[Serious] Atheist Dogma

[Belacqua]

Unless you came out of your mom with a belief in god your an atheist

Is it possible that you have a grammatical error, here, or are you posing a pun?

it is impossible to be an atheist, if the person is unaware of the description of a god. It appears that the person is an atheist, but that cannot be if they have no reference to distinguish the binary that you are trying to describe.

This forum has a kind of credo concerning the word "atheist." Some people here tend to be very strict about it.

They are adamant that anyone lacking a belief in God is an atheist. Some people are willing to apply the word to newborn babies, since they also lack a belief. In such a case, we would have to say that rocks and lizards are also atheists, but I have seen people argue this.

You are using the word in a better way, as far as I'm concerned. It is more meaningful to apply the word "atheist" to someone who has heard, and for whatever reason failed to accept, the assertion that God exists. Rocks, lizards, and newborns are atheist in only the most trivial sense.

But you're up against strong ideological belief, and experience indicates no one will bend.

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An individual person cannot be a secularist - the term "secularist" is a misnomer, only organizations, such as republic governing systems can be secular, at best, the only waay a person can be a secularist is by guarding the principle of of unbiased particpation in deliberating civil law - is that now the ultimate conclusion of separating faith from governance? Certainly you would agree that a government that forbids the representation for Christians is not secular - right???

I would say that I am an individual and a secularist because I think that government should be neutral concerning religion. And education unaffiliated with religion should be available. 

I agree with you that the word "secular" doesn't mean merely "non-religious." 

What is the definition of "faith," and what distinguishes it from "belief." and distiguishes  from "knoledge," and so forth???

I agree that it would be helpful for people to be more careful about using these words. 

Unfortunately the word "belief" has negative connotations for a lot of people. They think it means something like "to hold something to be true according to reasons of which I do not approve." So recently someone here was saying that she doesn't "believe in" evolution, she "accepts" evolution. That looks to me as if she's avoiding the connotations of what "belief" is. 

Do you prefer the old-fashioned view, that knowledge is justified true belief? I've found that to be the least problematical version.

In his book Seven Types of Atheism, John Gray points out that the history of science is full of ideas which were once believed and are now discarded. People held things to be true, for various reasons, and then stopped holding them to be true. This was belief. But people want to segregate what belief is, based on whether they find the reasons for it to be good or not.