Author: Ophelia Benson

This is a very stupid observation, presumably by a dull-witted sub-editor who didn’t read the article with attention:

The fruits of the feminist revolution? Sisterhood, empowerment, and eight hours a day in a cubicle.

That’s right. Why? Because lots of jobs involve eight hours a day in a cubicle. Such is life. But the point of the feminist revolution is that women ought not to be debarred from life in the larger world merely because they are women. Women ought to be seen as and treated as people just as men are people, and both sexes ought to have the ability to take their chances in the world as it is. That’s all. ‘The feminist revolution’ did not think or suggest that all women would or should have the ideal perfect paradisal job. Who thought it did? The idea was just that women should be equal, and treated as equal, so neither sheltered nor banished. That’s all. That doesn’t bring with it some kind of gilded promise of Thrilling Jobs Only, does it – all it brings is the ability to try on reasonably equal terms. Life is life, work is work, jobs are jobs; most jobs suck; big news flash. How could ‘the feminist revolution’ have meant anything else? How would it have gone about guaranteeing Wonderful Jobs for all women who wanted jobs? What is the complaint here? That ‘the feminist revolution’ promised all women would be monarchs or globally-famous poets or archaeologist/adventurers? Please. The feminist revolution was never that stupid.

Not believing there is a god should be enough (enough for atheism, enough for being an atheist). We shouldn’t have to sign up to more. We don’t have time to figure out all the things that we think don’t exist. We can just not think they exist, and let it go at that – or we can not think they exist and then go on to think they don’t exist, if we want to and have time, but that’s extra. Just not thinking so is the minimum needed for entry, or at least it should be.

There’s no sense in believing things exist for no reason – so we don’t (if we have sense) – and for atheists ‘god’ is one of those things. That’s important. The negative matters more than the affirmative.

The minimal definition matters because it has to do with reasons. We don’t believe because we see no good reason to believe – we know of no evidence that god exists. Believing that god doesn’t exist requires some as it were expertise – and like theism, atheism is a public, non-expert view. You can have more detailed or engaged or ‘expert’ atheism, but that shouldn’t be the main definition, because everyone should be able to Just Say No as easily as everyone is able to say yes.

There’s a discussion at Talking Philosophy of how to define atheism. It’s basically about the difference between saying atheism is not believing that there is a god and saying that it is belief there there is no god. Me, I would define it the first way first and then add the second as a more affirmative or energetic version – but what I wouldn’t do is leave out the first. I think the first is 1) an important part of atheism and 2) a version of atheism that is more useful to a lot of people than the more affirmative version is. It has to be possible to be definitely non-theist without having to be affirmative about it.

It does seem fair to say that atheism doesn’t (or shouldn’t) really apply to people who’ve never thought about the matter at all – atheism does seem to be more affirmative than that. So the definition should include that. I suggested ‘Atheism is, at a minimum, explicit nonbelief in a god.’ ‘Explicit’ means that the question has been considered, and that belief has been at the very least declined, and perhaps refused or rejected. But that still doesn’t entail affirmative belief that there is no god – but it also doesn’t entail the ‘oh gee I just don’t know, I have no idea’ popularly attributed to agnosticism these days. It’s just a No. No means No.