Every believer is an nonbeliever really
But that is not an argument for or against belief, more a comment on human nature.
Not quite either, my full idea was as below:
Every believer is an nonbeliever really. If someone is a committed Hindu they are nonbelievers of Christianity or Islam or Taoism etc
Muslims are nonbelievers in Judaism, Buddhism, Christianity, Taoism, etc.
Christians tend to be nonbelievers in Islam, Taoism, Hinduism, Islam, Bahai, Buddhism, etc.
Does it take effort to disbelieve religions you don't follow? Why?
AFAIK atheists just don't believe stuff. That doesn't take them especial effort. They don't strive to not believe it.
If they did do they really count as an an nonbeliever?
What I meant was, everybody disbelieves something.
Atheists just disbelieve all of it.
More simply said is the old chestnut that atheists tend to repeat "I just believe in one fewer god than you"
However I'm going a little further than that - in the sense that I am going into the cognition or thought process a bit-- I really do not think it should be so darn hard for believers to understand nonbelievers, if they really think think it through, because die hard believers ALL DISBELIEVE SOME THEISTIC CLAIM. Almost all orthodox believers think THEIR religion is RIGHT or TRUE and other religions are WRONG or FALSE.
Atheists, for many and varied reasons, agree with all theists on the particular point of what theists think about other religions: That they are FALSE, Atheists just get the idea into their head that ALL religions are false.
I think I vaguely remember something my mom and either my aunt, or a friend of theirs, dealing with when I was quite little:
They had several acquaintances [I think they were all former coworkers from the grocery store or something] of different faith backgrounds -- Catholic, Baptist, Jehovah Witness, Pentecostal (with the associated practices), a couple of New Age tarot horoscope Ouija board numerology crystal tea leaf sorts, a Pueblo with some traditional practice of some kind, and then I think maybe there was a Mormon. Maybe there was even someone from an Asian tradition. And of course they all knew about my heterodox grandfather and he knew about them.
Oddly I feel somewhat confident about the identities as I remember my mom talking about it and what my mom said, and I was fascinated by exotic things like religious belief, but my memory of what played out is little vague and less clear cut, though I seem to recall that each of those people would say to my mom and her friend that
all of the others were "into scary demonic stuff" and therefore more or less demons. (Yep not only accusing the New Agers but Catholics Protestants and Heterodox all pointing fingers at one another, yep)
Now
if I recall correctly, my mom and her friend decided they agreed with all of them and felt all of them were into "scary demonic stuff" and all of them were demonic. (whatever they thought that meant, and whatever that would "really" mean)
I am not an atheist myself, but I apparently play one on social media and discussion boards, because I find nonbelievers totally comprehensible even though I do not fully agree with their conclusions (I find atheism too comprehensive and too confident, but I believe also that most classical theists/practitioners of particular religions are equally
waaaayyyy too confident in their beliefs)
Agnostics are perhaps the most intellectually honest of the lot, more honest than me, myself a sort of vague general theist because of... why? I can't give a solid thesis supporting why I am a theist, do I just want to be? Why? What is it about theistic claims I believe? The overconfidence I've just always heard? Why does that convince me? Is that even why? I can't say.
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