h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Why take this "holier than thou" attitude to non-belief?

How does the term 'positive' mean 'holier than thou'?

Well it seems that to be a positive atheist you must define your life somehow by your lack of belief; in some way use it as a badge.

I have no interest in football, but I am not defined by it. When my otherwise intelligent colleagues move the coffee time conversation to football, or visiting a church on a Sunday morning I move along and do something else. I am neither a positive non-football fan nor a positive atheist.

I'm quite happy to follow the behaviours you ascribe to positive atheism. I have a moral code, I'm quite understanding of the need for religious (or footballing) beliefs of others.

So I define your positive atheism as feeling a need to show yourself to be, in some way, as good and reasonable as those who espouse peaceful religions (i.e. a little more holier than me)

I can see the aspects of "negative" atheism that you are trying to distance yourself from, but my neutrality encompasses both what you define as negative and positive, leaving me neither holier, nor unholier than any other unbeliever.

Hmm, thanks for that. Well put. I can't say I define myself by my spiritual beliefs, but it can be a useful label.

Perhaps I was being provocative saying "holier" in the circumstances.

I think the fine distinction I was trying to make was that I have no belief in God, rather than that I believe there is no God. It isn't a position of uncertainty about whether there is a God (there isn't), just a feeling that there is no point in listing explicitly the things in which I have no belief.

Again, I can see your point; I don't believe in sky hooks, green pixies and dragons but I don't list them as part of my belief structure. A god is just something else in that list.

However, belief is a sticky subject, and it's useful to have your belief structure figured out. It's suprising when it can crop up.

I've been caught off guard by people wanting answers to theist-type questions, and having a creed of my own means that I can answer properly, rather than just saying 'I never really thought about it', or 'I never thought it was important'.
If you can't answer their question, however irrelevent to your life it is, they will assume that they have won (and just because religion shouldn't be about winning doesn't mean that it isn't!).

Ha, I've kind of got the wring end of the stick there- your point really is that it isn't actually a belief structure. It's got nothing to do with belief. There isn't a god. The sky is blue. One hundred pennies in a pound. They're all the same.

(I still think having good answers is useful though).

Well Aristotle said that 'The unexamined life is not worth living.' Even if Atheists have no need of a 'creed' as such, we are still capable of thinking about The Big Questions.

It isn't that I haven't thought about these questions. I arrived here via childhood Christianity, relaxed agnosticism and creating my own, highly pragmatic, religion. In the end I just can't do the belief thing, unless I can be persuaded that there is some evidence.

I believe in the fairly conventional view of physics, even if the Copenhagen interpretation is a bit beyond the pale. I believe in money, although the value seems a bit uncertain right now.

And that's just it. We should be able to discuss these things on the basis of evidence, not belief. We may not be right, we may not reach agreement - but we shouldn't allow anyone to claim that their belief holds the trump card.