It does not take faith to be an atheist, let alone "great faith". “Faith” is the absolute “belief in” something. It is rare to find an atheist who claims to believe categorically in the non-existence of god/gods. I have only met one such atheist and I live in a rather atheistic country (Australia).
Like most atheists I take the default position of having no reason to to accept the proposition that there is a god or gods because there is no evidence based reason to believe it. I do not believe in fairies but it cannot be said that I “have faith in the non-existence of fairies". For all I know fairies, Zeus or some other god may exist - I just don't know. The same logic applies to all the thousands of proposed gods, fairies, trolls or imps. I don't “have faith in their non-existence". I simply have no reason to assume they exist. That makes me by definition an atheist (not-a-theist).
The religious often try to taint the atheist with their own shortcomings. When referring to their own faith, Christians place “faith” on a pedestal as the epitome of all that is wonderful about believing, as though believing for beliefs sake is special. When they are claiming atheists “have faith” they are using it as a brick to bash them, or as an insult. That is one thing I would agree on. Faith is an insult on human intelligence. Anything held and justified as faith, is an admission of the lack of intelligent inquiry.
The typical atheist like me, is an agnostic atheist. Now before you say an agnostic is different to atheist I should explain. It is often assumed (even by atheists) that an agnostic is midway between a theist and atheist; someone sitting on the fence. This is a misunderstanding of the meanings of the words as I will now explain.
Regarding religion there are two definite positions:
Theist: A believer in a god.
Atheist: A non-believer in gods.
Regarding knowledge there are two definite positions:
Gnostic: One who claims to know with certainty.
Agnostic: One who claim you cannot know with certainty. Also see Notes below.
Therefore we can have the following four combinations:
Gnostic Theist: One who claims certain knowledge of god’s existence (e.g. typical Christian.).
Agnostic Theist: One who says they don't know with certainty if god is real but believe anyway.
Gnostic Atheist: One who claims that they are certain that there are no gods.
Agnostic Atheist: One who says they cannot know if gods are real but have no reason to believe they are (e.g. typical atheist)
Conclusion: Typically, atheism in not a faith based philosophical position.
Notes:
There is a tradition of "Christian agnosticism". For more on it, search Google.
An alternate definition for agnosticism is used by those who suspend belief in god/gods.
You may also be interested in:
How I realised I didn't believe in god:
A distorted view of atheists:
How it feels to view the world as an atheist:
oOo
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