A question about atheistic “beliefs” (opinions, guesses, etc.)

[HappySkeptic]

I have not said that at all. What I have said...MANY TIMES...is that all indications are that damn near EVERY person who uses the word "atheist" as a descriptor or part of a descriptor (as you do) either "believes" there are no gods or "believes" it is more likely that there are no gods than that there is at least one.

How about you?

Is your blind guess that it is more likely that there are no gods than that there is at least one?

Okay, if it is your blind guess.

Someone took a similar position over at the amazon religion/atheists boards as well, and it was frustrating.  We were all told that not believing was the same as believing in the opposite, so the only rational position was being agnostic.

There is a difference between knowledge/ignorance and belief.  Being ignorant of the ultimate causes of the universe (which I admit) is a completely different question from whether I believe in a god, and it makes no sense to me to use one word to encompass both things.

Your idea:  

atheist (most believe there aren't any gods [instead of just doesn't believe])  ---- agnostic (acknowledges they are ignorant of whether gods exist) --- theist (believes in gods).

But, there are two different questions here.  At the ends, there is belief, and in the middle there is a question about knowledge or ignorance. That's why I don't believe they should be on a line. Also, not believing is not the same as believing the opposite.

How silly would it be if I stuck directly with knowledge, and put the line this way:

atheist (knows there aren't any gods)  ---- agnostic (acknowledges they are ignorant of whether gods exist) --- theist (knows there are gods).

This is not what makes and atheist or theist.  Ask the people at church if they know there is a god.  The honest ones will say that they can't prove it.  They feel it, or hope it, or think 1 billion people can't be wrong.  They do not know it as verifiable knowledge.  They have made a personal decision to believe, and have kept with that choice because of the need to connect with loved ones when they are dead.

Ask most people why they call themselves and atheist, and they won't say "because I can prove there are no gods".  Of course they can't.  The do not believe in any gods.  They may, like me, believe that gods are unlikely, but I cannot know.  I cannot "know" enough to evaluate whether my probabilities are valid.  But belief is about grabbing onto an idea you can work with to make choices in life. 

I believe in science, and that has no need of gods, and disproves many god concepts.  But I can't speak about disproving all gods (ones that do nothing, or deistic ones) -- I simply think that contemplating my ignorance serves no purpose.  For me to say "there could be a god" is as meaningless a statement as "there could be a garflebarb".  I don't know what either of them is, or how I could test for them.  To say I'm on the fence about belief in either of them is ridiculous.  I don't believe in either, despite acknowledging that I am completely ignorant about both.  As I said before, the set of things that can be imagined is unlimited, and therefore any particular imagined thing has a small probability of existing barring some evidence.

Is that blind, or just reasonable?