No I think not. Atheist either affirms the nonexistence of gods[1] or rejects theism. For my self, if pushed and I have no time to explain further, I will categorize myself as an agnostic. Lately I have resorted to calling myself a monkey brain eater. Metaphorically, I live in a community where they eat monkey brains so it somewhat behooves me to eat monkey brains too.
A spectrum of monikers might be:
Fascist, Holy roller, God fearing, reverent, agnostic, non-Deist, Dibblist, atheist, anarchist
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---------------------------------------------me------------------------------you
I’ve recently started to describe myself (if I absolutely have to) as an atheist agnostic apatheist - I don’t belive in God, I don’t pretend to know I’m right to do so, and I don’t particularly care.
You are welcome to feel. For some god is imaginary and for others he is not. God has a place in my life but I recognize that the idea of god can have powerful symbolism and control so just to keep those aspects in proportion I just take those ideas down a notch with a lower case ‘g’. No disrespect of God fearing people is intended. And certainly it is no skin off gods nose either.
In a theocracy willful and open disbelief is going to be seen as willful resistance than in a more secular society. Atheist has also been used as a curse - Teddy Roosevelt called Tom Paine a damn atheist though that wasn’t true. He was not a Christian, which might have been the cause.
In any case, we can hate Sauron, Darth Vader and Jar-Jar Binks without believing in them. Therefore I think these are two different issues. How often here have discussions involved - I don’t believe in God, but if he existed he’d be a putz. The first clause often gets lost after a while.
If I believed in a god (I don’t) but hated him, I don’t think I’d call myself an atheist. Czarcasm makes good suggestions; my wife suggests “mistheist” as a term for such a person.
I’ve never met anyone like that, though. Most people who believe in gods believe because they feel it’s a positive force. If I wanted to believe in something improbable that I thought was evil, I’d choose grey aliens with big heads and huge dark eyes.
I’m sorry I was presumptuous. I don’t know where MrDibble sits!
Fascist, Holy roller, God fearing, reverent, agnostic, non-Deist, Dibblist, atheist, anarchist
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-----------------------------------------------me---------------------answer to op
Demographic religious fervor index US
Fascist, Holy roller, God fearing, reverent, agnostic, non-Deist, Dibblist, atheist, anarchist
—^------------^------------^-------------^------------^---------^-------------^-------^---------^
–?----------125M--------90M-----------37M--------1.4M----3.4M-----------?------1.1M------?
Incidentally, for the general discussion, a theist might be a deist, but a deist must be a theist — just as a bovine might be a cow, but a cow must be a bovine. Deism is one branch of theism.
When I first started posting here, I would self-describe as “an atheist (or strong agnostic, depending on how one defines terms).” After having seen several threads of this type, I concluded, based on arguments made and sources cited (see, e.g., Wiki), that dominant English usage is that an atheist simply doesn’t believe in God (or gods), as opposed to believing that God (or gods) don’t exist. So, I have dropped the parenthetical. YMMV.
Not to get off on a hijack here, but I talked to a young man today who convinced me that he truly was not an atheist. He claimed that he could accept the existence of Pan, of Jupiter, of Baal, and all the other Gods, but that he, according to the Decalogue, would still be ok in the afterlife, as long as he placed no Gods above the god of Abraham. That to me, was the way to cover all bets.