"Atheism traditionally meant without a god not without a belief in god. Later schools of thought modified it to the later. According to the limited reading I've done on the subject anyway. Studying this leaves me a bit cold so I give the problem its appropriate measure of time."
Limited reading, eh? Well, if by "later schools of thought" you mean those of the late 1800s {"old tyme atheism" according to Rushdie and others] then we have this:
If you look up 'atheism' in the dictionary, you will probably find it defined as the belief that there is no God. Certainly many people understand atheism in this way. Yet many atheists do not, and this is not what the term means if one considers it from the point of view of its Greek roots. In Greek 'a' means 'without' or 'not' and 'theos' means 'god.' From this standpoint an atheist would simply be someone without a belief in God, not necessarily someone who believes that God does not exist. According to its Greek roots, then, atheism is a negative view, characterized by the absence of belief in God.
-- [Michael Martin, "Atheism: A Philosophical Justification", p. 463. Temple University Press, 1990.]