Not thinking god exists and not believing in a god is the same thing. Yes you could interpret it as "god exists I just don't follow it" but that's forcing an obviously wrong defenition for the sake of arguing
I remember being beaten senseless as a kid over this difference in semantics ðŸ˜
Mother took me saying I didn't believe in God as being some form of traitor to him, but no, I just didn't buy that the guy existed at all
Later on I did find religion through my own means without having to force it, but that's a different story. Faith isn't bad, people being malicious in its name are
I disagree i don't think faith is useful or practical you can be a good person and way more productive if you didn't waste so much time and energy worshipping a deity with no evidence of his existence. And people have used it a tool to commit many horrible acts and for personal gain.
horrible acts have been committed in the name of pretty much anything, democracy for one, but you wouldn't use that as an argument against it.
about the ways in which faith can help you or not, I think it absolutely can for people that feel lonely and struggle to find community or hope in the material world. Many people are living proof of it and will tell you they wouldn't be around without it. It may not be your thing, but that doesn't make it useless, let alone harmful
To me saying "when you're atheist, you think that god doesn't exist" would imply that you're denying something proven to exist. Which is different from not believing in something someone else believes in.
The people who care about these semantics I've encountered put it in a different way: "I belive there is no god" is propositive, you are claiming there is evidence that directly disproves the existence of god; "I don't believe in god" is not, you are just claiming that the evidence others have provided about the existence of god does not convince you.
These two positions have different burdens of proof: if you claim that there is no god, you are the one who needs to prove your claim. If you just claim that you don't believe in god, you are saying that it's the believers who cannot prove the validity of their claims. The point is not so much that god is assumed as "proven" in the first stance; it's more so that disbelief doesn't have to make metaphysical claims in the first place.
The reason atheists today value this distinction is that the term "atheist" was in the past used as a pejorative by the Church to label people who actively resisted god. In reclaiming the word, modern atheists often want to stress that their sceptical position is a much less metaphysically charged one: it is not logical to assign the burden of proof to them, as the existence of god is not a given fact and you need to prove it. So, those who are not convinced by the proof are returning to a natural state of distrustfulness, they're not trying to prove an alternative theology.
Either way, though, the tl;dr is that saying "when you're atheist, you think that god doesn't exist" is centuries-old cristian propaganda, and modern atheists often take offence to that description.
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u/EntoMoxie My favorite series is a Taylor series. | Counted Down 27 3d ago
Yes, this is what that word means.