Atheism is the default position.

I'm going to try my best to, once again, explain why my opponent is wrong. My opponent is insisting that in order to not believe something, you have to either accept of reject. "There are certainly gray areas between strict belief and non-belief: degrees to which we accept or reject a truth" "accept" vs "reject" THAT IS THE FALSE DICHOTOMY that my opponent denies he made. As I mentioned before, the real true dichotomy is "accept" vs "not accept" Atheism is the default position because, If you don"t make a choice to believe, you end up not believing. That"s why it"s not a choice. There is no justification required. Atheism is not a belief. It"s a non-belief. You can"t turn your back on something you don"t believe to exist. If there is nothing, which direction do you turn your back to? A good way to explain this is with the American justice system. When somebody is accused of a crime, it"s the prosecution"s burden of proof to prove him/her guilty. Nobody is required to prove they are innocent. We are all considered innocent until proven guilty. That"s the default position no matter if we committed the crime or not. It"s just like the default position to not believe in a God, no matter if there is a God or not. The jury can either decide that there is enough evidence to claim guilt or they can say there isn"t enough evidence, in which case they claim "not guilty". No jury is required to claim somebody innocent. If there is exculpatory evidence that can prove innocence, like a solid alibi, the person shouldn"t be on trial to begin with. They can be found "not guilty" and still have committed the crime. (OJ Simpson might be a good example of that) So, guilty vs innocent is a FALSE DICHOTOMY, just like accept vs reject is a FALSE DICHOTOMY. You are either guilty or not guilty (as opposed to being innocent). You either accept or not accept (as opposed to reject). My opponent insists that an Atheist "rejects" God. NOT TRUE! An Atheist just "doesn't accept" God. Big difference. When my opponent says "There are certainly gray areas between strict belief and non-belief: degrees to which we ACCEPT or REJECT a truth" He is talking about Agnosticism, not Atheism. Many people think an Agnostic is the same as being an Atheist. There is a difference and they are not mutually exclusive. You can, in fact, be an Agnostic Atheist. You can also be an Agnostic Theist. The opposite of Agnostic is Gnostic. You can be a Gnostic Atheist or you can be a Gnostic Theist. Agnosticism is based on what you know, while Atheism is based on what you believe. In order to be an Agnostic, you have to admit you don"t know for sure. Since nobody can prove that there is no God and not enough evidence exists that can prove that there is a God, it would be fair to say that every person who values evidence, is an Agnostic. Sure, there are people who claim they know that there is, or isn"t, a God. That would make them Gnostic. If you claim you know for sure, you"d need evidence to back that claim up. Atheism is the lack of the belief in a God. If you believe in a God, you are a Theist. If you lack the belief in a God, you are an Atheist. If you don"t believe there is a God and claim you know there isn"t a God, you are a Gnostic Atheist. If you don"t believe there is a God, but admit you don"t know for sure, you are an Agnostic Atheist. If you do believe in a God and admit you aren"t sure, you are an Agnostic Theist. If you believe there is a God and you claim you know for sure, you are a Gnostic Theist. Most Atheists are critical thinkers and rely on evidence. Without evidence, you can"t know for sure. That"s why most Atheists are also Agnostic. There are Atheists who actually do claim they know for sure that there is no God, so not all Atheists are Agnostic. My opponent said "If non-belief is a conclusion, then it cannot be the default state of a person. " That's right. IF NON-BELIEF IS A CONCLUSION. The thing IS, NON-BELIEF IS NOT A CONCLUSUION, no matter how hard my opponent wants to say it is. If you are a non-chess player, you don't have to justify being a non-chess player. You were born not knowing how to play chess and you may never have given it any thought. So where's the conclusion? A non-chess player is the default position. Until you decide to learn how to play chess, you are a non-chess player. It works for anything. If you don't speak Chinese, did you decide not to speak Chinese? NO! Do you have to justify why you don't speak Chinese? No, you just don't. You never decided to learn it! A non-Chinese speaker is the default position. If you don't believe in God, you don't decide not to believe in God. You can decide to believe in God, but before you decide to believe in God, you already are a non-believer by default. You have to start out being an Atheist. .. the default position. You have to start out being a non-chess player. Nobody is born a chess player. you don't have to reject Chess in order to be a non-chess player. You don't even have to know the game exists! You have to start out being a non-Chinese speaker. Nobody is born a Chinese speaker. you don't have to reject Chinese in order to be a non-Chinese speaker. You don't even have to know the language exists! You have to start out being an Atheist, Nobody is born a Theist. you don't have to reject God in order to be a Atheist. You don't even have to know the concept of God exists! A non-anything is the default position. My opponent was to claim that "Atheism (as evidenced by the suffix "ism") is an ideology. " Atheism is NOT an ideology. The prefix "a" means "NON". NON-THEISM (Atheism) is not an ideology just like non-communism is not a political view. Being a non-Communist is the default position, just like being an Atheist is the default position. It's not that difficult.