QUESTIONING GOD CAN BE A FORM OF ATHEISM

Is the person who says they don't deny the existence of God but see no reason to believe or have the opinion that there probably is one, an atheist or an agnostic?

This person might claim to be a negative atheist.  A negative atheist lacks belief.  Lacks implies lack of something that one should have.  But the negative does not mean lack in that sense.  If it did, it would denote that belief in God should be there and is not there.  But why should it?

Professor Antony Flew argued that atheism is the absence of belief in God and that you don't have to concretely deny that there is a God to be atheist.

If you lack belief in the tooth fairy that is not the same as lacking faith in God.

The tooth fairy is not claiming to have made all things and thus own all things ultimately.  God does.

So while it is a lack of belief it is lack of belief that indicates that there is more going on than a mere lack.  If you lack belief in Mary's kindness to you that is a lack yes but it arises from something within you that senses she is fake.  Lack of faith in God then is aroused by some inner sense that there is no God.  Actions speak louder than words and the lack is an action in the sense that doing nothing is. 

An agnostic about God does not decide one way or the other.  The evidence is seen to be confusing and fails to give a pointer.

The negative atheist disputes agnosticism and says it gives no reason to consider God as an option.
 
Negative atheism is not agnosticism then. It just looks like it.  The agnostic can still pray but the negative atheist will not.  So negative atheism might not be a clear, "There is no God", but it is a clear denial of God in other ways.  That may speak even louder than a blunt negation of God. 
 
So lack of belief in God is absolute denial in a sense.  Yet it remains a lack of belief and is not a belief. Lack of belief is saying you will do the deciding instead of any God so you dethrone God and put yourself or humankind on the throne. It is still an atheistic action. It is atheism as in action. Action can deny God as much as belief that there is no God can so lack of belief in God is atheism.
 
Weak belief in God is a sort of denial of God too. To doubt something so big and major is in a way to deny it is what it is and what is it? IMPORTANT! It is key to how lacking belief in God can be classed as atheism. It is not agnosticism - it is not sitting on the fence.
 
To be without belief in God is to be against it.  To be with belief in God but without a significant level of it is to be against properish faith and proper faith.  Why?  For belief in God is needed for a God to connect with you and you with him and because if God is a good belief and what we should wish for (whether he exists or not) it is not a neutral matter.  If God reaches to you through your faith and you to him then there is no mistaking its importance.  To fail to support it enough is to be against it.

If God is morality, or as good as, as many say, then to be without belief is to reject God's existence in a sense. It is another reason why not having proper faith through your own fault, if faith is good, is to be against faith.

To be without faith in God is to be without God, in this theology. If God does not reveal himself to me then nature reveals to me that there is no God. Not to reveal is to let something else reveal he does not exist. When looked at this way, the lack of belief in God is a form of atheism for it is not the same as lack of belief in anything else. Lacking belief in the tooth fairy is not denying her existence but lacking belief in God is, in a way, denying his existence.

God's existence gets a passive hostility, ie I don't want you in my life even if you ask to be, that that of the tooth fairy does not get which is why it is easy to simply not reject God explicitly but just not believe and still be an atheist.
 
Do atheists who say atheism at base the absence of belief in God [negative atheists] that may or may not go on to outright denial [positive atheists] think that we need the belief to be absent or lacked? YES! They indirectly deny God so they are truly atheists.

Negative atheism implies there is no God indirectly and positive atheism is just a blunt denial.  You can be a negative atheist without being a positive one.  You cannot be a positive one without also being a negative one.  You start off by seeing there is no evidence for God - negative and then progress to seeing there is evidence against - positive.

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