#STRask - What Would You Say to an Atheist Who Claims to Lack a Worldview?

Episode Date: July 17, 2025

Questions about how to handle a conversation with an atheist who claims to lack a worldview, and how to respond to someone who accuses you of being “stubborn and dogmatic” because you defend your views and don’t capitulate to their arguments.   How would you handle a conversation with an atheist who claims to lack a worldview and denies holding every belief atheists usually hold? How would you respond to someone who accuses you of being “stubborn and dogmatic” simply because you defend your views with facts and reason and don’t capitulate to their arguments?

Welcome. This is Amy Hall and I'm here with Greg Kochel for the hashtag STRask podcast from Stand to Reason. Greg, we got some fun ones today, I think. Not like the other ones. Bummer. Now these are fun. All right, let's take them on. All right. This one comes from Tom. I am currently in a conversation with someone who claims to lack a worldview.

He identifies as an atheist but denies there is such a thing as an atheistic worldview, given atheists merely lack a belief in God or gods. His claim is that worldviews require beliefs and he has denied holding every belief I've asked him about that atheists usually hold, materialism, etc. How would you handle this conversation? Carefully, because this is a dishonest dodge. This is a person who does not want to engage issues. This would be my assessment. This is especially the case with atheists who describe themselves as someone who simply lack a belief in God.

Well, that's certainly true as far as it goes, but it actually goes much further than that. I described this problem at length in Street Smarts, and I've often mentioned if, when I first heard this maneuver, and many public atheists use this now, because it's an attempt to avoid any responsibility for making a case for their view. But we don't have a view. We lack a view. This is not true, and it's not intellectually honest. And this could be demonstrated quite easily, and I describe this in the book, by making a simple statement and asking for a response. And so here's what I would say to an atheist who describes his atheism this way. I said, okay, I understand your view. You lack a belief in God.

Okay. I'm going to make a statement here and I want you to respond. And keep in mind, when I make the statement, there are only three possible responses. You can affirm the statement, three possible responses. You can affirm the statement, you can deny the statement, or you could withhold. All right? That is, you either think it's false, you think it's true, affirm, you think it's false, deny, or you don't have any opinion at all. All right? You're neutral on this. Here's the statement, God exists. So what's your response? Well, I have no belief in God. I'm not asking about whether you have a belief in God. I'm asking what your response to this simple statement is. Do you affirm that God exists? No, of course not. Are you neutral that you have no opinion at all about the existence of God? Now, of course, this isn't the case either. Of course he has an opinion

about the existence of God. His opinion is that God does not exist. In other words, he denies the statement. And you think of all of the atheists who hide behind this, I mean starting from, you know, Richard Dawkins right on down the line, all of them write books about this issue. Who writes a book about their non-beliefs? And denying that statement is affirming the opposite statement, correct? Yes, of course. If you deny that God exists, you're affirming that he does not exist.

I mean, this is straightforward, simple. There's no fancy footwork here for those so-called Brights. Daniel Dennett calls atheists the Brights. Okay, we're the rational people. We're just trying to follow the logic here. I'm just trying to get clear on something. Here is the reason, and they are correct in saying, they have no belief in God, in God. There's a reason they have no belief in God, because though they have no belief in God, they do have a belief about God. And the preposition is important. Their belief about God is that he doesn't exist. That's why they don't believe in him.

There's nothing tricky about this except for their ledger domain, their shell game that they're playing with language here. Okay? Now, if you were to ask me who is the best rugby team in England, I would say, I lack a belief of that sort because I know nothing about rugby teams in England. So a person who has no knowledge or opinion regarding something can justifiably say they lack a belief. But this is not the case with a person who identifies himself as an atheist and then defines atheism as merely lacking a belief. Okay? And that's as far as it goes. No, it goes further than that. They lack a belief in God because they have a belief about God. And this little series of questions that I offer is meant to clarify that. And I got that from Hat Tip to Doug Guybitt, a philosophy professor at Talbot, and that was very helpful to me. Oh yeah, now I see. Now I knew it

was a shell game when they make this comment, but I was willing to, I didn't know how to demonstrate it was in a very crisp way until Doug shared this idea with me. Okay, so that was really good. So that's dealing with this claim, this dismissal of responsibility to have a discussion on their views by saying, I lack a belief in God. So you try to flush this out. And by the way, again, those are the only logical possibilities. You can deny, you can affirm, you can deny, you can withhold. They do not affirm.

That's what we do. We're theists. They do not affirm. That's what we do. We're theists. They do not withhold. That's why he can declare himself an atheist. Right. That's where he's made his mistake here. Yeah. Or even if he doesn't declare himself as an atheist, if he is weighing in against theism, in against theism, then that intimates his atheistic belief, his conviction that God does not exist. Okay? And all of these people who make this move publicly, they all weigh in against God.

Okay? I don't know about this friend of Tom's, but that's the case. One other thing though, and that is, if you deny that God exists, this entails a whole bunch of other things. It entails a rejection of objective morality. Now this will take a little work to show this, but I do talk about this in Street Smarts too. Evolution is not going to get you object to morality because biology cannot make rape wrong, period. It might make you believe it's wrong, but it can't make it wrong. Believe it subjectively, making it wrong objectively, two different things, all right? And if there is no God, then do you think, what is your conviction?

That there is anything outside of the material world? We know God is not outside the material world. You've already made that clear because you call yourself an atheist, but is there anything else? Now, most atheists are materialists because that's what's left them in a denial of God. And they kind of go hand in hand. It's their materialism causes them to deny God in some cases. And some cases it's their denial of God that results in their materialism. You know, these are the, these kind of go together somewhat. But to say I have no worldview is just, it strikes me as disingenuous and shallow, honestly.

Well, this is what I'm curious about. He says he denies materialism. He denies holding any other belief. I wonder if there's a way to ask him to help him be a little more forthcoming, but maybe he's not a materialist, maybe he doesn't believe there's a God, but there's some other sort of spiritual. I guess what you could do is say, so what do you think reality is? Just describe it to me.

You don't have to use words. Yeah. You don't have to use specialized words or anything. Just tell me what you think it's like so I can figure out what you think, because you seem like a person who thinks about things, and if you're a thinker, you should have a coherent understanding of what reality is. What I've encountered is that a lot of atheists don't like the idea that they have a worldview. Now to be fair, there are different ways people might understand reality if they don't believe

in God. There are certainly different ways people might understand reality if they don't believe in God. There are certainly different ways. So there isn't one atheistic worldview per se. Which is fair to say then, when Christians get faulted because you guys can't agree among yourself. Well, atheists don't agree among themselves either. So I don't think if it's sauce for the goose, it's sauce for the gander. I don't think it's sauce for either.

It's not relevant. So what is my response to that? But in any event, go ahead. But there are, as you said, there are certain things that are entailed and I think the morality is one of the key ones that you could start with. But anyway, so there are things that are entailed, and this is where I think atheists get upset. And this is kind of what I've gathered.

At the root of atheism is, you know, spiritually at the root of atheism is a desire to throw off any constraints from God. So I think that's what's happening with the worldview issue also. I don't think they like the idea of other ideas being entailed by a first idea. I don't think they want to be constrained. I think they want to choose all of their beliefs based on what they want to choose. So the idea of saying if there's no God, then this and this and this follow. And if you want to be consistent, you need to agree to all of these things. They don't like that.

So maybe if you present it in terms of a positive thing where it seems like reality is cohesive, it seems like it's coherent, it seems like things work together, it doesn't seem like things are randomly coming at you, there seems to be an order and rationality to the universe. Even if you call it natural law, a lot of atheists would refer to that, you know. Yeah. So I assume you want to be a rational person. So do you look at the world, do you try to figure out how things fit together? Is that something you want to do or are you not interested in that? Because if you're interested in rationality and coherence and reality, then there are

things that come together. You can't choose every, you have to conform what you think to what is reality. And if reality is ordered, then what you think about reality ought to be ordered. That means entailment. There are certain ideas that entail other ideas. Yeah, and I very quickly a comment about I don't have any beliefs. A belief is a mental attitude in which you hold that something is so. So if I think that it's an accurate statement that you and I are doing a radio show right now or a podcast, whatever, then that's a belief that I have about that.

All right? Now, beliefs can be true or false. So if they're false, then you don't know it. It's a falsehood. It's not knowledge. But what some people have done is they've made two categories. There are things that I know and things that I believe. In other words, the things that you believe, you're taking on faith, you don't know that.

I'm famous, Dennis Prager does this. Drives me nuts. And he says, yeah, that we're here is a fact, that's knowledge. But that God exists, that's a belief. That we're here and you know it, that is also a belief. Because knowledge is a subset of belief. So you have all these beliefs, some you have are justified and true, that's knowledge and some are false, and that's falsehood.

But everything you think you know, you believe to be so. And so you have a belief about it. And so in this case, Tom's friend, the atheist, he has beliefs about all kinds of things. He believes he's an atheist, for example. That doesn't mean he's wrong in that belief. Like that's a leap of faith. This is the way it's characterized by some, including Dennis, but it just means that this is a belief, and

the belief may be justified or not. So it turns out when you look at it that way, he has beliefs about all sorts of things, and most of those things will fall under the rubric of worldview in some measure, okay? And so it's just a matter of teasing that out. But the way I introduced my answer, it was that this is, you have to tread very carefully here because this is a person who doesn't want to make sense of his world.

That's why they say these kinds of things. They're trying to get out from underneath any burden of proof, any need for justification, and they want to dump all of that on the other side so they are free to believe what they want, how they want, when they want, and not have to answer for those intellectually, so to speak. And I think what you said about beliefs offers another way forward and that is simply, what is your definition of beliefs? Maybe we're using this word differently.

Maybe that's the issue. So if you can define what beliefs mean, or even better, hear what his definition is and then use different words to describe what you're trying to get from him. What do you think is true about reality instead of beliefs? And what is your definition of worldview? Again, what is reality is another way to ask him about that rather than using this word that might set him off because he has a different definition. This might have more to do with that than anything else. He might have an understanding of worldview that's actually not correct or that he thinks

involves things that he doesn't believe in. So if you can use different words, sometimes you can get around that. As long as your words are accurate to what you're asking, there's nothing wrong with doing that. By the way, keep in mind there's no silver bullet here. If there's a person who just doesn't want to play, so to speak, to engage in a thoughtful, reflective fashion, there are some maneuvers you can take and things you could ask like we've suggested,

but he may just brush you off. Let's go to a question from Brian. How would you respond to someone who accuses you of being, quote, stubborn and dogmatic simply because you defend your views with facts and reason and don't capitulate to their arguments? How can I point out that they, by their qualification, are also stubborn and dogmatic, but say that in a more productive way?

Well, we have a simple rule in the tactical approach, and that is when anyone calls you a name, you ask for a definition, which is the first step in the Colombo tactic, getting clarification. What do you mean by that? All right. And so when somebody says, well, you're dogmatic. I mean, that in itself is not a problem in my view. In fact, there are certain theological tomes that are described as dogmatics, sheds dogmatics, for example, which means people are taking a very specific, precise, and firm position about something because they think they have good reasons. The issue is the reasons, all right, not the alleged dogmatism.

But it might be good to flesh that out, I should say to flush out the definition. So the question there is, okay, when you say I'm being dogmatic or stubborn, what do you mean? What am I doing that qualifies as being dogmatic? And why is that a vice? Or what qualifies me as being stubborn and why is that a vice? Now, what I've discovered,

and a lot of times when people use these descriptors of you, I almost called it name calling but it's not always the case, they have an opposing alternate view that it turns out they are just as committed to as you are to your view, okay? But they don't consider that a liability. It's not a vice for them. I talk about Christians being careful not to be, and this is especially with other Christians in theological discussions, unjustified in their dogmatism. There are certain things that you and I

as followers of Jesus are extremely dogmatic about, but our dogmatism is justified. We are holding firm to things that we have very good reasons to believe are so, and they matter. Okay, you want to call that stubborn? I guess a pejorative way of putting it, but okay. But being dogmatic and stubborn, and a general understanding of the meaning of those terms

is only a vice if it's not well just, if neither is well justified. I think that married people ought to be real stubborn about not getting a divorce, no matter what happens, because they made a promise, not just before man, but before God. And so being stubborn on the right issues is a virtue, not a vice. So you have to flush out the definitions here that this person has in mind when he's using these words to describe you, Brian, and chances are pretty good that once the definitions get clearly flushed out, they will apply equally to him. And maybe that will help. The issue is the, and I've said this many times before, but the real issue is the

reasons. Right, yeah. The real issue is the reasons, not whatever alleged vice the person thinks you have, dogmatic, stubborn, whatever. Those things can be raised appropriately in certain circumstances, but I think these are being raised as invectives against the Christian because he's standing firm. You're both holding to your position. So maybe you could say to them, look, we're both holding to our position. The question is who is right, and that's where the disagreement is.

The disagreement is not over who's holding to their position because we both think we're justified. So let's look at the reasons. And if we still disagree, we still disagree. But neither of us is changing our position. So we're both doing exactly the same thing here. Well, this is where Dennis Prager's dictum comes in benefited so much from him. He's a disabled at the moment, but from an accident last year. But he says clarity not agreement. That's what I want to pursue, he tells his people on his own show. We're not going to get agreement much of the time. How about clarity? And that's what he's after and I think that's one of the virtues of his style.

Well that's it for today. Thank you, Brian and Tom. We appreciate hearing from you. And if you have a question, why don't you go to our website right now, str.org. Just look for our hashtag STRask podcast page and you'll find a link there. Or you can go to X and just use the hashtag STRask. I'm sure you have questions rolling around in your mind and so I hope you'll send them on to us. Thank you so much for listening. This is Amy Hall and Greg Kockel for Stand to Reason.