What is this “you only think you’re an atheist” garbageness? I’ve had people say this to me on many occasions and I’m not really sure what they’re getting at.

Are they trying to tell me that I believe in something, some sort of god thing or other, without being aware of it? Because that’s absurd. Literally. “Utterly or obviously senseless, illogical, or untrue; contrary to all reason or common sense; laughably foolish or false: an absurd explanation.”

Maybe I suffer from multiple personality disorder and no one has bothered to tell “me” about it. In that case I would argue that they’re going to have to be more specific in their use of the word “you”.

Maybe they imagine that I don’t know what the word “atheist” means. If I thought that a peanut butter sandwich was a person who is approximately 5’9″ tall and habitually wears socks I would be pretty sure that I was a peanut butter sandwich. But I don’t think I’m wrong about what an atheist is.

(I think that the sort of person who says things to me like “you only think you’re an atheist” is much more likely to need to have a few words defined for them. Especially the words “atheist” and “agnostic”. I think that saying something like “you only think you’re an atheist” to me is likely to cause any conversation to degrade into me ranting at you, making use of supplementary charts.)

Maybe they’re a philosopher, in which case, I’m going to go take a nap, and they can blather on about the nature of knowledge to somebody else. Thanks. If I can’t objectively know anything stop bothering to try to teach me that I can’t objectively know anything because I can’t objectively know about it no matter how hard you try, and I will only continue to say ridiculous and flippant things like this to you until you shut up, anyway.

But no, really. What the fuck information are they trying to convey with a statement like “you only think you’re an atheist”. Can anybody tell me?