Books regarding atheism

[Belacqua]

Atheism is a lack of belief among stones and lizards.

If you are a grown-up human being who has heard and rejected religious claims, it is something more than a lack.

While I agree with the overall point you're making (so you're not in your own here), I think the application of the term atheism/theism to stones and lizards and other such things might be problematic. It's like applying the "with hair"/bald dichotomy to God and then saying God is bald because he has no hair.

You're right; but in the past I've had people so adamant about "no belief" being the only criterion that they did assert that stones are atheist. I'm just using it as an example of something which is incapable of belief.

It's very strange to me that what I say isn't obvious.

Let me try a dialogue:

Fundamentalist: I say that God created the world in six days.
Brain-dead atheist: I don't accept that claim. 
Fundamentalist: Why do you reject that claim? 
Brain-dead atheist: I don't need a reason to reject that claim. I reject or accept claims based on no reason. I'm just an atheist and I always have been.

I don't want to assume that anyone capable of posting here would resemble the brain-dead atheist.

Here is what I claim actually goes on:

Fundamentalist: I say that God created the world in six days.
Reasonable thinking atheist: I don't accept that claim. 
Fundamentalist: Why do you reject that claim? 
Reasonable thinking atheist: Because everything science tells me about the existence and development of the world, from the Big Bang to the development of my own solar system tells me that it all took a lot longer than six days. In general I find scientific explanations to be more well-founded and more believable than creation myths in old books, therefore I reject your claim. 

The point is that in even very simple religious claims, we reject them because there is something else we rely on more. In the above case, the whole of scientific cosmology. We have standards to which we hold (e.g. that science is more reliable than revelation) and we use those standards to evaluate claims. 

This means we have rejected religious claims, and continued to be atheists, based on standards of judgment. We are no longer like new-born infants, who lack belief in God simply because they don't know anything about it.