Quiz: Do understand atheists?

While anyone may accidentally have faith in something, generally speaking, they seek to minimize this, in an effort to not have faith in anything. They see faith as an intellectual error.

Nonbelievers have existed since believers existed. Explicit atheists can be traced back to Greece's Euripides and Aristophanes about 400 BCE, just by the historical record. Atheism is not contingent on the theory of evolution or abiogenesis. The only rational requirement for atheism is that the theists haven't demonstrated their claims.

It's a trick question - belief isn't subject to the will. One cannot simply choose to believe that gravity doesn't exist, and then step off the roof of a skyscraper. Our beliefs are mostly on autopilot, and we're either convinced of a claim, or not.

Many theistic people can't believe that, what's so obvious to them (God), isn't believed by others, so they rationalize an explanation for why nonbelievers exist that doesn't concede that their position isn't supported. In reality, atheists haven't been provided sufficient evidence to believe the claims being told to them... or they once believed, but realized the evidence for their beliefs was severely lacking.

Since every theist seems to have their own version of a god, atheists address their god definitions one-by-one. So far, all the asserted gods described to atheists have fallen into one of two categories - undemonstrated, and/or irrelevant. One could define God as "love", but unless there's more to it than being a basic emotion, it's not an important definition.

For many things, we don't even know whether something is possible or not, beyond being logically contradictory. Any number of god definitions can be formed that don't violate logic, and thus, the skeptical atheist will admit it's possible, even if it's astronomically unlikely. Since our laws of physics are descriptive of the universe, to the best of our current ability, a god apparently breaking laws of physics could just mean it has a deeper understanding of physics than we do, or exists outside of the bounds of those laws.

The average atheist doesn't "worship". It seems many religious-minded people struggle with the idea of not worshiping anything, so they conclude that atheists are simply worshiping something different than they are, and try to deduce the next possibility. Atheists don't believe "worship" is a good idea, in the same way they don't think kings and queens are a good idea.

Whatever parts of the Bible are believed, are due to being supported by evidence. The Bible isn't a all-or-nothing package, where everything is believed, or nothing. If a city referenced in the Bible is true, for example, that one bit of the Bible is therefore considered true. If Jesus is demonstrated to be a historical figure, the claims that Jesus performed miracles, and is the son of a god, still have to be demonstrated.

Even if many theists see it as a weakness/concession, the average atheist is fine with saying "I don't know" to topics that have insufficient evidence to indicate an answer to the question. That's the rational position to take. Currently, our data on the Big Bang goes back to shortly after the event, and anything before that (including "God") is largely speculation, and nothing more.

On an individual basis, atheist beliefs can vary wildly, but the basic common atheist position is a mixture of positive believe that no gods exist, or a lack of belief in any gods... but it's ultimately, specifically a position on whether one accepts the claim that one or more gods exist.