Another Atheist

It bothers me that so many theists have trouble understanding what atheism is. Let me try to boil it down.

• Atheism is nonbelief in a god or gods. It is not the same as denying the existence of all gods. (Albeit, some gods cannot possibly be true, ergo can be denied). I am not claiming that there was no deistic agent that caused the universe. Neither does Dawkins. All I’m stating is I have been given no reason- no evidence- to believe that such a being exists. And that is why I lack belief. I cannot choose to believe in anything for which there is no evidence.
• Atheism thus makes no claims. That is why if you believe your god is the correct one, you have the burden of proving it. I neither believe nor disbelieve.
• Atheism isn’t a religion. It has no tenets, no doctrines. It has no leaders. I was an atheist long before I’d heard of Hitchens or Harris. The only thing I’ve read from Dawkins is “The Selfish Gene”. I didn’t know he was an atheist then. Atheism has no sacred texts. The only thing that you can say that I share with other atheists, is a lack of belief in gods.
• Atheism isn’t symmetric to theism. A religion like Christianity has all sorts of tenets and values. If you are a theist, then certain things must attach to that. If you are an atheist, nothing attaches to that. We don’t get our morality from atheism, we don’t get our politics from atheism, we don’t get any meaning to life from atheism. Atheism only means one thing. That we have nonbelief in gods.
• Atheists just get values outside of religion. There is a vast literature covering politics, philosophy, psychology and biology that informs values in a nontheistic way. An atheist can be an anarchist, a Marxist, a libertarian, a utilitarian, a contractarian, a secular humanist etc. You can talk about the utilitarian values of a Peter Singer or the more anarchist values of Nozick. You can’t talk about these people having atheistic values.