Believers, put yourself in my place.

[Huggy Bear]

Oh wow. You never answered my question about this before Huggy. Maybe you will now, since you brought it up.

Can you decide, right now, to become an atheist?

I have answered that question...

I have explained many time that I personally have seen enough evidence to KNOW God exists, it is no longer a matter of belief.

Now can a theist choose to become an atheist? sure, it happens all the time...

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Perhaps, what is wrong too with defining atheism as lack of belief in God is to not define anything at all. For all -ism holds on to some affirmation and not merely describing some lack-ness. This is the first time that a term with -ism is defined with lacking. Are there any other definition which have defined the way new definition of atheism is defined?

Simply declaring that to be true doesn't make it so. This may be the first time you've heard that.

[robvalue]

Oh wow. You never answered my question about this before Huggy. Maybe you will now, since you brought it up.

Can you decide, right now, to become an atheist?

I have answered that question...

I have explained many time that I personally have seen enough evidence to KNOW God exists, it is no longer a matter of belief.

Now can a theist choose to become an atheist? sure, it happens all the time...

So the answer is no, you cannot choose to become an atheist. Thank you. You have a reason for your belief, and you can't simply ignore that reason.

No, theists don't choose to become atheists. They lose their belief, as the result of a series of events. They don't simply choose to become an atheist out of nowhere. You're using a tortured and ridiculous definition of "choose" in order to dig up an old argument, which by your own admission you've already lost. You're just saying that when someone changes their mind, they make a choice. That's a pointless equivocation. They don't choose when they change their mind. It gets changed for them, by new information.

[robvalue]

Let's say I don't believe in dragons.

Then suddenly, I see a load of dragons. Obviously, I "change" my belief. But it wasn't a conscious choice. It was inevitable, given the new information.

I can't sit here right now and suddenly choose to believe in dragons. If I could do that, I'm some kind of mental person.

I have the ability to have my mind changed. Of course I do. That's just stating an obvious fact. It doesn't make belief a choice.

[Huggy Bear]

Let's say I don't believe in dragons.

Then suddenly, I see a load of dragons. Obviously, I "change" my belief. But it wasn't a conscious choice. It was inevitable, given the new information.

I can't sit here right now and suddenly choose to believe in dragons. If I could do that, I'm some kind of mental person.

I have the ability to have my mind changed. Of course I do. That's just stating an obvious fact. It doesn't make belief a choice.

I don't know why this is so hard for you to understand,  a "belief" is accepting that something is true without proof.

https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/belief

belief

1. An acceptance that something exists or is true, especially one without proof:

     1.1 Something one accepts as true or real; a firmly held opinion:

So by definition what you describe is not changing a belief.

In your example, seeing a load of dragons would be PROOF, thereby making dragons an actual fact and no longer a belief...

Your belief that a God doesn't exist isn't based on any evidence, if it is, then provide it.

[robvalue]

A belief doesn't have to be based on no evidence. It says especially, not only. You're a theist, you believe God exists. Belief is a subset of knowledge, so if you think you know God exists, then of course you also believe it. You're using a partial definition now.

My lack of belief is based not only on a lack of evidence, it's based on a lack of a falsifiable definition. Without one, there can be no evidence. I have no idea what a God is meant to be, nor how I could identify one.

You're trying to say a belief is just a guess. So sure, if I guess at something, I can take another guess instead. But people generally have some sort of reason for their beliefs. If you base yours on guesses only, then that's up to you.

I firmly believe the cartoon characters from the bible are not real, because they violate everything I've ever observed, as well as being internally inconsistent. Reality does not correlate with them, and the stories therein are a load of nonsense. They are a very specific claim, for which I would expect to see a ton of evidence everywhere, and I see none.

[robvalue]

I can't believe you're willing to say you don't believe God exists in order to try and win this argument.

[Neo-Scholastic]

No, theists don't choose to become atheists. They lose their belief, as the result of a series of events.

Generalize much? The deconverted atheist does so by some series of choices. I know I did.

[AceBoogie]

I think one can choose to believe in something despite a complete lack of evidence for that something. But I don't think one can choose disbelief.

[purplepurpose]

Theists think that they should try to follow in to the footsteps of Christian martyrs, who not only abandoned pleasure, but embraced hard work in the name of "higher goals"(common goodness).

From what I have seen, their train of thoughts is intuitive "If such perfect standards exist, where only compassion is expected from people, then surly its not made by egoistical humans".