One of the most intriguing statements in philosophy and metaphysics is French existentialist Albert Camus’ oxymoronic proclamation that, ‘I don’t believe in god and I’m not an atheist.’ While it sounds paradoxical, it’s pregnant with profundity. First of all, non-belief in god is a narrow and negative self-description that ignores all other things you might believe in or not. Camus was right more than six decades ago.Though existentialism is broadly defined as atheistic, it has two schools: atheistic and theistic. Nietzsche, Jean-Paul Sartre, Camus and Simone de Beauvoir are known to belong to atheistic branch of existentialism, and Danish existentialist Soren Kierkegaard, Karl Jaspers and Karl Rahner were believing existentialists.
Your belief in oneself makes you a believer. It has a streak of positivism whereas an atheist can be full of negativity and deny things because he has programmed himself to deny all things. If theism is a label, atheism is also a tag.
Human mind is forever stuck in a simplistic binary of theism and atheism. Non-belief also has innumerable shades. Atheism closes all doors and possibilities. Human existence is not dictated by binaries and dichotomies. There are shades and sub-shades to whatever is seen or perceived by the senses. So, Camus was bang on when he proclaimed that though he had no faith in god, he still wasn’t an atheist.
