Is atheism a belief?

[Abaddon_ire]

You keep spamming that book even though you haven't read it. Have a quote from the author...


Perhaps that might give you a hint at his chosen title. 

But I doubt you have the wit. Or the honesty.

I also previously cited that 1 in 5 self identifying atheists also claim to believe in God.

If true then those 1 in 5 are not atheists by definition.

So there’s a lot more than the guy who wrote that book.

Whoosh. That was the sound of the point flying over your head. Schaeffer's father was a high flying Evangelist pastor who was consulted by Presidents. As a result, Schaeffer was raise fundie Evangelical. He was brainwashed. Even as an atheist, that upbringing still resonates in him and he can't shake it off. Hence his use of ambiguous titles for his writings.

That you are incapable of figuring this out for yourself tells everyone more about you than anything else.

There are also plenty of agnostic who don’t accept the typical definitions of atheism/agnosticism often presented in places like this, like Neil Tyson, Carl Sagan, Noam Chomsky, Huxley etc...

They define their agnosticism as distinct from atheism.

1i think you will find that

A. Not true.
B. People have other reasons to fudge the definitions and usages because of believers like yourself and Max who trade in dishonest dictionary games.

You seem to have the childish belief that atheism should be some ideological monolith like your religion of choice. Wake up. It isn't. Organising atheists is akin to herding cats. No two have the same ideology and we like it that way. Each individual can express themselves however they like and it is all fine and dandy.

Religionists, in contrast, are required to conform. You "think" you are non-conformist (and will likely object to this post on those grounds) but you are a conformist. You believe in the Abrahamic god. That is conformity for a start, as a foundational belief, and it also sets parameters and rules. What does your god want? What is your god's plan? And so forth. You are desperate to somehow nail down "atheist ideology" because you simply cannot consider that such a thing does not exist.

I hold to this distinction and definition, because the distinction most theists find useful, is between belief and lack of belief, not between knowing and not knowing, which exists in the traditional agnostic/atheist distinction, but not in the newly formulated ones.

No, you clearly don't hold any such thing.

If most people here merely lack a belief one way or the other when it’s come to the question of God, they’d fall under the category of agnostic. If they believe God doesn’t exist, they’d fall under the category of atheist.

Atheism is a privative. Oooo, complex word. But it has a simple definition. Go look it up, or shall I hand hold you.

For the record, here it goes again...

Atheism/Theism: This addresses belief, not fact or truth.
An atheist believes in no gods, an theist believes in one or more gods.

Agnostic/gnostic: This addresses knowledge/lack of knowledge.
An agnostic claims not to know. a Gnostic claims to know. (Regardless of topic)

Thus we have...

A gnostic theist claims not only that there is a god, but he/she KNOWS there is a god

A gnostic Atheist claims not only that there is no god, but he/she KNOWS there is not a god

An Agnostic theist claims not only that there is a god, but he/she KNOWS that there is no evidence for any such and believes anyway.

A gnostic Atheist claims not only that there is no god, but he/she KNOWS there is not a god.

We can circle this drain forever, but it seems to me that whatever god is claimed is pretty useless if it has to rely on a dictionary and a thesaurus to hope to define itself into existence. Even worse, he/she/it/housecat has to rely of the rubes willing to undertake such an effort. After all it isn't even his/her/its/chosen language.