My view and reasons for them. Atheist and Christians welcome here. (short)

[robvalue]

It's natural to feel uncomfortable with uncertainty, and so to plug gaps in knowledge with made-up answers like "god did it". It doesn't make those answers any more credible. I'm perfectly comfortable just saying I don't know things. I don't know most things, in fact.

I don't know how I could base my beliefs on "not believing in god". For starters, I don't even know what "god" is. Almost every theist I talk to says something different. Usually, it doesn't make any sense to me what they're talking about. The times it does make sense, I couldn't care less whether it exists or not so my belief in it is a non-factor.

The only way I can see phrasing it is that you're not going to do things like "base your morality on god" or "serve god" or any of the other things a theist might do. But that's really a given. I don't base my morality on disbelief in the tooth fairy, ghosts, Bigfoot, magic crystals or any other nonsense either. If those things did exist, they'd be equally irrelevant to me.

One can certainly fight for the cause of equality for atheists, because they face extreme prejudice (even death) in some countries. That's not so much because of a belief in god, but as a reaction to the state of the world. Heck, reasonable theists would fight for the same thing.

But sure, if it appears to you that atheism informs some peoples' world views, I'm not going to argue with you. I'm just presenting my views as an atheist. Since you're also an atheist, maybe you could reflect on whether any of it applies to you. If you'd rather not consider the labels, that's fine; but it then undermines your whole point.

Atheism is entirely a reaction to theism; people running around making ridiculous claims. It's not our fault they are doing that. We wouldn't even need the term if people stopped. But I couldn't care less if someone is a theist, like I said, as long as they don't act like a dick. The same is true for atheists. Dicks are everywhere, so many dicks will be atheists too.