What do believers say when you ask or tell them..

[tackattack]

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Awesome convo guys - very much enjoying it

A lack of belief would be the default position.

I see now how that is incorrect. How can the default position be to have a position on a belief in God? To be truly unbiased you would consider belief and no belief equally... that would be the default position. You could inform a child of the reasoning for or against belief in God... the child could choose to agree or disagree. Before you told him he would have no reasoning either way. Atheism isn't the default position.

Yes, but before you told the child, did they have a belief? No. That was the purpose of the word "lack".

You either believe or you don't. I think that's what Arcanus and I came to agreement on when we came up with our scale of belief in God. If someone doesn't have belief in God, whether they have reached that position themselves or whether it is simple definition (i.e. a person who doesn't even have an idea of what "God" is by definition doesn't have a belief in "God"), they are still atheists.

Methinks you are confusing the word atheist with something else. An atheist is someone who doesn't believe in God (from the Greek "without God"), not someone who believes there is no God. There are different types of atheist, sure, but the most general form of the word "atheist" must apply to all of them, and in all cases, that means the person has no belief in God.

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And how often is the most general form of the word Christian applied to all Christians in a conversation on this forum's discussion? You can't discount connotation from a self-imposed label. You can try and point out generalizations and fallacies. You might end up geting as frustrated as I do though.