Sometimes, a believer will assert that

it requires faith to be an atheist.

The first few times I heard it I thought that this was a tongue-in-cheek, somewhat tacit admission that they knew that their faith was somewhat tenuously grounded, something not to be examined too closely – like a mother’s claim that her baby was the most beautiful baby in the world and also unusually intelligent. It’s just something we say.

Now I know better. Believers really do think that it requires faith to not believe. Like an addict who needs a certain substance, believers have been made dependent on faith and need it to face the real world.

With the addict, the contradiction in the assertion is startlingly obvious: you don’t need drugs to stay clean. So perhaps we should build a bridge for believers that they can walk across to understand this point:

You don’t need drugs to not become high.
You don’t need a razor to not shave.
You don’t need a pen to not write a letter.
You don’t need a car to not park somewhere.

And you certainly don’t need faith to not believe something.