Quote:
Originally Posted by photon
Atheism has no belief structure, it's the lack of belief of something.
Q: Do you believe in one more more gods?
If the answer to that question is no, then you are an atheist. That's it.
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That's not entirely fair, IMO, or at least, in my experience, not really an accurate representation of what many / most people who identify themselves as "Atheists" mean.
In my experience, when a person says "I'm an Atheist" they mean that they hold an active belief that there is no God / deity / supernatural being in the universe. To the extent that accurately describes a person's beliefs, they're holding an ultimately faith based belief system. Anyone who has read much on quantum physics and theoretical cosmology knows that the fundamental underlying reality of the universe remains outside our understanding at this time, and certainly outside our common logic and intuition.
Things like Brane theory, the holographic universe theory, and the possibility that we exist in a bubble universe have led me to conclude that, while I believe there is sufficient evidence to disprove the existence of the Gods of the bible, I can't say there is sufficient evidence to conclusively determine that there isn't room in the extended universe for something that would justly be described as a deity. I don't believe in it, but I don't disbelieve it.
IMO, the better description of this belief system is
Agnosticism, allowing those with a belief that "the truth values of certain claims—especially claims about the existence or non-existence of any deity, but also other religious and metaphysical claims—are unknown or unknowable". This allows for a clear distinction from the active belief that there is no god, which, as I said, really is what many / most people who describe themselves as Atheists believe.