Question about "faith"

[Belacqua]

In other words, my atheism will continue, as long as theists continue to fail to meet their burden of proof to support their claims that a god exists.

In writing this, you demonstrate that you have a belief system.

Usually in philosophy, "I believe it" means "I hold it to be true." And a belief system is a set of things you hold to be true. 

One of the things we hold to be true is: "what constitutes good evidence?" or "what would have to be evident to constitute proof?" These are not things that people are born with. They are learned. One person from one culture will hold it to be true that a dream constitutes good evidence, while someone from another culture will hold it to be true that evidence must always be repeatable empirical quantifiable science-type evidence. Each person has a set of values or standards of evaluation that he uses, and these are a part of his belief system. Mr. A believes that tradition and authority constitute good evidence, while Mr. B believes that such things are insufficient. That's belief.

So when you say that theists have never met the burden of proof, you are showing that you have beliefs about what constitutes good proof. And since religious claims are seldom science-type claims, your beliefs about evidence constitute metaphysical beliefs. It is a statement of metaphysics to say that reliable knowledge from divine revelation is impossible, for example. 

So you do have a set of beliefs, and this is intrinsic to your atheism. 

Other atheists may have different sets of beliefs, and may reject religious claims for different reasons. For example, one person may reject all of religion just because the nuns were mean to him. This would be a weak reason, but it would be a reason nonetheless. 

Just as "religion" includes all kinds of different categories and beliefs, "atheism" also includes a large number of reasons why people reject religious claims. But atheists draw conclusions about religious claims based on their own beliefs. 

Just because one is an atheist, does not make them a skeptic or a critical thinker.

I think that a lot of atheists would be improved as critical thinkers if they acknowledged their own beliefs and standards of judgment, rather than pretending that their minds are at some sort of default setting. They are not.