Atheism, Nothing, and Faith: Is Matt Dillahunty being inconsistent?

In any debate, conversation, dialogue, or lecture, we've heard a billion times that it's important to define your terms. In this blog, you'll see why. But I also want to bring to your attention what I think to be an inconsistency. Atheist personality Matt Dillahunty has been making the rounds, delivering lectures, participating in many debates, contributing to his Iron Chariots website, and being the face of the weekly show The Atheist Experience. He is a great speaker, persuasive, confident, and a quick, logical thinker on his feet. Though I disagree with much of what he says, I end up agreeing with what he says back to his opponents as a rebuttal. As I've pointed out in a previous blog, Matt Dillahunty is the wake-up call to not just the Church in general, but the poison of Popular-level apologetics thinking it has any sort of sufficient grasp on the issues it clumsily talks about. 



Whenever a dialogue centers on a definition of

atheism, atheists are adamant about defining atheism properly. Admittedly, there are relevant nuances in the definition. If someone blatantly defines atheism as the position that positively claims that there is no God, then he or she isn't taking into account other varieties of atheism. The proper response is pointing out these other nuances, seeing who falls in what category, and the conversation can go from there. Christians who insist that the pointing out of these nuances is an evasion are guilty of ignoring other valid atheistic orientations. 

Let's take another example. Lawrence Krauss has popularized the notion that something can come from nothing. But Krauss would be quick to define what 'nothing' means: a vacuum with no matter, but with fields of force, which undergo quantum fluctuations, out of which virtual particles come in and out of existence. Now, as an exception to the metaphysical principle that 'out of nothing, nothing comes', the theist is in the same position as an atheist who is confronted with the simplistic definition that atheism just is the positive claim that God does not exist. There are relevant nuances. The theist does not mean 'nothing' the way Krauss is using it, and so it seems disingenuous for Krauss to title his book 'A Universe from Nothing', since, of course, if that's what he means by 'nothing', I and other theists have no problem at all. The relevant sense of 'nothing' has been redefined and applied to a case that's irrelevant to what the theist means by 'out of nothing, nothing comes'. This is an instance of clarification of terms independent of whether it's true or whether it's demonstrated to be true, or investigations into what's the proper method to determining whether it's true. 

At this point, I'd like to underline the inconsistency, which I see as unfair. Atheists protest that the hypothetical theists above are using 'nothing' improperly. Atheists protest that the hypothetical theists are using 'atheism' improperly. But why is it that the majority of atheists, and Matt Dillahunty in particular, are so quick to not define 'faith' properly? Again, they admit 'atheism' has relevant nuances; they admit that 'nothing' has relevant nuances. Why can't they admit that 'faith' has relevant conceptual nuances? From what I've heard, they dogmatically (for the tone of voice and the finality inherent in their denunciations seems to border on dogmatism) suppose 'faith' to be, plain and simply, belief without evidence. Now, this might be one of the meanings, or usages (to use Dillahunty's philosophy of the use of words in a language). But why can't there be other usages? And why can't these other usages still go by the word 'faith', just as 'atheism' can still go by the word 'atheism' with its relevant distinctions, and 'nothing' can still go by the word 'nothing' with its relevant distinctions? 

Of course, we can't just throw around words and make them mean whatever we want. But when we have a long history of a word used in a certain way, when scholarly exegesis has uncovered the use of the word as meant by the authors of the New Testament (and so should be the authoritative usage relative to authorial intent within the Bible), this usage is at least worthy to be taken seriously. Every now and then I'll hear someone mention this usage, and every time the atheist responds by saying that's not faith. Well, that would be the same tactic a theist would use if their response is 'that's not atheism', or 'that's not nothing'. Thus, I see a glaring inconsistency between their desire to recognize multiplicity of usages relative to conceptual nuances for a word, and an unwillingness to apply this desire to the word 'faith'. To clarify my criticism let me elucidate what I mean by 'faith' in the same spirit as an atheist would clarify the different usages of the term 'atheist', or a physicist or metaphysician might clarify the different usages of the term 'nothing'. 

'Faith', as used in the New Testament, comes from the Greek word 'pistis', which is a rhetorical concept used to refer to the giving of a forensic proof. According to Dr. Arash Abizadeh, the usage of 'pistis', in this sense, stretches all the way to Aristotle and Quintilian, equated with the giving of a proof in rhetoric, and how the proof relates to subsequent persuasion, if the proof was logically and/or psychologically effective. Dr. Jan Swearingen shows in her essay "Pistis, Expression, and Belief: Prolegomenon for a Feminist Rhetoric of Motives" specifically ties the New Testament's use of 'pistis' with its rhetorical usages in Greek rhetoric, saying it was "borrowed from secular Greek rhetoric" (pg 136). There are other nuances. It can also mean trust, loyalty, fidelity. It can also refer to a body of beliefs, as when we say 'the Christian faith'. The point is that atheist either by and large ignore the nuanced usage, or uncharitably define the word out of existence by saying that a belief based on evidence is automatically 'not' faith. Again, this would be the same as a theist defining 'atheism' out of existence simply because it's not 'positive knowledge of God's non-existence', or defining 'nothing' out of existence simply because it's not 'a vacuum with fields of force and no matter'. 

This double-standard needs to be noticed on both sides, and this inconsistency needs to be ironed out.