However, after having been betrayed by this person who claimed to hear the voice of God most nights and called herself "one of the few true Christians," I am torn by my beliefs.
Context is everything. What is the context of faith in YOUR life; this is how we establish what I think of as the ground state.
"To sustain the belief that there is no God, atheism has to demonstrate infinite knowledge. Because their declaration is tantamount to saying, "I have infinite knowledge that there is no being in existence with infinite knowledge."
For the faithful, the ground state is faith. For atheists the ground state is that there is nothing.
The quote Stoic provided is what I used to think was the best argument that my own atheism was faith, but that was only because I had contextualized my "faith" as a virtual crusade to "enlighten" my elementary school peers in
reality. The idea that you KNOW something, and that only you seem to be able to educate everyone else is very empowering when you are a child (and yes, for the record, I was "that kid," the nerd, and the fat kid
).
I grew up going to our local Episcopal Church sometimes with my mother, who goes more for "spiritual reasons" than a desire to adhere to scripture. Dad, in as many words, "didn't care, or feel the need."
When I was five, I was on an Indian Guides trip fishing with Dad. We'd caught and gutted a fish before, and I was fine with it because I was hungry and I wanted to eat it. :tongue2_1 No big deal; death was part of life. But today, as somebody else's Dad started to gut a fish, and I remarked that I liked fishing, but it sucked for the fish. And he said, "Well, God put fish on Earth so we could eat them," I'm sure which was to try and make me feel better about the whole thing.
Instead, having been kind of iffy on the arbitrary and, "because I said so" nature that I'd experienced God in pre-school and the occasional Sunday school I'd attended, it was then and there that I was sure that even if God WAS real, that He was mean and I wanted nothing to do with Him. If the sole purpose of the fish was to be eaten, then what was my purpose according to God?
The absolute-ness of it was disconcerting, NOT comforting. I had not been well educated in "God's love," so all I saw were a bunch of arbitrary rules and inconsistancies, and now mandatory death and suffering! 
Later in the day, when Dad and I started to gut the fish I caught, I just lost it. I mean, when you are at a stage where you still identiy with your toys and stuffed animals, the fish writhing there can be pretty damn human. In hindsight, the whole thing is fairly amusing to me.
I don't think your first interaction or understanding confines you to a given ground state, but I think the strongest one does.
Today, I'm much more tempered in my lack of religion. In fact, I think anyone who runs around publically decrying religion is wasting their breath, preaching to the choir, or exploiting the huge market in anti-religion (the 3rd option I've no qualms with).
My atheism is comfortable with itself, not really caring what anyone else does, because I know it gives them comfort. And I no longer believe my atheism is a faith, because I know that science is an evolving thing, that we can try and explain most everything, but that we can't say "for sure." I'm ok with not knowing; I'm actually more comfortable knowing there's some unknown than that I'm on a set track.
I only engage in "intellectual arguments" on the subject, because I'm interested in trying to find the truths around the matter. Right now I'm focused more on the "why," than the "which, what, or how." It isn't as simple as, "religion is necessary," because ethics exist with or without a moral code. Morals just simplify things. And it's dishonest to say, "Religion kills more people than it helps," because a) that's simply non-quantifiable, and b) people are gonna kill people no matter what.
Propstop, if that wasn't what you were looking for I apologize, but I hope it was in some ways useful.
