In this featured article by Carson Weitnauer of the Reasons for God blog, Weitnauer persuasively deals with modern atheists who have attempted to re-define atheism as simply a "lack of belief in God" and explains what the consequences are for doing so.
He writes:
"Many atheists claim that the proper definition of atheism is, as Austin Cline of the Atheism channel on About.com states, “simply the absence of belief in gods.”
But if atheism is a lack of belief and not a positive affirmation of what is real, good, and true, then the atheist immediately runs into serious problems."
You can find the article here. Wintery Knight also has a great post on this topic that can be found here.
Courage and Godspeed,
Chad
Comments
"none of these beliefs are part of what it means to be an “atheist.”
Why should they have to be?
"So if an atheist believes in the importance of logic, those beliefs are only accidentally or incidentally connected to their lack of belief in theism"
Why do they need to be connected? I might as well complain that your lack of belief in 911 conspiracy theories doesn't help you bake an apple pie.
"we are asked to believe that this is really what the atheist believes about the world?"
You're not being asked to believe anything. The word atheist only tells you that the person isn't a theist. A dozen atheists could all disagree with each other on virtually every subject bar their lack of theism. If you want to know what any particular atheist believes, go ahead and ask them.
Maybe there is a slight connection, though. Lack of belief in God might clear away some mental fog, and that's why many atheists tend to be rational, humanist, materialists. But the connection doesn't hold necessarily; it could just be incidental.