Is atheism a belief?

[The Grand Nudger]

Really?

Religious guy: "Let me tell you about God X."  (describes God X)
Atheist: "Oh. . . I think God X is probably not a real thing, as I've seen no evidence which would show it to be one.  Sorry."

-and another atheist responds "I don't believe in gods."

Religious guy: "Well. . . do you believe in any kind of God?"
Atheist: "No. . . of the definitions I've heard, I would say that I believe none of them is likely to represent truth.  Given no evidence to prove they exist, I'm going to have to say I think they are probably mythological stories or outright frauds."

"no, i just told you that I didn't."  

The only time I can think of where you identify as a lacking-belief atheist is on a form, where there are: "Hindu ☐; Muslim ☐; Christian ☐; Jewish ☐; Buddhist ☐; Atheist ☐"

An atheist doesn't believe in gods, it doesn't matter which god, or how many are/aren't under consideration, or why, or even if there is a why. In your examples above you excluded any semantics that would allow for a state in which a person lacks a belief.

Limiting ourselves to those semantics, as you did, it's unsurprising that atheism cannot be atheism - that it's actually something else, and we can repeat the example with absolutely anything - it's not a quirk of any particular object or concept. As I've already discussed with Bel, it's likely true that some atheists predicate their position on positive beliefs. It remains a fact that those beliefs can be shared by people who reach different conclusions, that there are other ways to any given conclusion, and that a person can occupy conceptual space accidentally.

Is atheism a belief in something? No. By definition it's the opposite of that. Are there other beliefs in other somethings that can refer to atheism or effect it? Sure. Any agnostic atheist can understand how this happens. We've seen examples in thread. People rattle off a list of "defined gods" and say they have positive beliefs that leave them in a gnostic position with respect to those gods...but then we hit the category of the nondescript god alike, and thres no specific reason that they don;t believe in those gods, and are far more open to those sorts of descriptions..but, still, they're atheists. They don't believe in those gods despite having no specific reason not to.