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Turn it on it's ear, and you can see how this concept is kind of silly. True, "atheist" indicates "does not believe in a supernatural deity." But if the question is whether or not you believe in a supernatural deity, or what religion you are, the easiest answer, and one that everyone understands, is "I am an atheist."
Just as we would not call a Christian a "Flying Spaghetti Monster Rejectionist," because such an answer is needlessly long as well as imparting less information than we want, I would not call an atheist a "pearlist," because I would then have to sit there explaining what a pearlist is, all to reach the inevitable followup question "so. . .you're saying he doesn't believe in a god?" to which the answer is "yes," at which point I may as well have said that in the first place.
Additionally, atheism IS a belief, not a lack of belief. The atheist /believes/ that there is no god. He has no proof, any more than the theist has proof of whatever god he happens to believe in, because you can't prove a conceptual negative. The closest classification we have for someone that has no belief would be strong-agnostic, which is someone who only believes that he does not know whether or not there is a god, and who believes that there is no way for mankind to find out.
What it all boils down to is the same problem inherent with political correctness. In attempting to "clarify" language so that no one can possibly get offended, political correctness left us with saying things like "he or she," "sanitation engineer," "differently-abled" (euphemism for "disabled," and a lie. If someone can't walk, they are not "differently" abled, they are "dis" abled),
In short, we have a bunch of people running around trying to de-clarify language in the name of, in the case of political correctness, the unreachable and foolish goal of not ever offending anyone, and in the case of this. . .Pearlist. . Well, I really don't know what his goal is. An atheist and whatever he says he is this week are two different things. An atheist is someone who does not believe in a god. That's it. No more.
His Pearlist invention requires not only the apparent lack of belief in a god (though there is room for debate there), but also the belief in and understanding of science and the scientific method. So even though Pearlism is apparently built upon atheism, it is quite different from atheism, just as Christianity is different from Judaism even though the former is built upon the latter.
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