Why atheism isn't the neutral starting point it’s often said to be

Assalamu alaykum - just some thoughts on why atheism isn’t really a neutral default from an Islamic perspective. People sometimes treat atheism as simply not believing in God, but from an Islamic point of view it goes further than that. It rejects ideas many of us see as basic and natural, like the sense that the world has a Creator. Seeing God as if He were just another scientific hypothesis can be misleading. Belief in a Creator is more like basic knowledge people tend to have - similar to relying on logic or moral intuition without needing experiments to prove them. The existence of many religions doesn’t automatically prove there’s no God. Cultural backgrounds and life experiences shape people’s beliefs, so variety often shows human difference rather than lack of evidence. Questions like “who created God?” don’t apply the same way, because only things that begin or depend on something else require a cause. The universe itself can’t come from nothing or cause itself, so the idea of a necessary Being offers a simple explanation. The problem of evil is often used against belief in God, but calling something evil already assumes a moral standard. Atheism struggles to account for the origin of such a standard if the universe has no purpose. Likewise, suffering and imperfections don’t erase the wider patterns of order and function we observe. Saying religion exists just to control people doesn’t fully explain why individuals often turn to God in personal crises when social pressure is low. In Islam, revelation complements and strengthens reason instead of replacing it. The Qur’an is presented as having a distinctive style and coherence that people haven’t been able to replicate. The question of free will is also hard for strict materialist determinism: if all thoughts are merely physical reactions, it becomes difficult to explain genuine reasoning or moral responsibility. So from an Islamic viewpoint, atheism isn’t a neutral starting point because it relies on logic, morality, and trust in reason without offering a clear explanation for them within a purely material framework. The theistic view, on the other hand, claims to provide a simpler grounding for those things by rooting them in a Creator. Edit: tried to make this clearer 🙂