This one always amuses me, and which is why I stand firmly in the "have not made a choice, feel no need to make a choice" camp as described by Apology earlier.
Comparing Christianity, or Islam, or Buddhism, or Hinduism, or many other religious beliefs to believing in unicorns or invisible bunnies seems to ignore, whether implicitly or explicitly, the social inertia (or you could say baggage) of the history of the belief in terms of cultural history. They aren't really comparable concepts outside of a vacuum where no other factors but the belief exist. Now, fifty or a hundred or a thousand years from now, if there is a Church of the Invisible Bunny or the Unicorn Orthodox Church that exists, then I could see them as being not only comparable but in fact extremely similar in terms of holding a faith. There seems to be no rhetorical logic behind the argument except to commit the logical fallacy of reduction to absurdity.
Reductio ad absurdum is not a logical fallacy. It is a logical argument that assumes a claim, demonstrates that the claim leads to an absurdity, and concludes that the assumption must therefore be incorrect.
In the case of the "unicorn" argument, the claim is that it is reasonable to believe in a god for which there is no empirical evidence. The absurdity that it leads to is that it is equally reasonable to believe in other beings, such as unicorns, for which there is no empirical evidence.
Ignoring the "social inertia" of religious beliefs is the very
point of the comparison, because "social inertia" is not a good reason for adopting a belief. Evidence is, and indeed, the evidence for the existence of unicorns is every bit as good as that for the existence of god (according to most traditional definitions of "god," anyway). The mere fact that millions of people have held a belief for thousands of years does not in itself make that belief likely to be true.
I've never understood why atheism would want to incorporate people into their group that clearly don't want to be a part of that group, unless it's to make up for their lack of numbers.
No one has asked you to join a group of which you don't want to be a part. They've simply asked you, "do you believe in god?" Since you have said more than once in this very thread that you "do not believe God exists," that, like it or not, makes you an atheist
by definition.
Yes, you could then go on to say more about your non-belief, such as that you are not completely sure. That's a completely reasonable position, and one with which I think most here would agree.
But that's not the question that was asked.
To use the analogy you drew in a previous post, the question you are being asked is, "Do you like men?" You are answering, "No, I am bisexual." Your answer is contradictory. Being bisexual means you
do like men; it just happens to mean some other things in addition to liking men. Similarly, being agnostic means that you do not have a belief in god. Yes, it means some other things in addition to your non-belief, but it still entails non-belief--atheism.
).