EDIT: I plead guilty to a provocative title. The tone of the diary is not quite as strongly worded, and perhaps I should have chosen a different title. I am not trying to shut down discussion; I am trying to communicate a specific concept, and perhaps I grabbed the language of identity politics too strongly.
Please don't tell atheists who is and isn't an atheist.
I don't tell Christians who is and isn't Christian.
I don't tell gays who is and isn't gay.
I don't tell conservatives who is and isn't conservative.
If you're not an atheist, please consider the possibility that those who are atheists might know better than you what atheism is and isn't.
What I'm seeing, in the recent discussion about atheists, is a lot of non-atheists saying "An atheist is someone who is CERTAIN there's no god", or some variant on it (e.g. "an atheist is someone who 'believes' there's no god") and contrasting this with "agnostic", which is their preferred label for anyone else who isn't theistic.
Here's the interesting thing.
Not a single atheist agrees with you.
If I were to define Christianity as "believing every word in the Bible to be literally true", and saying anyone who didn't believe every word in the Bible wasn't Christian, I think a whole lot of Christians would be righteously angry with me.
And if I did that and on top of that said I wasn't a Christian myself, I would be correctly considered both ignorant and arrogant.
So let me say it again, in different words.
If you aren't an atheist, consider the possibility that you might be confused about what an atheist is.
And again.
If you think members of a group believe X, and every single representative of that group tells you you're wrong, you're wrong.
I might have opinions about Christianity. But I don't presume to tell Christians who is and isn't one. (I might think a particular person is wrong about it, based on what other Christians have told me about their faith. That's different from telling every Christian in a diverse discussion group that none of them are actually Christians.)
Suppose I said that "if a man has ever had sex with a woman, he's not gay."
Every gay man on the planet would tell me I was ignorant and arrogant. Even those gay men who have not had sex with a woman at some point in their lives.
Suppose I said "if you're not a racist, you're not a conservative."
Even we here should know that's unfair and untrue. Every conservative would rightly tell me I was ignorant and arrogant. Even those conservatives who are racist.
Suppose I said "if you're for free enterprise, you're not a liberal."
Every liberal on the planet would tell me I was ignorant and arrogant. Even those few liberals who actually do dislike free enterprise.
So when you say "If you aren't CERTAIN there isn't a god, you're not an atheist"
every atheist on the planet will tell you you're ignorant and arrogant. Even those atheists who are certain there isn't a god.
So if you're not an atheist, but you think you know something about atheists, please ask yourself the following:
I was told X is true about atheists. Was I told this by an atheist?
If not, then there is a very good chance that the person who told you didn't know what they were talking about.