Atheist struggling to answer a question i often propose to myself

[mordant]

Nothing about atheism requires this "negative stance" if by that you mean taking up a knowledge position that there are no gods. It only requires seeing no valid reason to afford belief to any deities.

A proposition is either true or not true. So with respect to the proposition "God(s) exist." there are only two options. The proposition is either true, the theist stance, or it is not true, the atheist stance. The meaningful definition of atheism I have given does not force atheists to claim metaphysical knowledge; but rather asks them to own where they stand with respect to the question.

(Well, maybe there is a third option called 'I don't care' but I do not seriously believe any AF member falls into that category.)

No, you're confusing knowledge claims with belief claims. And "I don't care" isn't the third option.

As to any knowledge claim, we either know a thing is true / exists, or that it's untrue / doesn't exist, or that there's insufficient data to determine either one. The latter situations obtain with invisible beings the live outside the natural order (or in religion-speak, are supernatural). Inherently, no creature in this universe can observe or remark on anything or have any knowledge of something outside this universe. The instant we have any actual data about a god, that god then is part of the natural order, and can be observed / debunked. 100% (not 99.999%, but 100%) of everything claimed about gods are simply asserted without valid and admissible evidence, and can therefore be dismissed without consideration of this non-evidence.

That we have no knowledge about gods, that they are beyond examination, verification or contemplation* means we have no basis to form beliefs about them. So we do not believe.

It is possible, but in my view intellectually dishonest, to say that one knows gods do or do not exist. It's a valid semantic shortcut for an atheist to say "there is no god", but exposes you to the un-nuanced sensibilities of fundamentalists, who will then say that's an arrogant stance. And indeed, unless you want to claim to have been everywhere and everywhen, and have scoured all of spacetime and whatever lies beyond it for a god and not found it, there's some point to that. Although theists never seem to realize that it applies equally to them ... they have no evidence of god, have not personally seen him or even mounted a credible search for him, so to claim he exists as a matter of fact, is also "arrogant" as they put it, or "stupid" as I'd put it.

Focusing on beliefs allows us to to patiently insist that theists simply present their evidence so that we, too, might believe. They never, ever do. Making knowledge claims, even if it were supportable, allows theists the luxury of feeling existentially threatened and aggrieved and invites them to counter with their own equally unsupportable knowledge claims.

* Ironically religion even admits (when it suits its purposes, usually to deflect from some logical conflict) that god is ineffable, his ways past finding out.