The snide Atheist is fond of drawing the following illustration:
“If Atheism is a religion then bald is a hair color!”
The Christian response should be as equally to the point:
Then why are you in the barbershop?
In George H. Smith’s book: “Atheism: The Case Against God” much time is spent establishing what is meant by “atheism.” Smith describes different sorts of atheism and distinguishes these ideals from epistemological agnosticism. There is weak atheism, and there is strong atheism…and so on.
As far as I know, George H. Smith is the first to articulate these sorts of definitions, and as a Christian apologist, I’ve seen them pilfer down into colloquial language. They become talking points thrown about by arrogant Google scholars who haven’t invested any intellectual capital in the arguments but merely pick them up from God-hating websites and lock them in position…keeping them cocked and aimed at the unsuspecting Christian.
All this is just as useless for the colloquial God-hater as it was for George H. Smith.
You see, every man, woman, child, and even the insane necessarily have a metaphysical view.*
The moral of the story is…if you don’t have hair, then why stroll up into the barbershop and demand a haircut?
If you don’t have metaphysical views, then why argue with the Christian about the nature of reality, the origin of language, the preconditions of rational thought, objective laws of logic, etc?
They only argue because contrary to what their illustration implies, they do have a head full of hair…(and it’s time for Christians to get out the scissors!)
*I realize certain die-hard empiricists would cling to the Tabula Rasa of Locke and insist that babies are born without such views, but most philosophers have realized the error of this reasoning. To prove it is beyond this post however. At any rate, even radical empiricists must admit that every rational animal has a metaphysical view, even if they disagree about when it develops.