show no reversion to the term atheist. Quite the contrary, they proudly embrace it.

For heavens sake, on the very website where this essay was published, if one looks at the top, we see John Loftus books in a photograph: one of which is Why I Became an Atheist. The late Christopher Hitchens (a very famous and influential atheist indeed) edited a book entitled, The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever. The anti-theist atheist Dan Barker authored the modestly titled volume, Godless: How an Evangelical Preacher Became One of Americas Leading Atheists.

One atheist I have debated at length wrote an article entitled, Why is an atheist an atheist? in which he opined:

But ask an atheist why they are an atheist, and most times the person is so ready to respond to why the atheist is incorrect in her reply; they literally cannot wait for the poor person to stop talking.

You want to know why an atheist is an atheist. Ask him.

But atheists somehow dont like the term atheist anymore?

In conclusion, here are some of the many things that atheists en masse believe:

Im sure I could come up with many more things if I sat and thought about it a while, but this is more than sufficient to demonstrate my point: atheists (as people) have worldviews, even though the word atheism itself means (literally) rejecting a belief in God. And thats what we apologists (so relentlessly despised by atheists) are saying.

See more here:

Yes, Virginia, Atheists Have a Worldview - National Catholic Register