This is another piece of flawed reasoning the religious have been throwing around a lot recently – “it requires more faith to be an atheist than to believe in God.” I guess there must have been a memo sent round or something. Talking points. That’s the only explanation. It’s certainly not because it’s a valid argument.

The usual rebuttal given is that atheism just means no belief in God, and it doesn’t require any more faith to have no belief in God than it does to have no belief in Russell’s Teapot. That’s obviously true but I think it misses the point the theists are trying to make.

What they’re really saying

The flaw in their argument

And it’s a useless explanation. Unless they know something about this “God” – how he created everything; why he created it; what he’s likely to do next - it’s a lack of an explanation. It’s just a placeholder until a real explanation comes along. Except that the theist won’t be open to the real explanation when and if science is able to provide one. The placeholder prevents investigation into the real explanation. The theist is the one with the faith – faith that “God” is the explanation and that no other is possible. The atheist is content to say “we don’t know”. For now, anyway. And it’s obvious that saying “we don’t know,” requires no faith.

http://skeptico.blogs.com/skeptico/2008/07/atheism-requires-no-faith.html