I see your point. Calling atheism a belief is incorrect but it might be useful for practical purposes.
Yep. Actually on a computer now, so might be worth me clarifying my position a little now that I can actually TYPE!
Atheism isn't a belief. It's an absence of theism. For myself, I find that a little useless as a definition sometimes, although it's accurate.
In this thread, I responded to something Disciple posted;
In this sense, where atheists often make mistakes is when they assign "specific" meaning to these terms alone, when there really isn't any.
He's welcome to his opinion, but one thing I've often seen is that atheism is seen as the rejection of whatever religion a person is a believer in. A Muslim would commonly view an atheist as rejecting Allah, and a Christian would commonly view an atheist as rejecting the Trinity.
This way of viewing atheism does impact on how people see atheists, I think. They tend to view us as a group, in much the same way Christians are a group.
Thing is, none of this is strictly true. Some Christians don't believe in the Trinity. There are differing views as to what constitutes an idol. Etc, etc, ad nauseum.
So I think Disciple has a point, but I would suggest it's mostly relevant where a Christian doesn't follow one of the mainstream Christian denominations, or where they vary from the core teachings. OR, perhaps, when they're dealing with an atheist who's not particularly familiar with Christianity.
I'm guessing Muslims probably have more of a claim here (in that atheists treat Muslims as a single group of beliefs), and I would suspect that less prescriptive religions, such as Paganism, would have an even better claim.
Of course, atheists don't seem to have much beef with Pagans, apart from using their Gods as examples to monotheists in less than flattering ways.
Hard for theists of any flavour to get familiar with Atheist dogma, since we don't have any. I think their only options for treating atheists as a single group are to;
1) Deal with the loudest atheists, and assume atheist movements are representative of atheists. I actually think this misses the mark. If I'm Catholic, you can judge me to some degree by the actions of the Catholic Church. I am a member of it. But an atheist is not a member of the New Atheists (for example).
2) Base assumptions on atheists from dealings with atheists. Again, I suspect this would lead one to conclude atheists as a whole are more militant and vocal than they are, since you'd be dealing with them on boards like this (where they're specifically arguing religion) or in public life where they're speaking up about issues.
Most atheists I know aren't particularly militant, and aren't particularly vocal about anything much, although that might be partly cultural (no doubt it's a very different environment in Australia to USA in terms of religion). Actually, I should clarify...they might be vocal about all sorts of things (politics, football, whatever) but they don't commonly pursue anti-theist militancy.
Oh, and in general terms my examples are more pragmatic and practical than strictly accurate. It kinda comes from my line of business, where I'll need to be very specific about one part of a process, and just add the vibe/implications from other associated processes. Not defending it, particularly, but it is one way to avoid forever couching opinions in confusing language to ensure they're strictly accurate. Equally, it can be laziness on my part.
