Believers, put yourself in my place.

[Neo-Scholastic]

While a contemporary atheist may prefer one of at least four definitions that does not justify the demand that everyone else conform to that preference.  I am mocking the mostly polite, but often strident, insistence that only one definition applies. Not only does the word have history, most notably the French Revolution, but the dismissive attitude of the prominent New Atheists betrays their tacit acceptance of a “god denial” connotation.

The problem with this complaint of yours is that it is almost always a religionist of one ilk or another who is insisting that all atheists comport to his or her preconceived notion of atheism -- and the overwhelming majority of the time it is hard, D7 atheism -- when the fact is that there is a spectrum of views regarding the beliefs people hold.

That's kind of my point. There is a spectrum. The "simply disbelief" definition ignores that spectrum. It's a double-standard. Believers on AF have to carefully avoid generalizations about atheism and employ all manner of qualifiers to target specific stances within atheism. If you go with "without god" the category of atheism is so broadly defined as to be a meaningless category. In contrast to this atheists make generalizations about Christian beliefs without specifying exactly which set of doctrines or denominations they find problematic. The occasional True Christian appears, but it is quickly pointed out by atheists and believers alike that he doesn't speak for all Christians.

What you are asking me to do is refrain from using one perfectly legitimate definition, denial of god. That means that if I want to have a general philosophical discussion about the logical consequences of that intellectual commitment which is in one sense what atheism means, then some people expect me to always add dozens of awkward qualifiers just so they aren't offended by inadvertent inclusion. I find that particularly irksome when I know for a fact the offended party has made it otherwise clear that they are included in the "deny god(s)" category of atheism, are ontological naturalists, nominalists, physical monists, etc.

If you want to think that the modern atheist writers are making a hard negative assertion about the existence of gods, that's one thing, incorrect though you'd be. But to the extrapolate the opinions of a few writers to the mass of atheists (estimated to be anywhere from 700 million to one billion worldwide) is mentally lazy and ought to be beneath you.

A few writers do make a difference if their opinions are widely read and referenced. The Papal encyclicals represent a very wide swath of believers. So does William Lane Craig. So does Ken Ham. Grouping them altogether under the heading of Christian is fine with me because I have the maturity recognize the generalization and to parse out the criticisms that apply to the doctrines I favor. I don't get all worked up about defining Christianity. Yet that is what what many (note the qualifier) AF members do with respect to atheism. The insist that atheism must be so broad that a category that nothing meaningful can be said about what does or doesn't apply, generally, to that category. I fail to understand why generalizations are perfectly fine in one direction but not the other.