In The God Delusion, Dawkins contends that a supernatural creator, God, almost certainly does not exist, and that belief in a personal god qualifies as a delusion, which he defines as a persistent false belief held in the face of strong contradictory evidence.

What is a scientific atheist?

Scientific atheism asserts that such a being cannot possibly exist since contemporary science has shown that all that exists is material. There are two latent premisses in this argument.

What is a religious delusion?

Religious delusions occur in a person whose predominant thinking is religious. Faith is part of their personhood; delusion arises from psychiatric disorder. A person with religious belief may have a delusion but only if they have a concurrent psychiatric illness.

Why is the number of atheists increasing?

Polls show that the number of atheists is rising, and accompanying this rise is the increased marginalisation of religion in the public sphere. There are a number of causes of this, but perhaps most important is the perception that religious belief is intellectually deficient, coupled with the feeling that science has somehow shown this to be true.

Is belief in God an unjustified belief?

By ‘faith’, the atheists typically means ‘unjustified belief’, and so in describing belief in God as ‘faith’ they are claiming that it is unjustified. Why is it unjustified? The answer is given by the second half of the atheists’ reply: there is no scientific evidence to support it.

Why is belief in God without evidence irrational?

The reason that belief in God without evidence is irrational is because there is no evidence for God, say the atheists. This is the central claim: In order for any belief to be rational it has to be based on scientific evidence. This claim goes by the name of ‘Scientism’.