Atheism is not a belief, it is the absence or lack of belief in any deity or deities
that's just BS. Atheists believe that every theist they've ever encountered was fooling themselves and trying to fool everyone else. Atheists believe that if gods existed, they would somehow be able to determine this from the "evidence". Atheists believe theism is just a world-view based on superstition. Atheism is NOT "unbelief". It's a very determined COUNTER-BELIEF.
You go on about how others are biased, obstinate, and unwilling to learn, yet you keep making the same mistakes. Please try to assimilate this seemingly simple idea: Atheism is not a belief or a belief system. Atheists have many beliefs, but none are derived from their unbelief in gods. If you disagree, please be specific abut what it is you disagree with and why you think the idea is wrong. I say that atheism is not a belief system after you list several beliefs common you feel are common to atheists. Can you explain why those beliefs derive from unbelief in gods?
My disesteem foo faith is not a result of my atheism. My atheism is a result of my disesteem for unjustified belief. Because I consider believing without sufficient justification an epistemological error, and because I don't want to make that error, and because the evidence for deities is sparse and insufficient to justify belief, I am an atheist.
I don't care for your hyperbolic language, so I'll reword some of it. This atheist believes that every theist is a faith-based thinker, and faith is not a path to truth. Atheists believe that if gods are to be accepted as real, there needs to be sufficient supporting evidence to justify that belief. Agnostic atheists specifically deny what you claim they believe, that if deities existed, there would be evidence for them. That's what the agnostic part means: can't rule gods out. Atheists who are critical thinkers believe that theism is a logical error based on the willingness to believe without sufficient evidence. This atheist has counter-beliefs, and an atheistic worldview, but it is not called atheism. It is secular humanism. In its affirmations one can find what this type of atheist believes, not in his atheism. My counter-belief to theistic ethics does not come from atheism. It comes from the rational ethics of humanism. My empiricist epistemology does not come from atheism. it precedes and underlies my atheism.
Look at how I did that without having to use one denigrating word like fool and superstition. You describe atheists as mean-spirited, contentious, stubborn and biased, closed-minded and unwilling to learn. Yet what you see from them is even-tempered exposition of the principles of critical thought, how theism violates them, and why atheists reject such thinking. Like others, I never feel a need to call you a fool or stupid, nor dishonest. I consider you wrong and with considerable barriers to learning what what you are told in these threads. I also consider you easily agitated and quick to anger. But that's a large fraction of the theists I encounter on these threads.
That's what happens when one promotes a faith-based belief in an open forum and attempts to defend it against the scrutiny of reason. The theist can't, and is likely unfamiliar with the methods and standards that his ideas are being subject to. He encounters this opposition nowhere else, is initially surprised to see it, and eventually comes to detest it. It confirms what many have been taught that atheists are basically immoral and disruptive by nature. He hears the skeptic calling him stupid when the skeptic tells him why unjustified belief is a logical error he chooses not to make. He finds unbelief in his gods disrespectful, and often imputes base motives for that unbelief, using terms like rebellious and hedonism.
But this isn't restricted to the religious faith-based thinker. Bring any such idea to the marketplace of ideas and expect it to be deconstructed according to the same principles of critical thought. Make a faith-based comment about vaccines, election hoax, flat earth, climate denial - whatever - it will be received the same way, and will proceed down the same path beginning with a confident, optimistic and cheery presented of a flawed argument, who then becomes frustrated ("You can't disprove God" or "NASA is falsifying spherical earth reports" or "How do you know that stegosaurus fossil reports from scientists aren't fake"), and then emotional ("You think you're so smart. You'll see when your time comes" or You're a sheep" or "You're a communist" )
Tip: When you find yourself wanting to insult your audience, don't. It may give you some brief satisfaction, but it diminishes you.
Too bad so few of them are willing to just be honest about it.
You seem to be unable to see dissent in terms other than lying. I just finished rebutting your claim that atheism is a worldview and a counter-argument of some sort yet again, and already know that you will see that as dishonesty, not as a difference of opinion, but in terms of a moral defect. Too bad so few of us can be honest and agree with you.
you do not understand the vast majority of faith-based process or thinking.
You've think that you've got atheists figured out - exactly what they believe - yet consider them unable to understand the depth and complexity of faith-based thought like yours.
you want to reject and discredit the help theism gives to others
Nope. Not true. How many times have I told you that I think your version of theism is helpful to you, like eyeglasses to someone with impaired refraction, that I don't care what you believe any more than the man next door baying at the moon shaking a stick at it if it grounds him and gives his life meaning, and that if I had the power to change your mind about gods, I would not do that to you any more than I would step on your glasses?
My position has always been that that doesn't work for me, not that you should give it up.
The harm that theism does to some is another topic, but that some benefit from a god belief is not in dispute.
Incidentally, if one calls the mystery of existence God, but doesn't mean any more than an atheist would mean by that phrase, specifically, is not implying sentience or supernaturalism to that mystery, is he a theist, and does he hold unjustified beliefs (faith) because he uses language that way? Also, does this apply to you? Is it possible that your position isn't fundamentally different from the skeptics, but rather, that you use words like God and faith to describe it where the skeptic wouldn't? I'm not clear on what you believe about reality that I don't. I was about to write that I don't think that theism has harmed you. Au contraire. But then I got to thinking that I'm not sure that I should call you a theist just because you use the word God, since you don't seem to mean a sentient deity. I suspect that you hope its sentient, or suspect that it is, but don't assume it. If so, I don't see a deity or faith in that. What do you think?
But if course, some folks really like and want everything to "fall neatly into place". They really like the feeling of presuming that they've got it all worked out. Or at least that they have the tools to get it all worked out. It's really not much different than turning your life over to the religious controller God and letting him run everything, and explain everything, and just following along.
