Theoretical Leader

[robvalue]

I agree. That's another point people need educating on! Clearly even some of our regular forum members can't grasp the idea that atheists are simply individuals, and that atheism does not follow the dogmatic model of many religions. Simply put: there is no requirement for me, as an atheist, to agree with or even care about what any other atheist says.

Atheism is nothing... just like disbelief in invisible dragons feasting on my toe-spirit is nothing. It's the default position, regardless of any further claims made by any particular atheist. Theism, also, is basically nothing, since it describes a belief "in God" without specifying anything at all about what a god is. So theism means something completely different to every individual theist. Of course, most of them probably have "created the universe" somewhere on their god's imaginary Facebook page, but there's simply no criteria for what is and isn't a god that is in any way universally accepted. If we accept someone saying "The universe is God", which is a standard mode of theism, we have to accept anything I feel. Until something is either a well-defined abstract concept or else has some demonstrable link to reality, it's basically entirely elastic.

To make my point, I've asked the question of how you distinguish (as in, you have one of each to evaluate) a god from an arbitrarily powerful non-god. I've received no coherent answer that I'm aware of, and one theist was even bold enough to admit it would be impossible.