Yazata
The point is that people who believe in God (however that word is conceived) and those who don't are likely to have worldviews that differ dramatically at many points.
And the point we are making is that though they are likely to be different, just knowing the theist/atheist duality is knowing only one difference with any meaningful certainty. IE a theist world view is religious, an atheist one is not. Even then there are many forms of religious paradigms, slightly fewer but still very diverse atheist paradigms.
I would argue further that the atheist view is the default view on the question of god(s)(IE Occam says limit your entities/forces/causes to the least that adequately explain the phenomina)unless and until the theist view becomes necessary to explain the Universe or anything in it and evidence of that necessity is forthcoming. Ancient man's(or even modern man's in cases like Scientology or Mormonism)superstitious, supernatural beliefs notwithstanding.
And the strange thing is that all theists agree with me, except in the case of their particular god(s)'s existence. They are all atheist to all the other god(s).
the assertion that atheism is simply lack of belief in God, and nothing more.
The assertion is that it TELLS YOU NOTHING ABOUT THE WORLDVIEW of the atheist beyond a lack of theism. You've put forward a bunch of theistic consequences that the atheist does not accept as ever being real. As I've said before, I know nothing about the breeding habits of the Unicorn. As an atheist I don't accept the idea that there are breeding habits to be known for things that just do not exist. The same goes for "knowing god", whatever that means to the theist asking the question.
But that doesn't change the fact that an absence of any belief in chemistry would have tremendous repercussions for the kind of theories advanced by biology, geology and in the rest of science.
And those consequences are real and are caused by ignorance of real things. God, not so much.
There's no evidence to the contrary?
Got any? No one else does. We get assertions, told about revelations, shown texts making many fantastic and often hilarious claims, pointed toward reams of commentaries about unproven assertions in ancient texts with fantastic, supernatural claims, ridiculed, condemned to hell... But no evidence. And without evidence of a phenominon it is irrational to accept that it is real.
The point is that whether or not evidence for God exists, lack of belief still represents an implicit hypothesis, even if it's unconscious, and even if we choose (rightly or wrongly) to call it our 'null hypothesis' or our 'default condition'.
Belief is not a choice, thus the intense indoctrination of children from birth necessary to raise them to be believers in irrational concepts. And even then there are those who just don't buy it, they cannot make themselves believe what their own intellect tells them is non-sense. I was raised by a fundamentalist Baptist preacher, went to church(by force if necessary)every time the doors were opened, was the all time champion in Bible drills, went to vacation Bible school 3 or 4 times each summer(I can create true art with just a box of macaroni and some white glue), etc. But I never believed a bit of it other than the wisdom contained in some of Jesus' words and teachings. My mind easily recognized the wheat(Jesus' philosophy)and discarded the chaff(talking snakes and donkeys, etc). It also recognized the evil contained in the beliefs outlined in the Old Testament(the OT god and the NT god have little in common).
Grumpy
