Regarding the early comments, I never said belief implied faith, I said belief was a characteristic of faith. As I said in the post, believing in something without evidence is a characteristic of faith, and the term “taken on faith” is often used in such circumstances.

For me, there is a big difference between saying “I believe god does not exist” and “I do not believe god exists.” My atheism is not borne out of a different set of beliefs than a theist, it is simply the absence of belief.

Gary, you say:

I believe that my local City Hall is still standing, even though I haven’t checked it in several days, since public buildings don’t usually collapse without the fact being publicized.

and I couldn’t agree more – although to me, the evidence for your belief is that nothing has been publicised. This is the point I was trying to make.

K – I am aware there is no functional difference between not believing in God and not believing in any gods. However, when someone describes “atheists” as not believing in God, they are creating the implied assumption that God exists and atheists are going against the grain. If people walked around saying “Wow, you don’t believe in Santa” it would be ridiculous, yet true. Saying “wow, you don’t believe in God” seems to be a legitimate claim to make because there is an underlying assumption that God exists.

I don’t believe in Loki, but no one ever mentions that…

I have investigated more than a thousand supernatural claims in my decades of life and in every case the supplied evidence has been anecdotal one-offs, non-existent, or just plain ignorance.

I have no reason to think that the claims by people from times gone by would be any different. They were even less well informed than most are today, and credulity was therefore higher.

When I say that I’m an atheist, I’m saying that (in shorthand) that each of the individual god concepts that I’m aware of, I reject, for whichever reason is appropriate from that particular concept of a god.

My position changes for each god-concept, some I’m not so sure about (agnostic) but don’t believe exist (weak atheist), some I’m convinced don’t exist as I see that there is strong evidence that they don’t exist (strong atheist), and some I really don’t know much about to make a reasoned decision one way or the other (ignostic atheist).

However, all of these come under the general umbrella term of atheist (either defined as “not having belief in a god” or “believing in no gods” – I take both positions independently) so I’m happy to call myself one.

And as far as “destroying atheism” goes, all someone would have to do would be to convince me that at least one god exists. All the evidence that I’ve seen so far falls very well short of achieving this.

Not believing in a god (little g) or any gods (little g) includes not believing in God (aka Yaweh, etc.). If you have that belief, then it is just as correct to say you don’t believe in God (big G) as it is to say you don’t believe in any gods. It makes no difference to a Godite whether you believe in no gods or whether you simply don’t believe in God, because they only believe in one god, therefore their context of faith is that one god. Whether you don’t believe in God or don’t believe in any gods, you still don’t believe in *their* god, and that’s their problem.

Saying you “don’t believe in God” is accurate, and reflects the fact that while many do believe in God, you, as a believer in no gods, do not.

Basicaly, I don’t think you or any other atheist are being mischaracterised as “not believing in God”, because that’s true. If they then say you believe in some other god (e.g. Sat’n), then that’s a different story.

Faith is a particular kind of belief, arrived at with clear disregard for the evidence, on the basis of authority or tradition.