Books regarding atheism

[Simon Moon]

While I agree with the overall point you're making (so you're not in your own here), I think the application of the term atheism/theism to stones and lizards and other such things might be problematic. It's like applying the "with hair"/bald dichotomy to God and then saying God is bald because he has no hair.

You're right; but in the past I've had people so adamant about "no belief" being the only criterion that they did assert that stones are atheist. I'm just using it as an example of something which is incapable of belief.

It's very strange to me that what I say isn't obvious.

Let me try a dialogue:

Fundamentalist: I say that God created the world in six days.
Brain-dead atheist: I don't accept that claim. 
Fundamentalist: Why do you reject that claim? 
Brain-dead atheist: I don't need a reason to reject that claim. I reject or accept claims based on no reason. I'm just an atheist and I always have been.

I don't want to assume that anyone capable of posting here would resemble the brain-dead atheist.

Here is what I claim actually goes on:

Fundamentalist: I say that God created the world in six days.
Reasonable thinking atheist: I don't accept that claim. 
Fundamentalist: Why do you reject that claim? 
Reasonable thinking atheist: Because everything science tells me about the existence and development of the world, from the Big Bang to the development of my own solar system tells me that it all took a lot longer than six days. In general I find scientific explanations to be more well-founded and more believable than creation myths in old books, therefore I reject your claim. 

The point is that in even very simple religious claims, we reject them because there is something else we rely on more. In the above case, the whole of scientific cosmology. We have standards to which we hold (e.g. that science is more reliable than revelation) and we use those standards to evaluate claims. 

This means we have rejected religious claims, and continued to be atheists, based on standards of judgment. We are no longer like new-born infants, who lack belief in God simply because they don't know anything about it.

Addressing the bolded part.

No, this is not what 'actually goes on' in my mind. Thanks, by the way, for assuming you know what goes on in my mind, as well as the minds of other atheists.

This is the way I would state the above, and it goes along with the way I reason, I suspect many other atheists:

Fundamentalist: I say that God created the world in six days.
Reasonable thinking atheist: I don't accept that claim. 
Fundamentalist: Why do you reject that claim? 
Reasonable thinking atheist: Because no theists has ever met their burden of proof that the world took a god 6 days to create. Nor has any theist ever met their burden of proof that a god even exists in the first place, to create anything. Therefore I reject your claim

There is zero need to defend the disbelief in gods by appealing to science. The disbelief in gods was a rationally defensible position long before the age of the universe was know. Your example dialog here is putting the onus of the burden of proof on the atheist, not the theist, where it squarely belongs.

The point is that in even very simple religious claims, we reject them because there is something else we rely on more. In the above case, the whole of scientific cosmology. We have standards to which we hold (e.g. that science is more reliable than revelation) and we use those standards to evaluate claims.

NO! I reject theistic claims because they continually fail to meet their burden of proof. I evaluate existential claims based on the case the claimant is presenting. I may not need a better explanation at all, in order to reject theists claims.

I agree with you, though, that babies are not atheists, nor are rocks, for different reasons. Babies could be said to be non-theists, however.

[Tom Fearnley]

Also:

Why I Became An Atheist by John W Loftus. See the 2nd edition.