I really don't understand why you seem to think that all atheists have rejected the idea of gods.
I have never believed. My parents were atheists, and so were both sets of grandparents. I loved mythology as a child, preferably Greek and Norse, and gods, heroes and monsters were often my bedtimes stories. I never believed in those gods, although I enjoyed the stories immensely, and when I later read the Bible, I had the same reaction to that, except that I found it far more boring than my favourite mytologies. The first time I actually met someone I realised was religious, was when I was six, and started school in Jönköping (a town often referred to as the Jerusalem of Sweden, because of its many churches of different protestant denominations), and my teacher expected everyone to believe. It seemed very surprising to me that an adult would believe in what I considered bedtime stories, but it wasn't something that I gave much thought. All adults were a bit strange, after all. She was kind to me, in spite of my failings in the religious department. She probaly pitied the little heathen
There has never been a point in my life when I have analysed, and rejected, religion. That I am an atheist is simply a fact to me, the same way it is a fact that I am Swedish, and female. It's not something I have to analyse, accept or reject; it's just what I am. I no more needed to accept/reject the Christian god, than I needed to accept/reject Zeus. I understand that you feel atheists ought to examine their lack of beliefs, since so many people do believe in some god, or gods, but why? I wouldn't change any other opinions just on the basis that the majority of the world's population hold other views. would you change your religious beliefs just because other faiths have more believers?
Anecdote time: When my first father died, my mother was clever enough to get me my second one
He was an atheist as well, but he had come by it the hard way, since his father was a vicar. He had believed unquestioningly till his early teens, and then struggled for years, both mentally, and with his father, before he realised and accepted that his faith was gone. There were no similarities in how we became atheists. There were actually not many similarities in how we
WERE atheists either. To me, it was a fact of life, to him it was a constant struggle and a hard earned position. For him, religion remained a bête noir all his life, since there was alawsy a sense that he had betrayed his father (the vicar, not the god one). He couldn't find it in him to enter a church lightly, while to me a church has as little significance as any other temple, Acropolis, for instance. (No, I'll take that back, Acroplis has far more signicance for me...) Temples are often beautiful and culturally interesting buildings full of art, but that is all. To my father, they were forbididng, and conjured forth an avalanche of difficult memories. I have fond memories of my father struggling to enter a church for a concert - you could read the conflicting emotions in his body laguage.
Now, we were alike in many ways, but that was related to cultural factors, likes and dislikes, and perhaps to political opinions. Not to some quirk in our characters that led us to atheism. He would better suit the ideas you have of atheists, because he had in fact rejected the god of his childhood. His sisters had not, however. They were both believers, but very different from each other. His older sister was as close to a fundamentalist as you would ever get in the Church of Sweden; strict, judgmental and unforgiving. His younger sister was the opposite; kind, forgiving, and quick to love. I would never presume to say that their theism was the same, just because they believed in the same god. The belief was all that was similar. Just as the disbelief is all you can assume that two atheists share.
Imagine, Christian, that we all throw in the towel and stop playing stupid dictionary games. Your definition is right! Way to go! You win!
