Atheism is a broad tent so yeah you sometimes find atheists that believe in the supernatural (like say ghosts, or even concept of the soul, etc). Personally I don't get it, but whatever. Not aware of any term to separate them other than maybe "credulous", LOL.

Well said and I subscribe to your sense of atheism.

That said, I cannot tolerate an opposing view. There is nothing in the human psyche I can understand in that regard. It isn't so much a position of contriving truth from the ether of thought. It's the clear and present deflection of logic to a safe distance as we desperately hope and beg for purpose. In that agonizing hope, conceived, sired and dwelling only in desire, our affliction is to willingly accept imagination as some sanctified truth in the face of the historicity of fallacies clearly alive and admitted to in each and every dispelled myth. The expansive magnitude of that provenance cannot be denied or hidden.

In other words, we know we're lying to ourselves, have a few thousand years of evidence to such, and yet are still grappling with it in some psychically hobbling form. I don't understand that.

But, I do understand fear and that is the vehicle of theism. I can dig that and that's why my intolerance is relegated to only any form of argument theists portend to be of a logical nature. I can tolerate and allow for their fear-driven motivation. No one should live in fear and I would be a poor merchant to seek to sell it.

I have yet to meet a so-called "atheist" that believes in the supernatural, but I personally don't believe in anything besides reality, and that such "supernatural" claims either can be or will eventually be able to be explained with science (naturalism). The dictionary definition of atheism is strictly the non-belief in a god or any god, but I am compelled to want to broaden it to all forms of the supernatural (ghosts, witches, etc.). I don't think that somebody who believes that there is a ghost living in their house moving moving things randomly can be called an atheist, per se. For example, if you're a naturalist (as many atheists are and should be), how do you explain the "ghosts" or "spirits"? Do they just disappear after somebody dies? Do souls exist? Where do they exist? There are too-many questions to be answered, and someone that calls themselves an "atheist" and claims to believe in the supernatural is not a very good atheist.

I might be wrong here, but by definition an Atheist is "Someone who lacks belief in a Deity or the theory of Intelligent Design."

Therefore, even if people are Atheists, that doesn't mean (for the part of those) that they don't believe in "supernatural" things such as Fairies, Cyclops or even Unicorns, but of course, excluding God.

I've been pondering alternative terms for the different 'camps' of atheists out there. I mean you already have Implicit and Explicit and Negative and Positive and Weak forms of Atheism (sheesh), but then you have to account for the things that you brought up, such as belief in paranormality, etc. I mean these days you can't even say "scientist," because there's actually plenty of Christian "scientists" and plenty of non-theist scientists who are superstitious, e.g. What kind of term can we come up with? I mean, I wouldn't say that I'm an 'aspiritual' atheist, though I don't buy into much "spirituality," but only because I become quite in-spired when in nature or in great discussion, that my "spirits" are lifted. So that doesn't quite work. 'Amystical,' perhaps? But that doesn't quite cover it, either, because someone can believe in ghosts and not believe in aspects of mysticism. What a conundrum. Too bad the term 'materialistic' has been appropriated already, because I think it works nicely. Maybe it can be seen as different in meaning when used as a qualifier for the term 'atheism,' however. I'd like that. I.e., not to say "materialistic" atheist, but maybe 'materialist' atheist.

I think it is simply the term "supernatural" that is the problem. The very word indicates something you have no understanding of but you need to give it a title anyway. I don't ascribe a title to something if I don't have any understanding of what it is and to say a thing is supernatural is just doing that.

I once saw a UFO and then later identified it as the ISS, but that's the closest I've ever come to finding something intriguing that I couldn't explain. I didn't run and tell somebody that I saw something extraordinary as a first objective, I asked questions until I could explain what I saw.

When I was a teenage atheist I was fascinated with Erich Von Daniken's book "Chariots of the Gods". It complimented my non-belief in a Judeo-Christian creation myth. A few years later I became a more practiced skeptic and saw through that nonsense. I now consider Von Daniken a racist. He was plugging the notion that primitive brown people were not smart enough to build pyramids without help from an alien super-intelligence.

Hi, everyone! I'm new to this forum and I'm really happy to have found it. I've learned English just for fun, therefore my vocabulary is limited, so please, be gentle ;)

I agree with Truett. I've met many people who call themselves "atheists", but they believe in supernatural bs, e.g. New Age stuff. I don't think they should be called "atheists". I'd keep the word "believers" for them, because they keep believing in something beyond rationality and without evidence. How about "non-religious" believers?

Beautiful death, vague evidence in spirits? Really? I think you should contend that.