Belief and Knowledge

[Mister Agenda]

First, a little background on what inspired this thread. In another thread, Surgenator claimed that atheists do no believe in things which have not been proven to be true.

Atheist can believe in anything but gods.

I challenged him on that claiming that atheists believe in abiogenesis(which is an un-falsifiable hypothesis not proven to be true).

All atheists?

Others jumped in claiming atheist have no such beliefs...they just don't know. Anyways, that prompted me to make a poll at another atheist forum....too gauge what atheists really believe. You can find that poll here

I'm mystified why anyone who has been here for awhile would try to over-generalize about atheists.

Currently after 37 votes, more than 50% of atheists believe the unproven and un-falsifiable hypothesis that life in this universe arose via some natural process and not from design.

It's almost like we're a diverse demographic with only one thing in common.

One poster wanted to vote for 2 options. The "I don't know" and the "Via some natural process". I thought about this position and concluded it wasn't contradictory. He was confused. Was the poll asking belief or knowledge? The poll didn't specify. Although he didn't express it, this poster is savy enough to realize there is a difference between belief and knowledge.

Which made your poll unanswerable for many of us.

When an atheists(or anyone for that matter) says, "I don't know" he isn't saying anything about his beliefs....he is saying something about his knowledge.

Correct. May I now embrace you as a brother or sister?