Atheist or strong atheist?

 | 2 min

Imagine someone tells you that there is a magic giant radish in deep space that demands you hop on one foot for 10 minutes every Thursday morning or you will lose one sock out of every load of washing.

You have no evidence of this whatsoever, so you probably wouldn't believe it. Equally though, you cannot absolutely prove that it does not exist. And given the impossibility of examining all of deep space, you have to conclude that there is no way we can determine for sure the existence or non-existence of the radish. So, with respect to the magic giant deep-space radish, you are philosophically an agnostic atheist.

In everyday life though, you probably agree that the whole idea is completely stupid. You certainly wouldn't hop on one foot for 10 minutes every Thursday morning just in case. You wouldn't bother to carefully state that you lack belief in the radish's existence rather than say that you just don't believe in the radish. You would live your life exactly as if you knew there was no giant magic space radish. Practically speaking, you would probably act as a gnostic strong atheist towards the radish.

In practice, you would do this with many other deities or supernatural entities. You would be perfectly comfortable stating categorically that there are no fairies at the bottom of anyone's garden, there are no pots of gold at the end of rainbows, the hub of the universe is not a giant ash tree called yggdrasil and that the cosmos does not rest upon Atlas's shoulders. You probably can't prove these things aren't true but you believe they aren't regardless. Philosophically, you might have to be an agnostic atheist, but practically speaking, you are a strong atheist when it comes to these things.

This is how I feel about Yahweh/Jehovah/Allah, for instance. I know they can't be proven, so philosophically speaking, a strong atheist position is not logically defensible. But I see literally no more evidence to believe in the Abrahamic god(s) than I do in Papatuanuku, Atlas, Yggdrasil or the Giant Magic Space Radish that I just made up.

Philosophically, I am an agnostic atheist. Practically, I am a strong atheist.