In the Beginning Was the Word

A glossary for those who weren’t invited to the seminar, and why that matters

Every tribe has its language. Surgeons talk about haemostasis and iatrogenic risk. Lawyers invoke res ipsa loquitur and mens rea. Teenagers, for a mercifully brief period, deploy slang that renders them incomprehensible to everyone over twenty-five. This is not, in itself, a problem. Specialist vocabulary exists because it carries meaning efficiently between people who already share the context. A cardiologist who had to explain what an ejection fraction was every time they mentioned it would never get through a ward round.

The problem comes when specialist language is used, consciously or not, as a gate. When the price of entry to a debate is fluency in a vocabulary that only one side has been taught, the debate is not really a debate at all. It is a performance of expertise, and the audience is expected to applaud rather than argue.

Theology has been doing this for a very long time.

Terms like epistemology, ontological argument, theism, deism and apophatic theology are not inherently obscure. They describe real concepts that any reasonably curious person can grasp. But they arrive pre-loaded with centuries of in-group usage, and their effect on many people encountering them for the first time is to produce a familiar, deflating thought: perhaps I am not qualified to have this conversation.

“Religion is poison because it asks us to give up our most precious faculty, which is that of reason, and to believe things without evidence. It then asks us to respect this, which it calls faith.”Christopher Hitchens — Hitchens vs Blair (Random House, 2011)

You are qualified. The ideas are not as complicated as the language suggests. What follows is a working glossary, not exhaustive and not academic, but sufficient to hold your ground in any conversation about religion, belief, and reason. Think of it less as a dictionary and more as a field guide: the terms you will encounter, what they actually mean, and where they tend to be deployed.

One further note before we begin. If you are a believer reading this, you will notice that the definitions here are written from a particular vantage point. That is deliberate. This is not a neutral publication. The Permanent Rebuttal has a position, and it will be argued for honestly, which means starting from shared definitions rather than contested ones. If you disagree with any definition here, say so. That is, in fact, the point.

The Glossary

Belief · Positions on God

Theism

The belief that one or more gods exist and are actively involved in the world, including in human affairs. This is the position held by Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, and the majority of religious traditions. A theist’s god is not a distant abstraction. It hears prayers, sets moral laws, and may intervene in history.

From the Greek theos, god. The root of most of the terms that follow.

Belief · Positions on God

Monotheism

The belief in exactly one god. Christianity, Islam and Judaism are the three dominant monotheistic traditions, and between them they account for the majority of religious believers alive today. Monotheism tends to invest its single god with absolute qualities: all-powerful, all-knowing, all-good. It is precisely these maximalist claims that make the problem of evil, the burden of proof, and the logical arguments against God’s existence so pointed. A god defined as perfect and omnipotent has nowhere to hide.

There is a useful debating point here worth keeping in hand. The monotheist is already an atheist with respect to Zeus, Thor, Odin and the thousands of other gods humanity has worshipped. They have simply stopped one god short of the fully consistent position.

Belief · Positions on God

Polytheism

The belief in many gods. For most of human history, polytheism was the norm. The Greeks, Romans, Norse, Egyptians, Mesopotamians and countless other civilisations worshipped pantheons of distinct deities with individual personalities, domains and rivalries. Hinduism, which continues to be practised by over a billion people, is often described as polytheistic, though this is contested by some Hindu scholars. Polytheism is in many ways a more intellectually honest position than monotheism: it does not require its gods to be perfect, which makes them considerably easier to believe in and considerably harder to argue against on logical grounds.

The anti-theist case against polytheism rests less on logical contradiction and more on the absence of evidence for any supernatural beings at all, however numerous or imperfect.

Belief · Positions on God

Deism

The belief that a god created the universe but then stepped back and left it to run on its own, with no miracles, no prayers answered and no ongoing intervention. The god of deism is more like a watchmaker than a shepherd. Many of the American Founding Fathers held deist views. It is a significantly less demanding claim than theism, but still a claim that requires justification.

Often deployed as a retreat position. When pressed on the specific claims of a religion, believers sometimes fall back to a vaguer deism. Pay attention when this happens.

Belief · Positions on God

Atheism

The absence of belief in gods. Not the positive claim that no gods exist, which would be a much harder thing to prove, but simply the position of not being convinced that any do. The burden of proof lies with those making the claim, not those who remain unsatisfied by the evidence. An atheist is not obliged to disprove God. A theist is obliged to prove one.

Often misrepresented as a belief system in its own right, which it is not. Atheism describes what someone does not believe, not what they do.

Belief · Positions on God

Anti-theism

A step beyond atheism. The anti-theist does not merely lack belief in gods. They actively consider the belief in gods to be harmful. Where an atheist might be indifferent to someone else’s private faith, an anti-theist argues that religion causes damage: to individuals, to societies, to the pursuit of truth, and to moral progress. Christopher Hitchens put it plainly: even if God existed, the totalitarian nature of divine worship would still be an affront to human dignity.

This is the position of this blog. It is not a comfortable one, and it is argued for rather than merely asserted.

Belief · Positions on God

Agnosticism

The position that the existence of gods is unknown, or perhaps unknowable. An agnostic neither affirms nor denies the existence of a god. Technically, most atheists are also agnostic: they do not know that no god exists, they simply do not believe one does on current evidence. The terms answer different questions. Theism and atheism address belief. Agnosticism addresses knowledge.

Agnosticism is sometimes used as a hedge, a way of avoiding commitment. That is a different thing from an honest acknowledgement of epistemic limits.

Belief · Positions on God

Pantheism

The view that the universe itself is divine, that “God” and nature are the same thing. Not a personal god who created the world, but the world itself treated as sacred. Einstein used language that sounds pantheistic when he spoke of God. Spinoza is the canonical philosopher of the position. It is, in effect, a form of atheism dressed in religious language.

Epistemology · How We Know Things

Epistemology

The study of knowledge itself, covering how we know what we know, what counts as evidence, and what the limits of human understanding are. It sounds intimidating but the core question is simple: how do you know that? Every debate about religion is, at its heart, an epistemological dispute. If someone claims God exists, what would count as evidence? Why does it convince some people and not others?

From the Greek episteme, knowledge. When someone uses this word, they are usually asking you to examine your reasons, not just your conclusions.

Epistemology · How We Know Things

Empiricism

The position that knowledge comes from evidence and experience, from what can be observed, tested, and verified. Science is built on empiricism. The empiricist asks: what does the evidence show? An empiricist approach to the question of God’s existence will go looking for testable evidence, and will note that the evidence has so far not delivered.

Epistemology · How We Know Things

Burden of proof

The principle that whoever makes a claim is responsible for providing evidence for it. In a court of law, the prosecution must prove guilt. The defendant does not need to prove innocence. In debates about the existence of God, the burden of proof lies with those asserting that a god exists, not with those who find the assertion unpersuasive. This is not a hostile rule. It is how all rational inquiry works.

Russell’s Teapot is the classic illustration: if someone claims there is a china teapot orbiting the sun between Earth and Mars, the burden of proof is not on you to disprove it.

Epistemology · How We Know Things

Faith

In religious usage, the acceptance of claims without, or despite, sufficient evidence. Often presented as a virtue, particularly in the Christian tradition. From the anti-theist perspective, this is precisely the problem: faith asks you to bypass the normal standards of evidence that govern every other domain of life. You would not accept a medical diagnosis or a financial claim on faith alone.

Distinguish between the ordinary use of “faith” (reasonable confidence based on experience: “I have faith this bus will arrive”) and its theological use, which asks for something categorically different.

Philosophy · Arguments for God

Ontological argument

One of the oldest philosophical arguments for God’s existence, associated with Anselm of Canterbury. In brief: God is defined as the greatest conceivable being. Existence is greater than non-existence. Therefore God must exist. It is an argument from definition rather than from evidence, attempting to reason God into existence without leaving the armchair. Most philosophers, including many theists, consider it a failure.

Worth knowing because it still gets deployed. The response is simple: you cannot define something into existence.

Philosophy · Arguments for God

Cosmological argument

The argument that everything that exists must have a cause, and since the universe exists it must have a cause, which is then identified as God. The obvious counter: if everything requires a cause, what caused God? The usual response, that God is uncaused, eternal and a necessary being, tends to apply special pleading, granting God properties not extended to anything else.

Philosophy · Arguments for God

Teleological argument (argument from design)

The argument that the complexity and apparent purposefulness of the natural world implies a designer. William Paley’s watchmaker analogy is the classic version: just as a watch implies a watchmaker, a complex universe implies a creator. Darwin’s theory of evolution dismantled this argument’s strongest premise by providing a natural, undirected mechanism for the appearance of design.

Dawkins’ The Blind Watchmaker is named after Paley’s analogy and is the most thorough modern rebuttal.

Philosophy · Arguments for God

Problem of evil

The argument against the existence of a good, all-powerful, all-knowing God: if such a being existed, it could prevent suffering. It would want to prevent suffering. Yet suffering exists on an enormous scale. The theological responses, covering free will, divine mystery and the greater good, are examined and found wanting in these pages. The problem of evil is not a gotcha. It is a serious and unresolved challenge to the theist’s position.

Philosophy · Arguments for God

Euthyphro dilemma

A problem posed by Plato that cuts to the heart of religious morality: is something good because God commands it, or does God command it because it is good? If the former, morality is entirely arbitrary and God could command anything. If the latter, moral standards exist independently of God and do not require one. There is no comfortable middle ground here, and every version of divine command theory must eventually answer it.

This is one of the clearest logical demolitions available to the anti-theist. Learn it well.