Why don’t you just spell out the covert belief you accuse atheists of possessing?
If you can say that ‘theists are pushing a theist agenda in the US’, then there is nothing illogical about saying that ‘atheists pushed an atheist agenda in China.’
You seem to be having trouble distinguishing between an “atheist agenda” (and I’m honestly not really sure what that would even look like) and a Communist agenda.
And at any rate, you haven’t offered a single reason why anybody should care.
See, this is why I’m concerned about the word usage. I think that the majority of self-described atheists ACTIVELY don’t believe in God (i.e. they believe there is no God), and argue this with others through various descriptions of evolution and whatnot. But when they are called on their beliefs about the lack of existence of God, they switch to the other, broader, definition of atheist, which says they are just people who have a “non-belief.” Unlike theists, ner ner ner. It’s very annoying to me to watch this.
(And incidentally, I’m an atheist myself.)
Ok, then you might have a problem distinguishing between theism in the US and simple bigotry.
What does the scientific validity of evolution have to do with belief or non-belief in God / gods / any specific deity?? 
No. There are particular religious goals that religious groups in the U.S. attempt to impose on everybody. “This book is bad because it is blasphemous,” is an example, so is seeking to essentially destroy sexual education because it interferes with God’s desire for babies. Even goals that could be ascribed simply to bigotry are often approached from a religious point of view. The attempts to annihilate same-sex marriage are an example.
A comparison to the China thing would be to say “Christians pushed a Christian agenda in Nazi Germany.” They didn’t; they pushed a Nazi agenda, and a lot of them were Christians.
There isn’t anything inconsistent here. “There is no God” and “I don’t believe in a God” are functionally identical in the context you’re talking about.
Incidentally, I have never heard anybody, ever, argue for the lack of God because of evolution. Every single religious person I know accepts the reality of evolution without qualification.
I’m not sure what it would mean to ACTIVELY believe there is no god. An active believer in a god worships that god, tries to follow what they believe to be his teachings, and generally lives their life in accordance with their religion. As an atheist, I don’t believe I do anything comparable to this - indeed atheism is only an issue when a thread like this comes up, not a day-to-day matter. Although if anyone wants to explain what an active disbelief in god is, I’ll try to examine my views and see if it fits.
Nonsense. The only reason that atheists talk about atheism at all is because the theists won’t shut up.
As Der Trihs pointed out, you don’t have people going around talking about how they don’t believe in invisible goblins.
In a world without any belief in God, there would be no such thing as atheism.
Yeah I get pissed off about fundy anythings.
Steophan raises an interesting counter-point, which is:
We’ll fix it when the believers do.
Using the US as the example (since the 'Dope is US-centric) and considering the majority religion there; you have millions of people who claim to be adherents of a single religion who can’t agree on almost any part of that religion, and yet almost entirely use the same word to describe their spectrum of beliefs.
Get them to sort out whether they’re lacto-, ovo-, pesca-Christians, Christians-in-name-only, or Westboro Baptists, and then we’ll be getting somewhere.
Atheism isn’t a religion - it’s a close and deeply personal relationship with reality.
In related news, a thesaurus is not the place to go to for synonyms, a penal code is not the place to go to for laws, and RFC’s are not the place to go for internet standards. However, a website that literally anyone in the world with an internet connection can edit is the go to resource for all your needs.
Anyway, since you wanna go to wikipedia, lets go to wikipedia:
“Atheism, in a broad sense, is the rejection of belief in the existence of deities. In a narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there are no deities. Most inclusively, atheism is simply the absence of belief that any deities exist. Atheism is contrasted with theism, which in its most general form is the belief that at least one deity exists. God takes it up the ass like a little bitch.” (note, that last sentence might be reverted rather quickly)
So, by this vastly superior source, atheism is so broad that it’s practically meaningless. Or at least, it’s so broad that the difference between ‘atheist’ and ‘agnostic’ is lost, as the wiki article itself notes later when it points out that ‘agnostic’ has to be considered a ‘negative athiest’ under this excessively large umbrella definition of atheist.
To which I can only have two reactions. The first is wondering what moronic game people are playing when they have to redefine a word to be less precise AND to try and take over the definition of another word in order to support their arguments.
The second is, as an agnostic, for atheists to go fuck themselves. If someone doesn’t want people to think they suck cocks, they shouldn’t identify themselves as a cocksucker. If someone doesn’t want people to think they believe there is no god, they shouldn’t identify themselves as an atheist. Quit trying to redefine words to include me in your reindeer games.
Alternatively, if it’s limited enough that the word can actually mean anything, it means the position (a synonym to ‘belief’, thank you thesaurus) that there are no deities. Which, oddly enough, corresponds to the dictionary definition of the word.
So I’m afraid the argument still boils down to the proper definition of the word vs people who are unable to look up the proper definition of the word.
I have mainstream Catholic relatives who believe I should return to the church not just for the sake of my soul, but also because they love me and believe I’d be happier.
I have fundamentalist Christian relatives who beleive that both my Catholic relatives and my atheist self are going to Hell. Very real, bad Hell. Aborted babies go to the same Hell as Hitler, as they see it.
I don’t believe in Hell, but I do believe that the closest thing to it is having to compromise one’s convictions for the sake of getting along with other people; and not just for (a) the sake of social graciousness, *but (b) when they are being stupid and cruel. *“Eppur si muove” and all that.
Not every atheist is going to draw the line between (a) and (b) where you yourself would draw it. But you are just going to have to learn to live with that annoyance until it itself crosses the line from (a) to (b).
Ah, but what do you mean by “agnostic”? 
Seriously though, I’ve identified here in past as agnostic – based on Huxley’s original definition – and been told that I’m actually a “weak atheist”; my reaction has been less negative than yours… but only slightly. (These days I’ll claim to be Ignostic or a Theological Nnncognitivist, both because those are pretty accurate descriptions… and they confuse people). 
I do see some value however in drawing the distinction between “knowledge” and “belief”, which results in people being Agnostic Atheists (“I do not / cannot know, and do not believe”), or even Agnostic Theists.
The point all being, that getting any group to agree on a consensus definition of atheism, agnosticism, or for that matter Christianity or another religion, is pretty much a lost cause.
I believe I’m not a robot. That doesn’t mean that belief is the same thing as some nitwit who thinks working class Jews occasionally rise from the dead. One is based on observation and intellect, the other is based on subverting the same.
Harping on the world belief in this way is utterly shabby and a perfect example on the hysterical nonsense-arguments religious people and their apologists have to resort to.
Whose reality? yours, mine, somebody else’s?
The one that generates the evidence those realities get. 
They were Communists, not just “atheists”. Show me atheists who are not Communists or some other murderous ideology who do that. Of course, you can’t, which is why religious apologists always try to smear atheists by pretending that Communism = atheism.
Oh, please It’s the overwhelming majority of believers, not a tiny minority; that’s how they got to be the majority. As believers, it is their function to promote and protect their religion, they are the vectors for the psychological virus that has subverted them to its purposes. Puppets.
Yeah, I’m so militant and aggressive I argue with people on a message board.
Again, atheism is the logical default. Until there is evidence, the rational position is one of disbelief whether the question is gods or werewolves. Of course, in actuality the opposite is true; again and again religion has made false or incoherent claims. There is not only no evidence for religion; what evidence there is, is against it.
Communists, not atheists. They legislated their beliefs for the same reason Christians try to; neither Communism nor Christianity willingly abides rival beliefs.
There’s no such thing as a “fundamentalist” atheist, the phrase makes no sense. And we hold atheism to be intellectually superior to religion because it is, whether you like it or not. It has all the evidence, all the logic on its side. Religion on the other hand has illogic, baseless claims and a nearly unbroken record of being wrong on its side. It isn’t hard to be intellectually superior to religion, it is the garbage heap of the mind.
Just 13 percent of Americans accept evolution to that degree. America is a deeply religious nation, which means it is equally deeply committed to ignorance, irrationality and malice.
In other words, a group that is already a beleaguered minority should further split itself up into factions so they can be stomped on more easily. Divide and conquer.
There’s only one.
For someone who wouldn’t care about the subject much at all, you seem to be very adamant. Is it just that you don’t care very much about anyone else’s POV, but your own is very important?
That’s a very broad generalization. Could you show some evidence that a majority of believers favor forcing their beliefs on others?
Actually, faith is the default position any time the limits of understanding or of logic are reached. It may be faith in the scientific method, that science (or logic) can provide an answer, it just hasn’t yet, but you’re still making a faith-based assumption. Or it may be faith that a higher power of some kind is directing events so that they’ll work out for the best. Either way, you engage in acts of faith every day. When you cross the street, you’re acting on faith that some idiot isn’t going to come tearing around a corner at high speed and splatter you all over the road. Your faith may be based entirely on your trust of your own wits and reflexes, but it’s still an act of faith (and trusting entirely in one’s self seems most unreasonable when one considers the frailty and fallibility of the average jaywalker).
An atheist and a believer both make faith-based assumptions all the time. They’re just placing their faith in different things.
And changing the subject… will somebody kindly explain to me (in simple, easy-to-understand terms) just how you get those multiple quotes into these messages?