When does Atheism Become a Belief System

calamity said:

It's impossible to know what the universe is free of or full of.

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What is in the universe is independent of what we can imagine. Our ability to imagine gods does not create a possibility of them just because we don't know every inch of the universe. The two are not related at all. Our thoughts can contain things that do not exist anywhere in the universe. Simply creating a concept does not create a possibility of existence for that concept in the universe.

calamity said:

It's impossible to know what the universe is free of or full of.

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But it is possible to know what calamity is full of.

"When does Atheism Become a Belief System"

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If a person were born and grew in perfect isolation, never learning of any notion of any deity,
would such notion occur to them spontaneously?

Perhaps.

The human race acquired the notion from someplace.
And it apparently was not some one time fluke.
It seems to have occurred again, and again, and again, independently, in parallel cultures.
There was a slew of them in Africa, Europe, and Asia before Europeans began to infest the Americas.

BUT !!

Religion beat the European pilgrims to North America.

My intended point here: there may be two kinds of atheism.

- The -Gee Whizz! That never occurred to me!- kind of atheism. And then there's also the

- I've looked into it; and don't find any of it plausible enough to believe.

Eskimo: 'If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell?'
Priest: 'No, not if you did not know.'
Eskimo: 'Then why did you tell me?'
Annie Dillard

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calamity said:

Evolution is most definitely a theory. That is why they call it the Theory of Evolution. And, yes. It is a sound, good theory which is substantiated by much evidence.

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The word "theory" has a different meaning in science than it does in everyday conversation. Conspiracy theories are called "theories" by Alex Jonsians but they are not, in ANY sense, the equivalent of tried and true science. In the context of evolution, the word "theory" means something that is definitely occurring, whether we currently understand every facet of its function. It is a truth that we do not fully comprehend but it's still truth.

Aren't we doing the equivalent of "knocking on doors" when we discuss atheism here, especially those who insists there is no god?

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There are no rules for disbelief like there are for belief. There is no book of atheism, no pretense of an ethical mandate. Atheism does not have a structure, it is merely the word that the superstitious have invented to describe those who don't patronize them.

It's a belief, and for some it's even a belief system. Certainly there are people here who go out of their way to argue that no gods exist.

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It's not a belief, it's the inability to believe. What do you mean "go out of their way to argue that no gods exist"? Don't forget that on almost every part of this planet, the believers have long ago set up shop and every person on this planet is largely beseeched by god's spokespersons since the time of birth. The default human condition is that of victim of oppressive faith. Communities where this is not the case are the exception. Nobody has to "go out of their way" to defend themselves against the constant pressures of god's belief system. Believers already feel entitled to spread the word more thoroughly than any atheist has ever felt entitled to deny it.

The word "atheist" shouldn't have existed. Instead the word anti-empiricist should have described believers.