this post was submitted on 03 May 2026
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What do you mean "no stance"? I agree that most atheists aren't especially interested in having religious or philosophical arguments, but they still hold a position.
How do you work that out?
In a world where "no opinion" is a stance, every thought must be labeled as a stance, even no thought at all.
Just let it go
Did you mean to reply to the other user?
No opinion is perfect. I can respect that.
What I don't respect is the self-proclaimed big-brain atheist. The best(worst of the worst) example is your avg YouTube atheist or your avg tiktok atheist. They do these call-in shows and believers call in and the believers tell the atheist(s, often plural so they can gang up on the believer) why God matters to them, why their religion matters to them, and then all these big-brain atheists do is shit all over people for caring about and believing in something bigger than themselves while finding fellowship with like-minded observants.
That's extremely cringe to me. And it seems to me that your average atheist on Lemmy/piefed or Reddit or whatever is probably a fan of those cringey shows, if not one of the hosts.
Nonstance atheism is also called weak atheism, and the amount of weak atheists that still want to argue about it amazes me.
I concur with you, "non-belief" is a position! Otherwise, what the hell are they arguing about? Ignorance itself?
The critique is that absence of evidence is not necessarily evidence of absence. So if disbelief is justified only by “I haven’t seen proof,” then it risks becoming an argument from ignorance.
Have you considered you can be a weak atheist but otherwise have strong interest in debating religion, philosophy and ethics and maintaining strong convictions about it?
There are many things around the subjects of philosophy, religious discussion and ethics to engage with beyond specifically "the existence of god". Some people might just find it fun for its own sake.
Would you expect someone who has seen no empirical evidence or convincing argument to believe in a god, out of interest?
My objection is narrower: calling atheism a “nonstance” can obscure the fact that, in practice, people often do move from “not convinced” to “probably false,” and those are logically different positions.
Also, I’m not denying people can engage in philosophy, ethics, or theology without making a truth-claim about God’s existence. That’s fine and unrelated.
I think specific concepts of god are "probably false". But not 'god' as a wider concept.
I mean if they do, they can still engage in it.
That’s a much cleaner way to put it. The graded-credence approach avoids a lot of the black and white thinking that usually derails these discussions.
I appreciate the distinction between rejecting specific god-claims while leaving room for the broader category(and neatly avoids categorical error). That’s a more careful epistemic position than the slogans people usually trade back and forth.