Comparing Apples to Vegetables
The category error of comparing atheism to Christianity (6 min)
There is a common mistake I see both atheists and Christian apologists making. My personal journey of learning apologetics led me to discover this concept years ago. Specifically, my experiences with the arguments from atheists that I ran into, along with my own mistakes in dealing with them. It stems from a fundamental misrepresentation of positions made by self-proclaimed “atheists.” Though this misrepresentation is almost always unintentional, making it a mistake to assume deception, it is a misrepresentation that most Christians (including Christian apologists) do not deal with effectively nor answer properly. Largely because people do not recognize the problem in the first place. I first had an inkling of a problem when trying to wrap my head around claims of “non-belief” but had a hard time understanding how to deal with or comprehend the actual issues at the heart of it. More recently, I came to understand what is going on here and saw just how much of an issue this actually is.
Essentially, it is a serious category error that is routinely made and inadvertently reinforced by the language Christian apologists typically use. In short, the problem lies with the term “atheism,” especially when people contrast it with “Christianity.” This juxtaposition creates a misrepresentation of and a false equivalency between the belief systems in conflict. The contrast, worded this way, treats these opposing beliefs as if they are properly comparable; enabling a false portrayal of what the self-proclaimed “atheist” actually believes. However, this false portrayal is almost never deliberate (though it is opportunistic). So it is better understood as a reasoning error perpetuated by sloppy language.
What do I mean by this? Well, as the title of the article tries to hint at, atheism versus Christianity is comparing “apples to oranges”. It’s a faulty contrast that relies upon a misunderstanding of what atheism actually means and what atheists themselves actually believe. Christianity is a specific religion. One with specific and definable beliefs. Whereas atheism is a category of belief. Atheism only means no god/gods. So an atheist is one who believes there are no gods (plural) or god (singular). Hence the very word atheism derives from the prefix (“a”) meaning no or none and the suffix (“-theism”) meaning god or gods. It is not something somebody believes in specifically, but a category of belief (or worldview) that a person’s actual religion falls under. Nobody is merely an “atheist”. They are a Humanist, or a Buddhist, or a Marxist, or some other atheistic religion.
Generic atheists don’t exist. Not because people who are atheists don’t exist, but because nobody exists within a generic category by itself. Just like generic “theists” don’t exist. You have Muslims, Christians, or (religious) Jews. Judaism, Islam, and Christianity possess entirely distinct beliefs that require separate handling in most situations. Atheism is no different. Atheism is a category that contains several atheistic religions. So it is often misleading to compare atheists versus Christians because it implies that atheists somehow don’t have any religion/worldview or positive beliefs (I explain what religion means here). It allows the falsehood of “unbelief” and enables the claim that atheists have nothing to prove because they don’t believe in anything.
Christianity, for example, is a theistic religion. Theism, contrasted with atheism, means a belief in a god. Many times theism is shorthand for monotheism, the belief in one (and only one) god. While all Christians are in fact theists, who actually identifies themselves as a “theist”? Nobody! That’s because it’s a broader category that one falls under. It’s not wrong, but useless in contexts that require more specificity. This is especially true when you understand that theism can mean different, mutually exclusive, things. The god of Islam is not at all the same as the god of Christianity. Nor is the god of Sikhism at all the same as the god of Christianity, Islam, or Judaism.
Theistic views of god can be, and in reality are, drastically different from one another. Comparing atheism (a category of religion/worldview) to Christianity (a specific religion/worldview) is like comparing apples (a specific fruit) to vegetables (a category of food) when discussing what is nutritionally optimal. It’s a comparison that makes little sense when one of the things being compared is an entire category of food.
Christians make a mistake in comparing the two rather than comparing one of the specific religions within atheism that atheists actually adhere to. If we want to make meaningful comparisons, then it means comparing atheism to theism more broadly and generically, or something like Humanism (what most self-described “atheists” actually are) to Christianity. Another mistake is in talking about what “atheists” believe, as if atheism were itself a coherent belief system. Because atheism is a generic category, the only actual beliefs held in common by “atheists” are the rejection of god/gods. That’s it. Many other things associated with “atheists” have nothing to do with atheism itself but instead apply only to specific atheistic religions that don’t apply to other atheistic religions.
It helps to understand this by seeing what it would look like by taking an example that replaces atheist with theist. If somebody talked about how “theists” are wrong because the Koran and the Book of Mormon are error-filled and contradictory, it would be immediately obvious what the problem is. “Theists” don’t believe in the Koran; Muslims do. “Theists” don’t believe in the Book of Mormon; Mormons do. Muslims and Mormons are in fact theists, but every other theist, like Christians and Sikhs, couldn’t care less what either of those sacred books claim because Christianity rejects the Koran and Sikhs put no faith in the Book of Mormon.
When Christians talk about atheism, as if it were a belief system, they allow actual atheists to pretend as if they are neutral non-believers with no belief system. Because Christians portray atheists as sitting under a categorical umbrella that has no coherent beliefs other than believing in no gods. This is a huge mistake, and one that has allowed many self-proclaimed “atheists” to rig the game in their favor by presenting themselves as vague non-believers with no positive belief system. Which is something that only exists at an abstract, categorical level. Specific atheists are always (without exception) adherents of a more specific religion/worldview that simply exists within the broader category of atheism. This needs to be made clear and brought up in any discussion that goes beyond the extremely general debates regarding the existence of a vague and deliberately undefined god (or gods). Using language that ignores this distinction is one of the major problems in Christian apologetics and religious debates today.
This problem is a factor in the overly broad generalizations that might be true in a theoretical sense but are entirely unpersuasive when applied to actual people. This is because any individual who hears these claims and knows they don’t apply to them will have good reason to disregard what you might say. Saying that atheists are “secular”, for example, is as misleading as claiming that theists believe in the Book of Mormon. Buddhism and Confucianism are both atheistic religions because they do not believe in a god or gods. That doesn’t mean they are secular. Buddhists, Marxists, Humanists, and Jainists are all part of the same atheistic category. Yet, we cannot accurately consider Buddhism and Jainism purely secular or naturalistic.
If you want to present arguments against secularism, then do not lump “atheists” in with this argument. Because at that point you are generalizing so much that many people who legitimately fit within the category clearly do not adhere to such a belief. If you are trying to debunk arguments made by people like Richard Dawkins or Sam Harris, then describe them as Secular Humanists, not merely “atheists.” Dawkins and Harris do not adhere to a non-belief system that believes in nothing other than a rejection of the Christian God. They are adherents of a Humanist religion that has many specific and clear positive beliefs about the world, human nature, creation of the world and humanity, etc. Do not present them as “non-believers” as if they are empty vessels devoid of “belief”. They aren’t non-religious they are non-Christian. They are atheists, yes, but more specifically they are believers in the religion of Humanism.
Christians need to understand that the labels and wording we use are very important. Sloppy categorization and poor framing allow many problems to manifest. Notably, category errors like a contrast between the category of atheism and the specific religion of Christianity have enabled a popular narrative of “disbelief”; as opposed to the reality of these individuals having a specific religion but hiding behind a vague category. It is not a minor error but one for which we should vigilantly be alert to reframe debates more accurately.