bagong

Ah - I thought you were saying Buddhism wasn't atheist.

From the Buddhist perspective, the defining mark of ii'shvaravaada ("theism") is not the assertion of II'shvara as a personal & transcendent God in the Abrahamic mode, but simply any assertion that there exists a state/entity that is 1. unchanging, 2. self-existent, and 3. perfectly blissful. I think that's a useful set of minimum characteristics the theos in "theism" should posess, even outside of the Indian cultural context. By this definition, most streams of Hindu thought could be defined as theistic.

Dharma

the western definition of atheism so far doesn't possess that definition and thus can't so far challenge Hindus/Taoists with the same brand of atheistic arguments used against "abrahamic religions", which is why I clearly defined "theism" as it relates to these different cultures.

Theology comes from "theos" which is Greek for God. It would depend if the Greeks were Monists, which I don't think they were, but I admit I am not a Greek scholar on Greek religions...so I am not sure if they had any singular state of being.

So the question for western atheists is : is a singular state of self being (Brahma/Taoism)atheistic in the western defintion of atheism?

I think that's a hard one to call.