by Jack Roviere

Created on: August 16, 2008   Last Updated: October 12, 2009

To find out what purely and simply constitutes atheism, let me just ask a very simple question?

Do you believe in any kind of god or higher power?

If you answered "no"...or at the very least, you did not answer "yes," then you are an "atheist."

Is that really it? Some people believe that atheism includes all kinds of positions and beliefs. But answering no to the question "Do you believe in gods?" doesn't seem to change much of anything. Atheism has so many poor connotations to it...so surely, atheism can't simply be the negative answer to the belief in higher powers?

Yet, that is quite simply all atheism is.

There has been a movement recently to re-frame what atheism really means. It has taken several forms, from "atheism means you are amoral" or "atheism means you actively believe there is no god." Of course, these "frames" generally are ones created by people who *aren't* atheist...so it seems unfair for these outsiders to get to determine what atheism is or isn't, when the simplest answer seems to be so logical.

Atheism is actually just an umbrella of all positions that don't fit under theism. Since the theistic umbrella includes all positions that do believe in some kind of god or higher power (it can be one deity - monotheism - or multiple - polytheism. It could be a deity who doesn't interfere in human affairs - deism), the atheistic umbrella simply is all positions that do *not* believe in any kind of god or higher power. So, atheism doesn't have rules or regulations. There is no such distinction as being a "practicing" atheist vs. being a "lapsed" atheist. As long as you don't believe in deities, you are atheist.

But the same could be true for a theist/deist. The only qualification that covers everyone in that umbrella is that they *do* believe in some kind of god or higher power. The deist subset might happen to believe in a god that no longer interferes with humanity, while the Christian subsets believe in Jesus, the Anointed one. But these are just specific subsets of the theist superset. One does not get kicked out of the theist club because one does not believe specifically in Jesus...one only gets booted out of the Christian club.

So, if we know that atheism is the umbrella for lacking a belief in god or gods, to further understand what constitutes atheism, we probably should look at what is *under* the umbrella. Other than the wildly differing beliefs, there are some subsets that describe *how* atheists disbelieve - that is, don't believe or

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