I'm puzzled as to why a movement is even a bad thing.

Women's suffrage.

Civil Rights

Anti-War movements

Environmental movements.

Bowel movements

Lots of movements are for good causes.  If the best argument against the so-called "new atheism" is that it's a movement, I will sleep soundly at night.

Movements arent always good either. Facist movements and theocratic movements. But asking theists not to call us facists simply for saying, "Hey, we exist too" is like expecting Elvis not to eat that double cheeseburgur topped with peanut buter and bannanas.

(Read with Elvis voice in mind)"Thank you, thank you very much. Elvis has left the building to go have a bowel movement. I gotta hunka hunka burning fallacies I have to dump in the jon. Cant forget my barbitchuates and deoderent pills." 

Yes! Killing the atheist movement little by little THROUGH EMAIL CORRESPONDANCE!!!

From your email, I'm going to assume you are a believer. 

Ironically, I would say that it's you who doesn't believe in anything.

You believe "X is true". I believe that "X is not true".

That doesn't mean I don't believe in anything; that only means that I disagree with you, however passionately I might do so. 

I believe in the positive effects that result from teaching a person to think for himself. I believe in improving the intellectual environment of our world. I believe that doing so improves the entire well-being of our country and our planet.

Believe in God, on the other hand (namely the christian god), is a stinking pond where the only form of progress is to become stinkier, more stagnant, and more covered with slime.

And for future reference, it might be a good idea to try some actual arguments instead of entertaining yourself with lousy word games. Otherwise, people are just going to laugh at you, and you are going to deserve it, because you are an ass.

Or maybe you could just rethink your witty little stab.

Theists may disagree about what is the true nature of God, or whether there are multiple gods. But you cannot rightly say we are an "atheist" towards one God, but not another. Atheist means one who rejects the existence of a God (or gods). It doesn't mean one who rejects some gods but not others. Theists can believe in Thor, Zeus, Ra or Poseidon. If I reject Thor, Zeus or Ra but think Poseidon exists then I'm not an "atheist" towards the others. That's just confusing what the word "atheist" means. I deny the proposition which claims they exist, but there's no atheism involved in that

Consider if we had a word for denying the exists of any humans. An ahumanist. Let's say I believe that my human friend Roy exists, but I reject the existence of his imaginary friend Barry. Am I right to say that I'm an "ahumanist" with reference to Barry, even though we defined the term ahumanist to mean one who believes there's no credible evidence of any human existence? When clearly I do believe some humans exist? Your claim is that you see no credible evidence for believing any deities exist. Disagreements about what is the nature of God, or whether more than one God exists, has nothing to do with atheism.

Why I'm bothering saying this - the reasons I reject Zeus are not the same as why you do. I believe that a creator God exists, for reasons besides what I find in the Bible. I look at ancient cultures and think "they were right to believe a creator God existed, whom they called Zeus or Ra. But they were wrong about many of the qualities and sayings they attribute to Him". It is entirely uncontroversial to say that most humans have an inclination to believe there is something spiritual. I look at other religions and can empathise with that urge. I don't reject their gods for the same reasons you do.

In other words, if I took it one step further and rejected God as Christians define Him, I *wouldn't* find myself in the same place as you. You don't just take it "one god further". You reject the idea that there is any God or gods to be described at all. Rejecting "one god further" would not necessarily entail an abandonment of theism.

I have to agree it's wrong to use the word "atheist" for anyone who does believe in any god or gods, however, we do "just take it one god further." You believe in one god (the Christian one) and deny that any others exist. We deny he exists, too. This assumes you believe in and don't consider the devil, angels, etc gods (by many ancient definitions they would qualify.)

Exactly why I object to the word "atheism". Why does it even need to exist? (Answer: To provide theists with a mechanism to spread the illusion of a theistic "moral high-ground" and an "us vs. them" mentality).

*reaches in pocket for two more cents*

Typically, when I think of the word 'belief', I usually refer to just half* its definition (* not half of the strings you'd find in a dictionary, but half of the instances that definition includes). Beliefs are accepted whether or not their is evidence in they're favor (consistent with the usual defintion), but I usually am only thinking of only those that are accepted without evidence, and I call those 'facts' beliefs. 

I suppose a better word for me should then be 'delusion', but many religious people throw the word 'belief' around in the same way that I end up using it. So when someone asks me if I believe in evolution, in keeping with the dictionary definition I suppose I could just say 'yes', but actually I end up not doing it that way, or make the attempt thereof, and rather I say 'I accept that evolution is real'.

See, I use the word 'accept' for 'facts that are accepted on evidence', and 'belief' for those that aren't. In that regard, I can't say 'I believe the earth is round', for instance. OK, so am I wrong to use the word 'belief' exclusively like this? If there is a better word, I would like to know it...

Maybe the word 'delusional' isn't always correct either; because then, would it be correct to speak of children being 'delusional about the earth being round', since they believe it to be the case, but without evidence? Again, I would like to know of a word that is a 'belief' 'accepted without evidence' (dictionaries typically don't give you a lexicon of definitions, but of only words...)

In keeping with my use of the word 'belief', I suppose it's safe to say most skeptics are without beliefs. There is evidence to support that two working hands does more evidence that a thousand lips praying, for example. Yet again, if there is a better word... thanks in advance! 

I have a typo:

There is evidence to support that two working hands does more work than a thousand lips praying, for example.

Not 'evidence that'.

Jake commands through his servant Sapient, and his humble servants obey:

Thank you, Mister Webster. You're correct. You're not atheist. You do, however, reject thousands of gods, and believe only in one. In essence, you are different from us only in that you believe one fairy tale out of thousands, and we reject them all. I commend you on your powers of logic. You've completely derailed a thread by trivializing the main point and arguing over an inconsequential colloquial usage of a word.

This is correct, insofar as it would be silly for you and I to spend the afternoon arguing over what the horns of unicorns are made of. As an aunicornist, it's pretty pointless for us to discuss, isn't it?

Another paragraph, and another deflection from the point. Let me make it abundantly clear. People who believe in a god (or many, if they happen to be polytheistic) don't see the irony in their own position. Without so much as a "How do you do" they flippantly dismiss literally thousands of deities, and then they call us arrogant when we dismiss theirs.

While this might be true, I don't recall you mentioning criteria for why one rejects a deity. I didn't realize that I'm not a true atheist if I reject god-belief for the wrong reason.

Well, that's really awesome for you. My crazy aunt believes that her quartz crystals channel chi through her chakras and it makes her rheumatism go away, and not just because she saw it on an infomercial.

Yes, it is controversial. We have never encountered a culture where religion was not passed on to children by their parents when they were too young to make a rational decision about it, so we don't have a control against which to judge our current culture.

Your ability to nitpick an inconsequential point is truly staggering. Let me try one more time to make the salient point. Your god story looks exactly the same as every other god story -- supernatural, miracles, laws, reward, punishment, etc. It was undeniably not the first god story, nor has it been the last. Yet, you believe it. What makes us different from you is that we believe in exactly one less god than you do. What makes you similar to us is that you reject thousands of gods -- even ones you've never heard anything about!

Could you step back from the dictionary for a minute and see if you can grasp the content of the point?

Yeah. I know. We know. We all know that you believe in the god concept and we don't. We're talking about the fact that you believe a particular god story, even though it's exactly like all the others.