Atheism is another of those problematic terms. There is, in fact, more than one type of atheist: at least five different variations have been delineated. These are:
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Negative/weak atheism someone who to all intents and purposes doesn’t believe in a god, without necessarily going so far as to say that there is in fact no god.
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Positive/strong atheism someone who simply affirms that there is no god as a statement of fact.
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Explicit atheism somone who knowingly rejects any notion of god.
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Implicit atheism someone who has not heard of a god, and cannot therefore decide whether belief in such an entity is reasonable or justifiable or worthwhile. Children especially are usually considered to be implicitly atheist as they have to be taught that there are such things as religious ideas and concepts of god.
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militant atheism is a term one finds in the press; it describes any atheist – strong or weak – who argues vociferously against statements made by people of faith, and seeks confrontation with them. In the UK, Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens are the two best known examples.
religious atheism is how I choose to describe those religions, such as most schools of Buddhism (Theravadin, Zen, etc.) and the Advaita vedanta school of Hinduism.
An indication of the problem can be seen in the number of caveats and definitions. In particular, the idea that there are religious people who are themselves ‘atheist’ goes against intuitively what people would commonly take to be a feature of atheism – that is, its irreligiousness (if not anti-religiousness).
This latter common perception of what an atheist is (a view particularly in the US) is itself problematic, of course: a disbelief in something is now associated with a particular negative attitude. It is a situation made worse by the existence of ‘militant atheists’. It is this that gives atheism its increasingly sectarian and hostile nature, one which people such as myself would want to avoid: why should we define ourselves by something in which we do not believe?
Nevertheless, that there are indeed ‘religious atheists’ alerts us to a feature of atheism: that is that it is rooted in the Western and Islamic experience. The term ‘atheist’ has little meaning in China and India; it would not have had much meaning in the West more than 1500 years ago. It is defined against theism, which is at bottom a belief in a personal god of the Islamic and Judeo-Christian traditions. Atheism is defined by what it is not: it is not theism, perhaps because not being a theist was exceptionally rare in the Common Era up until three hundred years ago at the most. Atheism, by defining itself what it doesn’t believe in, rather than what it does, can be seen as ‘negative’ – it is the reason why the BHA sees humanism as ‘positive‘.
Finally, there is the point that the word ‘god’ is used too often as though it means the same thing to all people, or that there is an agreed definition. The responsible thing, when asked by someone if you believe in ‘god’, should be to ask what they mean by ‘god’. One of the traps that some atheists fall into is to define a god, and then say why they don’t believe in it. They may find that there are theists who would equally not believe in that particular definition of god.
Because atheism is related to a specific cultures and traditions, and in a specific time, and because it is sectarian, and increasingly seen as something hostile, I am personally reluctant these days to describe myself as an ‘atheist’.
On the other hand, insofar as atheism argues that it is encumbent upon theists – particularly those who are engaged in conversion – to prove their claims of the existence of a god, rather than for anyone to try and prove a negative and by proving that a given god does not exist, then in that sense I remain an atheist: this is a weak atheism that makes no claims to knowledge about the non-existence of god that one finds with ’strong’ or positive atheism, but one that says that it finds no reason to believe the claims for a particular god’s existence. It is not an atheism by which I would necessarily define my identity by, however.
