Is atheism a belief?

[bennyboy]

I'd say if panpsychism is true, then I'd define the Universe itself as God, and such a God would be real by definition.  

I'd define it as a unicorn, and such a unicorn would be real by definition.

Panpyschism neither claims, implies,  or would demonstrate the existence of a god.  An atheist can be a panpsychist all day long.  If there are reasons for your agnosticism, and there are plenty of potential reasons...this isn't a valid one.

Not really the point. I'm not really talking about God, the definition of God, or about the nature of the Universe.

I'm talking about the ways in which a binary statement about belief cannot be expressed, and in which an agnostic position is right, rather than agnostic/gnostic X-ist or agnostic/gnostic not-X-ist.  One, because the question is not well formed-- so I gave an example of a very easy-to-understand definition which was unambiguous enough to satisfy that criterion: I didn't claim it was a good definition of God, or a popular one.  Finally, because the belief is dependent on knowledge which is unattainable-- since I cannot know whether the condition of that conditional belief is met, I cannot form a coherent belief (or statement about the belief).

Let's drop the God idea and just look at Schrodinger's cat.  Do you believe it is alive?  In my opinion, it would be foolish to say that you lack a concrete belief that the cat is alive, and that you therefore default to cat-is-dead.  You have a conditional belief-- IF the particle has not decayed, the cat is alive.  But unless you have access to that information, the only answer you can give to "Do you believe that there's a living cat in this box?" is "I don't know."  It would be nonsense to start pointing to bi-axial relationships between belief and knowledge, and shouting something like "Yes or no! Do you have that belief or don't you?" The answer would still be-- "I'm agnostic about that belief," because knowledge and belief are strongly linked in at least some cases.