Originally Posted by
yeahgr8 
it is important to question what the individual means by athiesm because all athiests i have met passionately dont believe in God and there is a personal reason why they do not, i.e. something that happened in their lives.
As was discussed though even if someone is simply a person who has no belief in God etc, they must believe in something, e.g. laws of gravity...try and float off into the sky if you cant gravity is a power greater than you!
As you say, these are the atheists you know. I had no trauma that caused me to conclude that I can't believe in any god. The idea is simply not supported by evidence. God may or may not be out there, I just don't know. Because in the majority of conversations I've had "atheist" means "believes there is no god" I usually say I'm agnostic (because I also don't have evidence to support the claim that there is no god), but it's semantic, these terms don't really mean anything... or perhaps they have so many meanings the terms themselves are useless.
This made me bristle a little bit (or really, a lot) because so often I hear the patronizing attitude that if I could only get past whatever trauma I had, I'd be able to see the Light. This implies that there's something wrong with the non-religious, that they are damaged goods, when really I just require evidence that something is true before I decide to accept it.
From dictionary.com:
be·lief –noun
1. something believed; an opinion or conviction: a belief that the earth is flat.
2. confidence in the truth or existence of something not immediately susceptible to rigorous proof: a statement unworthy of belief.
3. confidence; faith; trust: a child's belief in his parents.
4. a religious tenet or tenets; religious creed or faith: the Christian belief.
Belief is defined as
opinion. So a belief in a god (or gods) is completely appropriate, because it's an opinion. There's no way to support or refute it with physical evidence, so you draw your own conclusions.
I definitely take exception with the idea that I have to believe in gravity. I don't believe in gravity, but I can gather evidence to support the idea that mass attracts mass. In fact, I have gathered data to support that. I can draw a logical conclusion that does not require me to believe something I can't support with observations. When I run into something I can't support or refute with evidence the only proper answer is "I don't know." I can have a hunch about what's happening and/or try to develop ways to understand it, but until I can provide evidence
I don't know. Whether I believe it or not has absolutely no bearing on the facts.