Fairly often, atheists are inundated with improper understanding of what atheism is by theists. We’re consistently told that atheists “Hate God” or theists cannot divorce the understanding of not believing in a God with believing there is no God. For each position, there is nuance, much of which is either dismissed, not recognized, or refused to accept in entirety.
When corrected on the former, that atheists do not “Hate God” in the same way a theist “Loves God,” we cannot actually hate something we do not believe exists, however we can hate the character of such a thing. The example I tend to give is hating Sauron or Dolores Umbridge; neither atheist nor theist believes in such a thing is a real being, rather a character, and we can hate the character. This does not mean that the emotional response to them means we believe they exist.
The latter is simply put as well: I may not believe aliens exist because we lack evidence to substantiate their existence, but this doesn’t mean that I believe they do not exist. I justify this position by pointing out the vastness of the Universe, amount of planets which can support life, and also make note that there’s no playbook by which life must occur, where, how much, and how sentient. It is likely that alien life exists elsewhere in the Universe, but given we’ve no evidence, I do not believe it does (or doesn’t).
Nuance exists in each position.