North Korea 'executes Christians'

[Tiberius]

I thought it was a belief in the non-existence of gods. Okay, let's be specific.

Positive atheism is irrational.

The original word from the greek 'a' (without) 'theos' (gods) meant someone without gods, or to put it another way, someone who did not believe in gods.

In more modern times, the word means the rejection of theism (theism being belief in one or more gods), ergo atheism is the rejection of the belief in one or more gods, which is tantamount to saying "disbelief in one or more gods" or just "disbelief in gods".

It's on the same level as modern skepticism; in other words, if something doesn't have evidence to back it up, we do not believe it. Same thing we do with most claims in life.

I doubt very much that many atheists today are the so-called "strong" atheists, who espouse positive atheism, and firmly believe that gods do not exist. None of the great atheist thinkers today are of this mindset, although one must not confuse anti-theism with positive atheism. You can be anti-theistic and still have a "weak" atheistic stance (Hitchens is a good example of this), mainly because anti-theism concerns itself with the actions of believers rather than the actual belief.