Is atheism a belief?

[bennyboy]

I'm not sure where you find disagreement.

"I don't know", is not accepting the proposition that a god exists as being true. If you accepted the proposition that a god exists as being true, there is only one answer, "Yes". All other answers, besides yes, are not accepting the proposition as being true.

If you say "Is boobledyboo true?" then I cannot answer that question, as I don't know what you mean by it. However, I can see that you are speaking meaningfully, and I suspect that if I understood you, I could answer your question. I'm not a-boobledyboo-ist by default.

But 'skewing toward' a yes or a no, is still either accepting the proposition, or not accepting it, no matter how weakly one accepts the proposition, or not.

As Hume said, “A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence”.

You are still thinking of the mental end-point-- the arrival at a statement by an individual ego. However, the self is more than this-- the brain is doing all kinds of things, and it's perfectly possible for multiple brain systems to hold contrary states about a question. Until you can verbalize your answer, a yes/no question stands in a state of superposition: not yes by default, or no by default, but yes/no.

As far as your position toward panpsychism goes, if you suspect it is true, then you believe it, no matter whether you have knowledge or not.

I wouldn't call a hunch that vague a belief at all. And anyway, we're not talking about panpsychism, we're talking about god-- a belief in which is dependent on actual knowledge: IF panpsychism, then god, IF NOT panpsychism, then not god.

If one answers, "I don't know" to a question about if they believe something, and they understand the question, had time to consider the question, etc, then one does not, at least for the time being, accept the proposition, under consideration, as being true. They might also not accept it as being false, either. But that is not what is under consideration here. All we are considering is whether one accepts it as being true.

I disagree. It's perfectly possible for the myriad functions of the brain to be in conflict, and for the ego to be aware of that conflict. How does one reduce a complex state into a binary answer? For example, you can have spiritual and religious feelings that are very compelling for you, and you can have an intellectual understanding of omni-3 and see that it cannot be explained away. If you feel that there's a God, but do not think the God idea holds up to rational thought, then which of these answers should you give when attempting to verbalize an unambiguous answer to the question?

My answer is this: if I can NEITHER definitely state that I believe in god, NOR definitely state that I believe in not-god, then I'm agnostic. I don't have any coherent belief worth stating, except "I don't know." In this case, the bi-axial model you are trying to fit my answer isn't very useful.