What you are doing is making the assumption that if one definition is required for another, then the reverse must be true. In other words, whilst it is true that refusing to believe requires not believing (since refusing to believe means you are...not believing), the reverse isn't true. To not believe in something requires you not to have a belief it in; it does not require you to refuse belief in something. There is a clear difference. Perhaps it is you who should look up the meaning of the word "refuse".
In a world where no mind had a thought of God, nobody believed in God, hence there were no theists, and everyone was an atheist. Just because they wouldn't call themselves atheists doesn't mean that they weren't by definitions we use today. All you are doing is moving your argument around in the hope that I will become distracted; I won't. As I've said multiple times now, you cannot have the proposition "those people neither believed in God nor didn't believe" because firstly it violates a law of logic, and secondly, it makes absolutely no sense.
For atheism to be a viable term, yes, it requires theism to exist. However that isn't what we were discussing; we were discussing whether the people who are described by the term "atheist" (i.e. people who do not believe in God) existed before those who are described by the term "theist" (people who do believe in God). It doesn't matter that the word didn't exist; it exists today, and by today's word, those people are atheists.
Take your argument to the extreme and you could easily say that because 1000 years ago there was no such concept as a car, everyone in those days neither owned cars nor not owned cars. That statement is again, ludicrous, since it violates the 3rd law, and it is pretty obvious to anyone with a working mind that people 1000 years ago did not own cars.
In a world where no mind had a thought of God, nobody believed in God, hence there were no theists, and everyone was an atheist. Just because they wouldn't call themselves atheists doesn't mean that they weren't by definitions we use today. All you are doing is moving your argument around in the hope that I will become distracted; I won't. As I've said multiple times now, you cannot have the proposition "those people neither believed in God nor didn't believe" because firstly it violates a law of logic, and secondly, it makes absolutely no sense.
For atheism to be a viable term, yes, it requires theism to exist. However that isn't what we were discussing; we were discussing whether the people who are described by the term "atheist" (i.e. people who do not believe in God) existed before those who are described by the term "theist" (people who do believe in God). It doesn't matter that the word didn't exist; it exists today, and by today's word, those people are atheists.
Take your argument to the extreme and you could easily say that because 1000 years ago there was no such concept as a car, everyone in those days neither owned cars nor not owned cars. That statement is again, ludicrous, since it violates the 3rd law, and it is pretty obvious to anyone with a working mind that people 1000 years ago did not own cars.
