The Thought System
But about God that process of systematizing one's beliefs is inherent in the subject. It requires many more processes of logic—and acceptance or denial of religious faith—before one has a belief “system” about God. So the distinction about “believing no god exists,” versus “not believing a god exists” is more than a slip of the English language.
It would not be acceptable if a woman said she believes tables don't exist. We would question how she could come to such a belief.
It should not be presumed that when a person says he “believes there is no god,” that he means he is atheist. A belief that there is no god, taken literally, would really define the agnostic.
But for the atheist who by definition cannot have a belief about a deity, that slip of the tongue is only that: a slip of the tongue. If he has thought about this oddity in the English language, he will argue against you when you point out his “belief.”
Otherwise, he will agree, not having seen the error in the semantics.
If a theist says, "You say don't believe God exists, then you probably believe there is the possiblity He does exist, don't you?"
Yet how many people (besides myself) are willing to state unequivocally that there is no god or gods? It may be this unwillingness to make such a definitive statement that puts most atheists closer to thinking like agnostics than like someone who is sure.
The Epistemic Semantics
There is a large distinction to be made in this semantic difference. You can choose to believe that something exists. On the other hand, you may have a total lack of belief in that same thing without making the attempt not to state "the thing does not exist."
But god exists as a concept, if not as a reified (empirical) yet supernatural being, for all persons in all cultures and in all languages. Therefore, the contrary of "god", i.e., the epistemic opposite to a theologically conclusive deity, is metaphysical naturalism. In that epistemic system there can be for the atheist nothing but a denial of the existence of anything of a supernatural origin.
A formalized epistemology is not a belief system, yet it may contain some beliefs where it finds no empirical or intellecual resistance to an idea such as a god, or where it actually allows for beliefs of faith to replace reason (where "faith" is taken to mean the negation of "reason."
In the book "Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy," Edward Craig writes: "The Medieval Church wrested the keys away from the pagan philosophers; making the fatal mistake of trying to reconcile faith and and reason, it ended up subordinating Scripture to reason. Now the keys are being claimed by science..."
"Naturalism holds that the universe requires no supernatural cause and government..." The Academy of Metaphysical Naturalism's "Strong" Definition of Naturalism
Semantics vs. Perception and Conception
Such negation of reason is negation of existence when "existence" is defined as the content of a human consciousness. Certainly there is more to existence than what is known; but what is "known" is that many things in existence are not known and that a metaphysical valuation must be placed on what is possible within the unknown.
In a consistent epistemic system, nothing unknown could defy or deny the content of consciousness. Existence and one's consciousness are irreducible primaries. Outside of the axioms that "things exist" and that you are "conscious" of them.
Those "things that exist" are perceived, and one may conceptualize god, but one may not "perceive" god when the distinction is made between perception being empirically induced, and conceputalization being intellectually induced.
In the absence of a "revealed revelation" as a direct perception which most people will never have in their lives, they are left with the conceptualization of the existence of god.
And that is not a matter of semantics. It is a matter of consciousness of percepts vs. consciousness of concepts. The only means of perceiving god is to have a revealed revelation, and as Thomas Paine wrote, such a revelation is revelation only to the person who had it; no one else is committed to accepting it.
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