Is atheism a belief?

[The Grand Nudger]

That's not all that you're claiming, Bel..or, if it is, then you need to pursue more accurate language.  You're claiming that a bunch of people who don't hold the beliefs that I do....do.

They don't.  I don't know what else to say...do you think I'm just lying to you for shits and giggles....what?  I...and every other human being alive, is capable of positively disbelieving some story you tell about breaking the sound barrier..without that necessitating that they hold some antithetical belief against the existence of supersonic jets.  Your god is fucking stupid.  OFC there are people who positively disbelieve in that nonsense...that doesn't mean that they positively disbelieve in gods.  They tell you that...I, as a person who's argued with them...tell you that...you...maintain otherwise.

Honestly, wtf?  What's the point?

You're bringing in a lot of concepts that aren't relevant to the point I'm making. I don't know why you're doing that.

More like your pigheaded insistence can't reckon with those relevant facts, I think. 

I'll try to state it another way, in simple language, and then I'll give up.

A religious person makes an argument regarding the existence of God. Do you find this argument persuasive? 

If no, you are still an atheist. 

If yes, you are no longer an atheist.

If you chose no, did you find the argument unpersuasive because you have reasons to find it unpersuasive? Or did you reject it for no reason? 

Haven't I already answered this?  Whatever reasons I now possess, I didn't possess before.  I've been an atheist, however, the entire time. The only thing that atheism entails..is that a person doesn't believe. Atheism doesn't make demands on why that's the case, it doesn't specify any particular reason for being in that state, or even demand that there must be some reason for one being in that state.

Possible Atheist B simply doesn't believe in your silly stories..thus wrecking your entire thesis on the subject. Too bad, them's the breaks. Your feelings on the matter reflect your own peculiar biases, not atheism. You find yourself locked in some sort of ideological battle with the boogeyman of science. I'll simply note that..if you carefully read many of the deconversion stories here..you'd find that people commonly lose their beliefs before they ever find whatever bit of science you think lead them to that. A constant trend is "I used to believe....and then I read the bible" not "and then I read a short history of time". By and large, people go searching for some other explanation -after- the one they previously possessed fails..not beforehand.

It's a interesting thing to me, I enjoy reading those stories...because they describe something I've never experienced, and probably never will experience. There was no need for me to rationally pick apart religious beliefs by reference to scientific facts. I can do it today, sure...but..again, five year old me wasn't exactly well read on the matter. Five year old me liked ghost stories and fairy tales, and I sill do..and, just as I did then...god stories are simply lumped in with ghost stories and fairy tales in the same way that you subconsciously categorize stories about talking donkeys as fantasy.