Talk:Atheism/Archive 25

Doesn't this mean basically the same thing?

"...This definition includes as atheists all nontheists, both those who believe that there are no gods, and those who merely don't believe that gods exist."

If someone believes there are no gods, then obviously they don't believe gods exist. If someone believes gods don't exist, then they don't believe there are gods. Granted, technically you could say that the former could believe that even the idea of gods doesn't exist, but I'm sure hardly anyone would dispute the fact that some people believe in them. Could someone tell me exactly in what way these two are different? Ralphael 02:57, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

This is a distinction that has been explored in books on theism (and atheism) and in the discussions here - read the archives for all the gory details. Basically, "atheist" and "nontheist" both mean "not a theist," but some use "nontheist" as an alternative to "atheist" which they take to mean someone who denies the existence of god(s). The term "weak atheist" (and "implicit atheist") can cover those who "don't believe gods exist" if they are unfamiliar with theism - these people do not "believe that gods do not exist" because they don't know what gods are. That's just one example, so read the archives and you will get the whole picture. MFNickster 04:18, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

Basically, you missed out the converse: yes, if someone believes there are no gods, then they don't believe gods exist. But if someone merely doesn't believe gods exist, then this doesn't necessarily mean they believe there are no gods. Mdwh 23:31, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

I think it is ambiguously expressed, though I also know it's one of those things that's tough to express precisely. Say we define 'to believe proposition X' as 'to hold X to be true', and we also define 'to not belive X' as 'to hold X to be false'. If someone holds the proposition 'gods exist' to be false, this implies the person holds the proposition 'there are no gods' to be true (i.e. 'gods exist is false' implies 'gods do not exist is true'). And yes, I've seen this issue debated many a time. I think the statement "merely doesn't believe gods exist" is ambiguous. Perhaps "merely doesn't hold a belief regarding the existence of gods at all" would be better. Or does this lead to other problems? smhhms 09:40, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

I don't think it's safe to say that we define 'to not believe X' as 'to hold X to be false'. If anything, the extensive debate here has shown that definition to be inaccurate. The statement may be ambiguous, but our purpose here has been to clarify it (which I think we've done successfully). The only problem is when someone new comes along and challenges it yet again. MFNickster 19:13, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Saying "assert that there are no gods" rather than "believes that there are no gods" helps somewhat to clarify the difference, I think - I think it's clear that some atheists make that assertion, whilst others don't. Maybe "doesn't hold a belief" would also be better - I can't think of other problems that would create, and wouldn't object to that change. Mdwh 15:31, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Some people believe in UFOs. Others are adamant that there are none. Many people have no firm position on the issue - they do not believe one way or the other. It makes sense to say that not believing in UFOs is not the same as denying them. It's not exactly the same with gods, but there is some similarity. --JimWae 04:24, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

I just changed it to "This definition includes all nontheists: those who fail to believe in gods along with those who deny the existence of gods". I understand it to mean what was there before, but it's way more coherent. So, while it may not satisfy the philosophers, I say big deal to that as lay people can understand it better. As it stands, I think these 80kB with their block quotes and exploration of such nuances come very close to meriting template:technical. The Literate Engineer 05:20, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

Personally, I'm not so keen on "those who fail to believe in gods", though I think the statement as a whole is better than the previous one. smhhms 09:40, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

The problem with "fail" and "deny" is that they can, in my opinion, carry an implication that God does exist - it's a statement from the point of view of a theist. Mdwh 15:31, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

69.132.21.50 Non theism does not reject the morals of society based on the beliefs of others, whereas Atheism is as much a religeon as it is not. It is the belief that since God is not in them, that it cannot be in others, whereas Nontheism would be more closely related to Agnostisism, in that a truth or belief in gods(lowercase), God or Gods(both uppercase) or a naturalistic approach to the same discussion is not yet proven or disproven can and should not be discussed until a truthful and non-biased scientific approach to the discussion is studied. Non-theism should be more linked to Agnostisism in this right. 69.132.21.50

Where are you getting this? Do you have anything to back it up, or is this just your opinion? MFNickster 13:07, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

The key difference between atheism and notheism is that atheists may not believe in deity, but regard the issue as important. Nontheists deny that the issue is of any importance. 63.232.237.93 05:31, 3 January 2006 (UTC)Ryan

By whose logic? I'm not saying that's incorrect, but what is the basis for the distinction? I don't see any a priori reason that the terms shouldn't be synonymous. MFNickster 14:23, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

Agree with MFNickster, this is an encyclopedia article and the distinction should only be made if it is a fairly well established one. I don't see any a priori reason either, and whatever the case for the distinction might be, it would be preferable to state who made the case, particularly given it is in some dispute. smhhms 11:59, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

Atheism and Logic

Very large percentage of atheists consists of those people who have either studied logic or philosophy or excessive science. Logic is always flawed and half philosophy has the tendency to do introduce such concepts. Most of them also believe in Darwin's Theory of evolution which ultimately results in such kind of beliefs. How do they explain the concept of God even in the most ancient men we have found on this planet? PassionInfinity 08:02, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

• people were as stupid then, as they are now, only now there's TV to reinforce the idea, so it's more like organized stupidity--172.136.191.115 14:03, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

• I'm probably wasting my time, but since at least your attitude seems to be one of actual curiosity and interest, I'll try to explain some things. However, since this doesn't seem to relate directly to the article, but rather to understandings of philosophy and theism in general, it might be preferable that we move this to one of our talk pages if it's too continue. But first, I'll reply. It is true that many explicit atheists have studied logic, philosophy, and science to some extent, especially naturalistic ones. I'm not sure what the term "excessive science" means, though; that sounds to me like saying "excessive math" or "excessive history" or "excessive art". What's your meaning there?
• Also, please explain what you base the statement "Logic is always flawed" on; logic is the only widely-accepted tool by which people can analyze the validity of statements, so if you consider logic itself flawed, what do you use instead? Also, philosophy on its own does not necessarily tend to introduce atheism, any more than free, creative, open-minded thinking in general tends to introduce atheism. Remember that for thousands of years almost all western philosophers were theists; it's not philosophy itself that promotes atheism, but specific philosophies and arguments that many people find compelling rebuttals of theism. See philosophy of religion.
• The theory of evolution certainly does not automatically result in atheism, either. For one thing, there are many kinds of theism that perfectly well allow for life to have come about, for all intents and purposes, completely naturally, such as deism. Secondly, there are many millions of perfectly normal theists who believe in evolutionism for a variety of reasons; see evolutionary creationism. You might also want to keep your eyes on god of the gaps; why should it be necessary to ignore scientific discoveries about the universe just for you to hold your spiritual beliefs? Are you making sure to critically analyze both sides of the dispute, not just the one that's less familiar to you?
• As for your last statement: that a belief is ancient or common does not imply that it is true. What determines how truthful a statement of existence is is how closely it matches up with our direct, repeatable observations of reality today. There are many views on how theism is so common and so old in human beliefs, but none of the widely-accepted ones within the scientific community write off the sociological signifigance of theistic belief as being just "because it's true"; even if it is true, there's a lot more than that to understanding human social trends. As examples of reasons theism has always been so important: like superstitions in general, belief in deities allowed people to understand, explain, and believe that they could to some extent control or influence the uncontrollable, such as floods and disease; theism also was a useful way to give good, useful values to a large community of people and ensure that they will stick to those values for fear of being divine punishment—as these was the days before science or logic, there was no way to convince anyone of the rightness of your statements except through threats and promises, and theism was thus a very useful tool for ancient leaders who needed to keep a populace in check; and so on. I hope I answered your questions to your satisfaction. -Silence 14:18, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

PassionInfinity, are you saying that belief in logic will inevitably lead to belief in logic? -- Ec5618 14:34, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

First of all, please don't waste your time if you really think this dicussion is. Secondly, by "Logis is Flawed", I meant that if you stick to logic only, it results in lots of Paradoxes. Ec5618 is quite right althogh not perfect. Logic can be used to prove the existence of God as well as the non-existence of God! Really... what exactly does that mean? Should I blindly trust Logic? You cannot teach Einstein's theory of Relatively to a dog. Can you? No matter how logical you are. It is impossible. What is so difficult in understanding that there may be somethings even more complicated that our minds just can't grasp? This universe is even more complicated than any of us have ever imagined! I will talk about Darwinism and other things later. Those arguments come afterwards. Thanks! PassionInfinity 10:26, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

Since this conversation doesn't relate directly to the article, but to the principles of thought and communication and philosophy in general, I hope you don't mind if we move this to User talk:PassionInfinity, at least until we reach some sort of agreement or conclusion that would lead to a change to the Atheism page as it currently stands? Or at the very least, this probably would be more topical in Talk:Logic than here. -Silence 14:43, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

ignosticism and apatheism

I'm trying to avoid making any more edits myself, so I'll raise this here. I know that ignosticism and apatheism have wikipedia articles themselves, and so on that score they might as well be used here. But on the other hand it is not clear in the article that these terms command no wide acceptance and will simply not be found in any philosophical or theological dictionaries or encylopedias, and do not appear in the work of any of the major atheist writers and philosophers. Certainly to label logical positivism "ignostic" is extremely dubious. Not least because Wine's meaning of "don't know and don't care" rather fails to capture the seriousness of what the likes of Carnap and Ayer were saying. Since Wine, the word appears to have taken on a life of its own and is treated in Wikipedia and elsewhere as a full blown ideology. Apatheism is the same. If I were studying philosophy and wanted to use Wikipedia to get a quick overview of what atheism involved, this section would do me a severe disservice. --Dannyno 09:11, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

If it's not clear in the articles and sections that these terms are more "popular labels among atheists" than "popular terminology among philosophers", then isn't the solution to add that information, not to delete the articles or sections..? If it's that huge of a worry for you, shouldn't it be quite easy and simple to point out that those two terms aren't favored in academia? Where's the disservice?

As for logical positivism being labeled as ignosticism: I agree, that would be silly. And it would be equally silly to do the opposite. Logical positivism and ignosticism are not synonyms. If they were, ignosticism would be a redundant term (like "nontheism" is a redundant term using the broader definition of atheism). But logical positivism has much, much broader application than just to theistic questions. That's why I changed the section's name to "Atheism in logical positivism", prior to my finding an easier title in the form of ignosticism. -Silence 19:20, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

Am I the only one who thinks this article was written by a bunch of philosophy majors?

I mean seriously half the article reads like this "aeitheists say that don't believe in things that don't believe that say they beleive unless they do which is why they say when they do" <--This was either written by Yogi Bera or a Philosophy Major (ie, someone who is really stoned and at the same time hates rational thought with a Ronald Reagan inspired passion)--172.136.191.115 14:03, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

• If you have any suggestions for how the article might be improved, especially specific ones, I'm sure everyone here would love to hear them. The more easily understandable the article is to everyday people, the better, as long as no important content is lost. I also agree that atheism terminology is an incredibly complicated, contradictory, elaborate network of bizarre and silly semantic difficulties, by and large, and that wading through them all is a huge ordeal. I had to draw up a chart for myself of how all the types of atheism relate just to figure out how everything went together. -Silence 14:18, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

• Do you still have that chart? I'd love to take a look. If it's clear and pretty enough, we might even include it in the article. -- Ec5618 14:34, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, I'd be interested to see how it compares to the typology I set out under "typologies" just up the page a bit --Dannyno 14:55, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

I was actually considering putting it up last night, but I chickened out because there are still a few problems I'm trying to work out with it. If you have any advice, additions, or other changes, I'd love to hear them, so I can help gain a clearer understanding of the terminology we're using throughout Wikipedia. I put the chart on User:Silence/Atheism (where I used to have my rewrite of the atheism article) rather than here because I think I've already flooded this page too much already, eheh.. -Silence 15:40, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

Kind of like mine, then (only obviously not as good - joke :-) ). But rather confused as between strong and critical atheism. --Dannyno 09:48, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

Atheism as conscious rejection

I deleted this slab of text:

Atheism as conscious rejection of theism===

The most common dictionary definition and understanding of atheism is that atheism is the conscious, purposeful rejection of theism. Under this understanding of atheism, only forms of atheism falling under explicit atheism are actually considered atheism, with all other nontheistic beliefs being grouped under other titles, such as nontheism or agnosticism, used for "implicit atheists". This would include all implicit weak atheists, such as apatheists and infants.

Although this definition is unpopular among most philosophical texts and the majority of the atheist community (particularly explicit weak atheists), largely because of its suggestion of atheism as a belief rather than the rejection of a belief, it remains the dominant definition among laypeople.

Not only does it simply repeat points made elsewhere (i.e. to lay people atheism is often understood to mean the most militant forms of strong atheism), but it contains palpable falsehoods. It is not true that "the most common dictionary definition" is that atheism is "the conscious, purposeful rejection of theism". It is not true that "rejection of theism" is unpopular in philosophical texts. I note these claims are unsourced, as they'd have to be, being wrong. --Dannyno 14:24, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

This may seem like just another POV, but I find it odd from a purely logical perspective that atheism must be the "conscious rejection of theism". Surely Theism, just like any other hypothesis, must be conciously believed in as no hypothesis (whether religous or scientific) is naturally present in the open mind. Therefor logically, atheism should encompass "not conciously beliving in theism" and not just the concept of specifically rejecting theism. - Canderra 17:27, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Your conclusion doesn't follow from the rest of what you said, and is begging the question ("atheism is defined as 'lack of theism', therefore logically atheism must be defined as 'lack of theism'"). It is true that theism must be consciously believed in, and it's true that lack of theism doesn't necessarily have to be believed in (though it can be, in the subdivision "denial of theism"), but the disagreement here isn't over that, it's over what the actual term atheism encompasses. You seem to be trying to use the "atheism-as-lack-of-theism" definition in your very attempt to discuss the "atheism-as-denial-of-theism" one, so no wonder you confused yourself. The term nontheism was invented as a result of how common the definition of atheism as "denial of theism" is, and encompasses all lack of theistic belief—in other words, nontheism is synonymous with the "lack of theism" definition of atheism, the advocates of which are currently shouldering out any attempts to actually explain this very important disagreement in more than two introductory sentences.

Explaining that issue (along with going into the history and usage and status of this definition in more depth) is the primary point of the section which I've now made three times, only to have deleted three times in a row without any satisfactory explanations as to why—just random accusations of it being "slanted" or "untrue" without any attempts to specify what parts of it are faulty or to make even the slightest attempt to actually improve the section, rather than deleting it offhand again and again despite its importance to this article due to the incredible pervasiveness of that definition throughout the modern popular mind. If the section is ever allowed to actually exist without being subjected to constant rash total deletions, I'd recommend that you try to improve the section by adding some of the clarifications which you would have found helpful in the above problem you found with defining atheism as "denial of theism", so that it's less likely for anyone else to be similarly confused. -Silence 18:50, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Almost this entire article is based on the writings of individuals in their philosophical texts, arguing for this or that interpretation of and subdivision within atheism. However, how atheism is defined in a philosophical writing generally only reflects the views of a single person, or at most a single movement. How atheism is defined in dictionaries, on the other hand, will tend to represent common usage and how the general public understands a word, even if it's not technically correct or lacks the in-depth analysis of the philosophy papers. So, let's check out a few dictionaries, and a couple of encyclopedias while we're at it, to get a pretty easy idea of how atheism is usually defined.

• 1) American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language:

  1.
        a. Disbelief in or denial of the existence of God or gods.
        b. The doctrine that there is no God or gods.
  2. Godlessness; immorality.

• 2) Webster's Dictionary:

  the doctrine or belief that there is no God.
  1 archaic : UNGODLINESS, WICKEDNESS
  2
        a : a disbelief in the existence of deity
        b : the doctrine that there is no deity

• 3) Webster's Revised Unabridged, 1913:

  1. The disbelief or denial of the existence of a God, or supreme intelligent Being.
     Atheism is a ferocious system, that leaves nothing above us to excite awe, nor around us to awaken tenderness. R. Hall.
     Atheism and pantheism are often wrongly confounded. Shipley.
  2. Godlessness. 

• 4) Compact Oxford English Dictionary:

  the belief that God does not exist.

• 5) Cambridge International Dictionary of English:

  the belief that God or gods do not exist

• 6) Encarta World Dictionary:

  unbelief in God or deities: disbelief in the existence of God or deities

• 7) The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy

  Denial that there is a God.

• 8) The Wordsmyth English Dictionary-Thesaurus

  the belief that there is no God.

• 9) WordNet:

  1: the doctrine or belief that there is no God [syn: godlessness] [ant: theism]
  2: a lack of belief in the existence of God or gods

• 10) infoplease Dictionary:

  1. the doctrine or belief that there is no God.
  2. disbelief in the existence of a supreme being or beings.

• 11) Ultralingua Web:

  1. A lack of belief in the existence of God or gods.
  2. The doctrine or belief that there is no God; SYN: godlessness.

• 12) The Online Plain Text English Dictionary:

  (n.) Godlessness.
  (n.) The disbelief or denial of the existence of a God, or supreme intelligent Being.

• 13) AllWords.com Multi-Lingual Dictionary:

  the belief that there is no god.

• 14) The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy:

  Denial that there is a God. (Compare agnosticism.)

• 15) LookWAYup Translating Dictionary/Thesaurus:

  1.	 [n] a lack of belief in the existence of God or gods.
  2.	[n] the doctrine or belief that there is no God.

• 16) Encyclopedia Britannica:

in general, the critique and denial of metaphysical beliefs in God or spiritual beings. As such, it is usually distinguished from theism, which affirms the reality of the divine and often seeks to demonstrate its existence. Atheism is also distinguished from agnosticism, which leaves open the question whether there is a god or not...

• 17) The Columbia Encyclopedia:

denial of the existence of God or gods and of any supernatural existence, to be distinguished from agnosticism, which holds that the existence cannot be proved.

Of all the dictionaries I was able to find, only three have the definition that is currently completely dominating the atheism page, and, indeed, every page related to this topic on Wikipedia: 8, 10, and 15—and considering that they have the exact same text as each other, just with the definition order switched, it's obvious that only one dictionary really used the definition and the other two copied it. Of course, one other dictionary or encyclopedia source I was able to find repeats this definition: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/atheism , for the most obvious of reasons; it was clearly edited by one of the people who made sure that the less-common definition would be the only one given any in-depth treatment, or even acknowledgment, on Wikipedia; it even makes sure to use the weak/strong terminology in the dictionary definition, to further hammer into place that specific view of exactly how atheism should always be defined (I thought Wikipedia and Wiktionary were supposed to be descriptivist, not prescriptivist?). Not that there's anything especially wrong with that definition (other than the ambiguity of "strong" and "weak" terms in general, but that can't be helped now), but to act like it's the only definition is kind of dishonest. The only current saving grace is that the other definition is mentioned as the "second theory" on atheism now, but it's then ignored for the entire rest of the article while the first theory is gone into in enormous depth, and all other Wikipedia articles then adhere solely to the first theory, without ever explaining why, or even that, they do. That's a situation I want remedied (by adding in the view of the many people who more narrowly define atheism wherever it makes a difference), so the confusion these pages can so easily cause is minimized as much as possible.

If you think the section I made on "Atheism as rejection of theism" was poorly-done, I'm completely OK with that, as long as you or someone else makes an acceptable version of that exact same section, because information on by far the most common understanding of the definition and usage of the word "atheism" is currently sorely lacking. What's the point of having articles that are meant to be read and understood by as many people as possible and yet completely toss aside and ignore the terminology in common, everyday usage just because they don't like it as much? Arr. -Silence 15:23, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

WP:WIN. Wikipedia is not in the business of saying how words, idioms, etc., are used. However, it may be important in the context of an encyclopedia article to describe just how a word is used in order to distinguish among similar, easily confused ideas. FeloniousMonk 15:52, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

We're not in the business of saying how words are defined, we're in the business of saying how significant concepts are used and understood. I gave the dictionary definitions to show that the more common way atheism is understood by the populace as a whole is as the belief that deities do not exist (indicating conscious rejection of theism), not as mere lack of theism. I did not give the dictionary definitions to recommend that we turn the article into a dictionary definition of the word, but to recommend that we more fully represent the common POVs of what atheism is—we have pages and pages and multiple sections analyzing and advocating the less-common definition of atheism as lack of theism, but no more than a handful of sentences, and not even a single section, discussing the alternate view of what atheism is.

Listing the dictionary definitions I could find was also a response to the claim above that the most common dictionary definition of atheism isn't rejection, denial, or disbelief in theism (rather than mere lack of it), which it clearly is. The view that atheism is just the lack of theism is, in fact, almost completely lacking in dictionaries and encyclopedias of all kinds, suggesting that it's decidedly a minority view in the world at large, even if it's on equal (or higher) footing with the narrower definition in the atheist community itself—hence its dominance only on wikipedia and wiktionary, where atheists would obviously have more ability to control how the convepts and terminology are to be used than they usually do, especially since they'd tend to have more interest in the articles relating to the word than most theists would.

To clarify, I'm not advocating the removal or shortening of a significant POV ("atheism = nontheism"); I'm advocating fuller representation of the dominant one than a brief mention and subsequent write-off. And since my attempt to do so has been deleted in its entirety, I ask someone with more experience with the article or the field (perhaps someone with access to better resources on this field than I do, and who thus can cite useful sources on the topic) to do so, for the sake of NPOV and clarity. -Silence 16:38, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

Now wait a minute. What I said was that dictionaries do not commonly define atheism as "the conscious, purposeful rejection of theism". And this is true. They do not. None of the defintions you have listed do so. Please do not assume that in saying this I am asserting a position that says that atheism "is" just lack of belief. I have done the same exercise as you and checked dictionary definitions. I completely agree that the article should point out the different ways that atheism is used - that's why my rewrites tried to be neutral between the two main definitional pro-atheist traditions - atheism(privative) and atheism(rejectionist). And why I included a section on atheism in religious apologetics. And why I would like there to be a section that notes what generalist dictionaries say. Indeed, I think I pointed out somewhere that it is OK for lay and specialist uses of a word to vary dramatically, and used "inferiority complex" as an example. It's fine for people to think that atheism means "god does not exist". They'd be wrong, insofar as atheism does not and never has meant that in theology, philosophy or atheist polemics since d'Holbach, but that's fine as informal use goes. Your list of definitions is split between those that define atheism (wrongly re: technical usage, obviously) as "god does not exist" or variations thereof. Most of the Oohers have "disbelief or denial". Have you ever looked up what "disbelief" and "denial" mean? McCabe pointed out over 60 years ago that these words allow for a diversity of meanings as per the common distinctions. Alright? --Dannyno 10:00, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

I apologize for being unclear. When I said "dictionary definitions favor X", I was not trying to say that they explicitly worded it as I worded it—I was still thinking in terms of "atheism as nontheism vs. atheism as explicit atheism", so I was giving the definition only to contrast with "atheism as nontheism"; to give the general idea, not to be exactly the same as the dictionaries. The one thing that does not make sense to me here is "And why I included a section on atheism in religious apologetics"; how does making a section going into pejorative, largely archaic definitions of atheism in any way relate to making a section (as I attempted to do) going into the most common definition among laypeople? Moreover, it's already been pointed out in the article that some specialists (Ernest Nagel, Paul Edwards and Kai Nielsen are mentioned) do use the definition of "atheism" equivalent to "explicit atheism" rather than the one equivalent to "nontheism", so to write off that entire system of thought concerning atheism as just being the utterly incorrect, mistaken beliefs of the uninformed and ignorant masses seems pretty heavily biased.

Just to over-egg the pudding, look in a little more detail at your list of definitions (I've left out Britannica because I know very well that it gives some very detailed information on defintions and distinctions and allows for variations of usage):

Here are the ones that define atheism in only one way:

4) Compact Oxford English Dictionary:

 the belief that God does not exist.

5) Cambridge International Dictionary of English:

 the belief that God or gods do not exist

8) The Wordsmyth English Dictionary-Thesaurus

 the belief that there is no God.

13) AllWords.com Multi-Lingual Dictionary:

 the belief that there is no god.

Here are the ones that explicitly allow for a broad definition:

9) WordNet:

 1: the doctrine or belief that there is no God [syn: godlessness] [ant: theism]
 2: a lack of belief in the existence of God or gods

11) Ultralingua Web:

 1. A lack of belief in the existence of God or gods.
 2. The doctrine or belief that there is no God; SYN: godlessness.

15) LookWAYup Translating Dictionary/Thesaurus:

 1.        [n] a lack of belief in the existence of God or gods.
 2.    [n] the doctrine or belief that there is no God.

Here are the ones that define it primarily in terms of "disbelief or denial". They *all* allow for a distinction to be made.

1) American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language:

 1.
       a. Disbelief in or denial of the existence of God or gods.
       b. The doctrine that there is no God or gods.
 2. Godlessness; immorality.

Notice that b) is what we're supposed to think is the "common" dictionary definition. So what is a)? Must be different to that, right?

American heritage defines "disbelief" as "Refusal or reluctance to believe." And "denial" as:

1. A refusal to comply with or satisfy a request. 2a. A refusal to grant the truth of a statement or allegation; a contradiction. b. Law The opposing by a defendant of an allegation of the plaintiff. 3a. A refusal to accept or believe something, such as a doctrine or belief. b. Psychology An unconscious defense mechanism characterized by refusal to acknowledge painful realities, thoughts, or feelings. 4. The act of disowning or disavowing; repudiation. 5. Abstinence; self-denial.

2) Webster's Dictionary:

 the doctrine or belief that there is no God.
 1 archaic : UNGODLINESS, WICKEDNESS
 2    a : a disbelief in the existence of deity
       b : the doctrine that there is no deity

Compare 2a with 2b. Assuming we're talking Merriam-Webster online, it defines "disbelieve" as "transitive senses : to hold not worthy of belief : not believe; intransitive senses : to withhold or reject belief"

3) Webster's Revised Unabridged, 1913:

 1. The disbelief or denial of the existence of a God, or supreme intelligent Being.
    Atheism is a ferocious system, that leaves nothing above us to excite awe, nor around us to awaken tenderness. R. Hall.
    Atheism and pantheism are often wrongly confounded. Shipley.
 2. Godlessness. 

Again, Websters 1913 defines "denial" as 1. The act of gainsaying, refusing, or disowning; negation; -- the contrary of affirmation.

Exactly. The contrary of "affirmation" is not "lack of affirmation"—it requires conscious ("intentionally conceived or done; deliberate") rejection ("to refuse to accept, submit to, believe, or make use of"), making it a form of explicit atheism. Implicit atheists (i.e. infants, apatheists, completely undecided people, people who have never even heard of or thought up theism, dogs, plants, rocks..) do not "deny" or "refuse" or "negate" or "gainsay" or "disown" or "disbelieve" or anything else theism, they just don't accept it. But none of these dictionaries seem to accept implicit atheism as atheism, excepting the three mentioned above (all of which have identical text, meaning two are just mindless carbon copies of the original anyway). This, and more importantly the common attitude and understanding which it represents, is significant, and should be explored in more depth on the page than just three sentences, as it currently is. -Silence 19:13, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

2. A refusal to admit the truth of a statement, charge, imputation, etc.; assertion of the untruth of a thing stated or maintained; a contradiction. 3. A refusal to grant; rejection of a request. . A refusal to acknowledge; disclaimer of connection with; disavowal; -- the contrary of confession; as, the denial of a fault charged on one; a denial of God. Denial of one's self, a declining of some gratification; restraint of one's appetites or propensities; self-denial. And it defines "disbelief" as "The act of disbelieving; a state of the mind in which one is fully persuaded that an opinion, assertion, or doctrine is not true; refusal of assent, credit, or credence; denial of belief."

Sounds like explicit weak theism to me. What difference does any of this make? We're discussing the significance, commonality, and status of the viewpoint that "implicit atheism" is not atheism, not the viewpoint that weak atheism isn't atheism, or anything like that. The dictionaries allow for explicit weak atheism, but very few of them allow for implicit atheism.

6) Encarta World Dictionary:

 unbelief in God or deities: disbelief in the existence of God or deities

Unbelief means "lack of belief: lack of religious or political belief", and disbelief means "feeling of not believing: the feeling of not believing or of not being able to believe somebody or something".

OK. I'll give you that one. Four non-Wikipediowned dictionaries that acknowledge implicit atheism as atheism at all (two unique). Out of 15 (17 with the encyclopedias). -Silence 19:13, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

7) and 14) Dictionary of Cultural Literacy

 Denial that there is a God.

Unfortunately we don't know what this dictionary means by "denial", but we have seen that it can be understood in more than once sense.

And in no sense that denotes "lack of belief" or even "lack of acceptance" without conscious choice. So who cares that it has more than one definition? So do cheese, run, and door. -Silence 19:13, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

10) infoplease Dictionary:

 1. the doctrine or belief that there is no God.
 2. disbelief in the existence of a supreme being or beings.

"Disbelief" is defined as "1. the inability or refusal to believe or to accept something as true. 2. amazement; astonishment: We stared at the Taj Mahal in disbelief."

So if you stare at God in disbelief, that makes you an atheist? Huh. (Just kidding.) -Silence 19:13, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

12) The Online Plain Text English Dictionary:

 (n.) Godlessness.
 (n.) The disbelief or denial of the existence of a God, or supreme intelligent Being.

Again, it says "disbelief OR denial", so it's a safe bet that they are allowing a distinction to be made.

So in actual fact, all but four of the dictionary entries you posted define atheism more broadly that just "clear conscious rejection". --Dannyno 10:42, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

Interesting and irrelevant. That "disbelief" and "denial" are distinct does not in any way support the argument that any of those dictionaries except the 4 mentioned would consider "implicit atheism" (atheism without conscious denial of theism) to be theism at all. This argument is becoming absurd; please accept that "atheism as denial of theism" (or "atheism as conscious rejection of theism" or "atheism as disbelief in theism" or whatever other near-synonymous wording you prefer.. yeesh) merits a section and either start on one yourself or allow others to. Your POV as to what "atheism" should mean matters, but it is not the only POV that merits detailed coverage. -Silence 19:13, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

I think we're talking past each other. You've got it into your head that I'm trying to promote a POV line, but I'm not. I actually agree with you. I'm the one who tried to seperate out and clarify the several distinct definitional traditions: the (pretty damn major) religious apologetic one, the philosophical rejectionist one, and the longstanding "privative" one. I agree that lay people often (I've never seen a survey but it's certainly not uncommon) take atheism to mean the belief that gods don't exist, and that this should be covered. And it's is certainly very common (and less unreasonable) to see it defined in terms of rejectionism - as per Edwards, Nielsen etc. This is probably the mainstream view outside of polemic atheism, in fact. Where I 'disagree' with you is in your rather sweeping generalisation about what dictionaries do or do not say about atheism. It's clear that *most* dictionaries prioritise a variegated rejectionist definition - but many of them, and that includes some of the really authoritative ones, also include the "lack of" definition ("Denial or disbelief" often covers this, as we've seen). Now, whether or not they would admit ignorant infants (implict weak atheism) a la d'Holbach and Smith is an open question, but it's not always obviously excluded. What I'm saying is that this should indeed be covered: but I want a bit more care over what it is claimed "dictionaries" say. I'd prefer the major ones: OED, Collins, Chambers, Merriam-Webster etc. rather than all these ones of dubious scholarship. And by the way McCabe was saying in 1950 that Funk and Wagnall used the "positive/negative" distinction: I'd love to see a copy to confirm this. Anyway, the headline is: I AGREE WITH YOU! I just don't want to see generalisations about dictionaries.

Just to emphasize. You note: it's already been pointed out in the article that some specialists (Ernest Nagel, Paul Edwards and Kai Nielsen are mentioned) do use the definition of "atheism" equivalent to "explicit atheism" rather than the one equivalent to "nontheism", so to write off that entire system of thought concerning atheism as just being the utterly incorrect, mistaken beliefs of the uninformed and ignorant masses seems pretty heavily biased. It was me who put that stuff in about Nagel, Edwards and Nielsen! I'm so misunderstood :-) --Dannyno 09:54, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

Silence, I don't know why you think posting on my own talk page is a proper response to my edit. Don't take it to harassment, allright ? Neither of you wrote anything about the actual topic of "atheism as rejection/denial of gods", so I deleted the section for being irrelevant. I am not starting a reversing war, simply expunging bad content. You should know by now that nothing in wikipedia is to be taken personally. Franc28 19:50, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

1. I think that posting on your talk page is a proper response because it is a proper response, and is essentially universally acknowledged as such by the Wikipedia community. That's what the user talk pages are there for: talking with fellow users about pretty much any subject. And that was certainly not my first response; I'd already pointed you to this talk page in my edit summaries for the Atheism page, and you'd completely ignored me and continued to delete the section without writing anything at all on the Talk page to explain your actions. Most users in my situation actually probably would have posted a message to your Talk page immediately after you made your first revert, rather than giving you a day, as I did, which which to explain yourself in more detail. Since you never did, I finally did the polite thing and posted to your talk page in case you hadn't noticed my previous messages or preferred to talk there than on Atheism. The impolite thing would have been to simply return the paragraph to the page with a revert, but I chose not to do that because I'm interested in an actual discussion, not an edit war. I was hoping you were interested in the same, but your actions so far haven't suggested that; you attempt to force your edits on others without talking about them at all, whereas I had a lengthy conversation about my contested edits on this talk page already, and gave the other users two weeks to try their own hand, but it turned out that no one else was interested in writing a section on it; the only person who even attempted it failed to understand the basics of what the section was supposed to be about when I made it, so I finally did what I should have been allowed to do from the beginning: I returned the paragraphs there for others to expand upon and change at their liking. Leaving the section completely empty, obviously, just confused people.
2. "Harassment"? Since when it is harassment simply to talk to a user on his user talk page a single time, to give that user important information and start a necessary dialogue over an edit dispute? You didn't have any messages on your user page indicating that you didn't want others to talk there; if you are that offended by people taking advantage of the exceedingly common act of posting to a user's talk page, then you should have made that clear rather than expecting everyone to be psychically aware of your specific, unusual preferences. You also didn't react negatively at all, as far as I can see, to any of the other users who edited your talk page, so why did you explode with so much hostility just because of mine, deleting your entire talk page[1] and making rash accusations against me here?
3. Neither of you wrote anything about the actual topic of "atheism as rejection/denial of gods" - Incorrect. The other user didn't understand the point of the section at all and guessed at a subject, which I then promptly fixed by adding the actual information on atheism as denial of theism. You still have yet to back up your claims that my version of the section was irrelevant with any actual examples of irrelevant information in the section, much less backing up your claim that the entire section is off-topic. I'm actually becoming quite sure, based on your actions so far, that you didn't even read the section carefully, but just skimmed over it and saw that it discussed things like common usage and so assumed that it was off-topic, when actually is of central importance to a section on "atheism as denial of theism"! I can understand such a mistake happening once, but to repeatedly make the mistake and stand by it so stubbornly doesn't make a lot of sense. (errare humanum est perseuerare diabolicum) Especially when anyone can easily see just by reading my version of the write-up on the section (and by reading our discussion above on the section, of course) that it's quite accurate and relevant overall. It could use some fixing-up and expansion, but not a total deletion.
4. "expunging bad content" is not an excuse for repeatedly deleting a passage without explaining your reasoning when others do not think that it merits deletion. Everyone has a different idea of "bad content", and Wikipedia disputes are settled by consensus, so your proper course of action would have been to list your specific complaints about the section and then have us respond to them. If you refuse to do that, then continuing to revert sections you disagree with is of no benefit whatsoever to the article, because it relies on all of us blindly obeying you and following your every dictate for no reason. So, are you willing to discuss, or not?
5. You should know by now that nothing in wikipedia is to be taken personally. - When did I say that I'd taken anything you said personally? Just because I have a disagreement with you doesn't mean that I took anything you've said thus far personally (at least, up to the point where you accused me of "harassment" without any justification whatsoever, but that's an unrelated issue). If anything, you're the one who seems to be taking this matter far too personally and responding with emotion rather than reason, what with your violent reactions to my attempt to set up a dialogue. I'm still interested in such a dialogue, if you're willing to finally list your grievances regarding the "Atheism as denial or rejection of theism" section so we can talk about this, not fight. -Silence 20:25, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Hey, what is this ? I didn't ask you for a book. I already gave you my grievances on my previous message. Both your edits and the other guy's edits were biased and irrelevant to the topic of "atheism as rejection and denial of gods". Now make a better section, if you want it so much, and stop this waste of time. Franc28 20:36, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

I did not write a book, I wrote an in-depth response to your message. If it is too long for you, ask me to summarize parts of it that confuse you and I will do so. You did not, in fact, give me your specific grievances about the section in any of your edit summaries. Your first edit summary was:

• Removed : both of your edits don't belong here. That should settle the issue nicely. If you want to make a section called "Atheism as denial or rejection of theism", then talk about that.

This one simply made the broad claim that the section I'd written did not discuss "atheism as denial or rejection of theism", even though, if you'd read it, it clearly does. It also fails to explain what you think "atheism as denial or rejection of theism" should discuss, and how the current text fails to meet with these expectations of yours. It is totally unreasonable to expect everyone to have the exact same ideas regarding how a section should look as you do, when you refuse to give any details about what you expect! Your second edit summary was:

• rv : Don't reverse my edit. The section is irrelevant and slanted. If you want a section about "Atheism as denial and rejection of theism", write about that, not about common conceptions of atheism.

This again failed to list any specific grievances at all, but repeated the claim that the section is "irrelevant" (why is a section on the most common usage of atheism irrelevant to an article about atheism?) and making the new claim that the article is "slanted" without in any way specifying which direction it is slanted in, how it is slanted, and where it is slanted, making it impossible for anyone but you to fix the article in any way, as only you know why you reacted the way you did to the article. Until you explain it. I'm still waiting; you are making this much harder than it has to be by making unreasonable demands while refusing to give even the slightest information about exactly what you really have a problem with in the section. Your current attitude is about as helpful as if you'd just popped a "POV" sticker to the top of the page without ever explaining what about the article you find POV. It's all well and good to have an opinion, but it's useless in a communal setting like this if you can't express it to anyone else.

As the person who refuses to say what he thinks would make the section a "better section", if anyone, you are the one making this a "waste of time". If you want this resolved quickly, your only course of action is to explain your specific problems with the section and what you want out of it, not to continue to repeatedly make ridiculously vague references to abstract notions of "better" and "irrelevant" without any justification. -Silence 21:00, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Silence, I think you have indeed been misunderstood here, but that's because you weren't clear. Don't engage in edit wars, don't flood the talk page, and most of all: don't put your stuff back in before we all understand what you're doing. When on a touchy subject you wait for consensus, I don't know if it's a policy, but it seems pretty sound to me. I'm going to try to sum it up, anyone correct me if I'm wrong:

• Silence, you consider that most (nearly all) dictionnaries and encyclopedias consider only explicit atheism to be atheism. They usually present the two definitions corresponding to weak and strong atheism, but do not (except for a few exceptions which stem from a single source) consider implicit atheism to be atheism. You worded explicit atheism as "conscious rejection of theism", meaning with or without belief that there is no God, i.e. weak/strong atheism. Some may have interpreŗeted this "conscious rejection of theism" as meaning denial of theism, or strong atheism. It seemed that this didn't include the "lack of" meaning, while in fact what you were pointing out was that the conscious "lack of" was present, but the "lack of" because one hasn't thought about it yet is generally absent. Hence the dispute.
• Now please post here the fragment that you would like to include. People will object and you will respond concisely and clearly until a consensus is found. Does this look fine for everyone? Jules LT 21:33, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Although I do appreciate your stepping in to help try to resolve the dispute, I do not appreciate mischaracterization of what I have done to try to paint this conflict as being solely (or even largely) my fault. I have not engaged in any "edit wars"; I only reverted the page to my version once after the text was removed, and that was because there had been no specific justification for removing the text yet, and I figured it was best to leave it up until the discussion was over so it could at least begin to possibly accumulate a few improvements and additions in the process, and because I didn't anticipate there being such resistance to it. As soon as it became clear that Franc28 was unwilling to let , I stopped working on the page and focused entirely on trying to get in contact with him, entirely for the sake of trying to avoid edit wars! Even worse is your accusation that I flooded the talk page—good god, where did that come from? I'm a verbose person by nature, but thoroughness is hardly synonymous with "flooding"! And finally, no one said that they didn't "understand what I was doing" at any point; no one ever voiced a meaningful complaint on the Talk page, no one ever asked a question about it, no one has, indeed, said anything at all for the last two weeks on the subject until now. And the policy of avoiding working on touchy subjects before consensus established goes both ways—it applies to removing material as well as inserting material (or in my case, replacing bad material with better material). I've been discussing this issue with you all on the talk page all along; Franc is the one who I've had to go to great lengths to get to become remotely involved in the discussion of the page. Again, thanks for taking the time to comment, but please don't make accusations, even veiled ones, before you've fully examined the actual chain of events involved in a situation like this. It just confuses matters further. -Silence 22:15, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

No. I have never read a dictionary (other than Wiktionary) that has had the definitions for strong and weak atheism on it. Strong and weak atheism are a better of whether the believer considers his belief to a positive assertion, or just the lack of one. People commonly misinterpret strong and weak atheism to extend the definitions much further than they technically apply to, hence the confusion with you thinking that strong/weak atheism are regularly distinguished in dictionary articles.

I also did not word "explicit atheism" as anything except what it already was worded at when I came to this article. Also, the following line makes no sense: "You worded explicit atheism as "conscious rejection of theism", meaning with or without belief that there is no God, i.e. weak/strong atheism." How does "conscious rejection of theism" mean "with or without belief that there is no God"? Additionally, you seem to forget that it's possible to be a weak implicit atheist. However, you are correct that explicit atheism can be divided between "strong explicit" and "weak explicit", depending on how the person consciously rejecting theism views his or her own belief-positivity. There's no other way to define it; the terms positive/negative are far too subjective to be applied to almost anyone who hasn't specifically chosen one of those terms to apply to him- or herself, because it depends so much on factors that rarely come up in other aspects of atheistic position classification.

"Strong atheism" is not "denial of theism". "Explicit atheism" is "conscious denial/rejection of theism" (the difference between denial and rejection in this case is trivial and purely a matter of semantics and connotation, but I added both terms for clarification because someone took so much issue earlier with my not mentioning the word "denial" or "disbelief"). Anyway, "strong atheism", rather than just being "denial of theism", also requires the notion that the denial is positive—that is, one is consciously denying or rejecting the notion of theism, and additionally believes that doing so is a positive statement, a proposition in its own right, rather than nothing more than. Explicit weak atheists, on the other hand, also deny/disbelieve/reject theism, but don't hold this denial/disbelief/rejection to be positive, instead considering it merely the purposeful lack of a positive belief, and no more a positive statement in its own right than "I don't believe in Santa Claus" is. Was that clear enough?

Anyway. Here's the deleted text:

===Atheism as denial or rejection of theism===
The most common dictionary definition and layperson understanding of atheism is that atheism is the conscious, purposeful denial of theism. Under this understanding of atheism, only forms of atheism falling under explicit atheism are actually considered atheism, with all other nontheistic beliefs being grouped under other titles, such as nontheism or agnosticism, used for "implicit atheists". This would exclude all implicit weak atheists, such as apatheists and infants, from being considered atheists.

Although this definition is unpopular among many philosophers—though it does have some advocates, such as Ernest Nagel—and the majority of the atheist community (particularly explicit weak atheists), largely because of its suggestion of atheism as a belief rather than the rejection of a belief, it remains the dominant definition among laypeople, remaining a much more common definition than atheism as "lack of theism".

Now, please give me your specific complaints regarding this text (and ideas to improve it), so we can make it better rather than just continuing the meaningless revert war. OK? -Silence 22:15, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Please don't insert your comments between the paragraphs of mine, it makes the whole thing more confused. I'm sorry if I didn't go through every diff before posting, but this remains: there should be no edit war. I don't care who. Sorry if I implied that you were the one. You are indeed verbose, and although this is not the worst thing ever, it might help if you refrained from this tendency when you can, so people will actually read what you write. I don't see how this is an "even worse accusation", it's only practical advice from a somewhat reformed verbose person.

• As for "consensus for removing things", you should remember that the state of an article previous to an addition is generally the result of some kind of consensus. It is the new thing that is questionned, not the removal of the new thing.
• I didn't say dictionnaries had the definitions of strong and weak atheism, I said they had meanings corresponding to those in their definition of atheism. Because what we have here is definitions of atheism, and I work on what I have at hand here.
• In this very article, we have: Weak atheism, sometimes called soft atheism, negative atheism or neutral atheism, is the absence of belief in the existence of deities without the positive assertion that deities do not exist. Strong atheism, also known as hard atheism or positive atheism, is the belief that no deities exist. This has been sourced in many places, as far as the words weak/strong are used; introduce distinctions for positive/negative if you like, but that's another matter. With these meanings we can see that when dictionnaries mention 2 meanings to atheism which are "absence of belief in god(s)" and "belief that there is/are no god(s)", they more or less word the positions of strong and weak atheism. It's doesn't depend on how the person views his own stance, it's about whether they believe or not that "God does not exist". "Positive" here is only a qualificative for the asertion that god does not exist; the definition works equally well without that word, it only makes it clearer. Now if you disagree with the article's definition of those, please give your sources and change it.
• I'm sorry if I wasn't clear enough, saying You worded explicit atheism as "conscious rejection of theism", meaning with or without belief that there is no God, i.e. weak/strong atheism". I wasn't saying that "conscious..." meant "with or w/o...", I meant that it was compatible with both. That's true: you can conscious reject theism with or without positively believing that god does not exist.
• Strong atheism indeed isn't denial of atheism, I just checked out "denial", sorry for that. I still maintain that there was a misunderstanding that can be resolved, even if it wasn't expressed as such and if Franc's behaviour may be questionnable (his blanking of his talk page sure isn't a good sign).
• I know exactly how implicit/explicit and weak/strong interact, thank you. I was the one who tried to make that clearer with a diagram. I'm not saying that it's impossible to be a weak implicit atheist, only that this possibility wasn't considered atheism in dictionnaries. I thought that that was your point in the first place; obviously I was wrong.
• You go to great length to explain why I was wrong. A simple "That's not it, what I meant is THAT:" followed with a few lines' explanation would have been fine.

Jules LT 20:32, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

• Sorry for adding my comment between your paragraphs, but I figured you'd find it easier than having to deduce which comments of yours I'm responding to. Since you don't, I'll just keep my whole comment here.
• I agree that there should be no edit war. That's why I posted "there should be no edit war" right before you scolded me for starting an edit war. Reading every single edit might be overdoing it, but at least reading the handful of edits and posts in question is a good idea. But nevermind, it's not a big deal, let's move on.
• "As for "consensus for removing things", you should remember that the state of an article previous to an addition is generally the result of some kind of consensus" - Perhaps in general, but remember that this is a special case: the section would already have been in the article for weeks if Dannyno hadn't objected to my use of the word "rejection" in place of "denial" the first time I added it, which prompted our lengthy discussion above. Everyone else had two weeks to say so if they had a problem with the section, and no one else did (nor did Dannyno mention any significant problems with the section, just the semantic one of not using the literal dictionary definition, which I fixed for my re-addition). So part of the reason I re-added the section to the page was actually to prompt anyone who objected to it to add new comments on the Talk page with more substantial objections, if there were any! My posting more to this Talk page about re-adding the same text we'd already gone over would have been superfluous, as I'd already said my piece plenty on this page; the only way to further the conversation would be for those who don't favor including the text to speak their mind here, but that person has been completely unwilling to do so thus far. Hence the current running-in-circles state of affairs.
• "Strong atheism, also known as hard atheism or positive atheism, is the belief that no deities exist" - The problem is that everyone defines "belief" in their own little unique way. This line should most certainly be clarified in the article, with "positive belief" or something similar, because it can only cause confusion otherwise. Until "negative belief" becomes an oxymoron in commonly-spoken English, "belief" on its own simply will not do.
• "I meant that it was compatible with both." - K, thanks for the clarification! I was probably being a bit too picky asking for it, but it's important to be as clear as possible when we use terminology like this, because it's far too easy for meanings to shift with terms as vague and mutable as "strong" and "weak".
• "I still maintain that there was a misunderstanding that can be resolved" - I agree. In my experience, 95% of all arguments are just the result of misunderstandings, not real disagreements over anything substantial. But to resolve it, both parties need to be willing to understand what happened, not just one. I'll gladly talk this over if Franc's willing, but if he doesn't supply any specific problems with the section I pasted above or do anything else to further this discussion over the next couple of days, and if no one else finds anything objectionable about the text (that I can't correct quite easily, of course), do I have the permission of the people here to re-add the section? I don't want to have to wait another half a month to add it if there are no serious objections to it. -Silence 21:44, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

Finding if one is a weak/strong atheist

I realize that we had the exact same debate in the section just below, except that I hadn't paid attention to the fact that weak atheism excluded strong atheism and I took "denial" for much stronger than it actually is, leading to confusion. My point is that atheism taken to mean "absence of theism" can be divided in two subparts that are mutually exclusive and comprise it all by asking a simple question:

• Is the proposition "God does not exist" true?
• No-->theist (not our point here)
• Not sure/I don't care-->weak atheist
• Yes-->strong atheist

This faithfully reflects whether one positively asserts that gods don't exist, doesn't it? As opposed to how one sees his stance; of course an atheist wouldn't want to be found believing things, it likens him too much with the theist. Jules LT 21:12, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

I still have problems with this. My understanding of the terms is more like this (expanded a few things to keep things in perspective, but more importantly note where I disagree):

Is the proposition "God does not exist" true?

• Definitely not. --> theism (closed; "it is impossible for a god to not exist")
• Possibly, but I highly doubt it. --> theism (open)
• Maybe. I'm not sure. --> agnosticism (agnostic weak atheism if unsureness is accompanied by lack of theistic belief)
• I don't care. --> apatheism
• That proposition is meaningless. --> ignosticism
• What's "God"? / Goo goo gaa gaa. / Meow? --> implicit weak atheism (based on ignorance of theism)
• Probably, but it's not a positive statement; it's merely the lack of a belief. --> explicit weak atheism (open)
• Probably, and I positively believe in it; it's a new proposal in its own right. --> explicit strong atheism (open)
• Definitely, but it's not a positive statement; it's merely the lack of a belief. --> explicit weak atheism (closed; "it is impossible for a god to exist")
• Definitely, and I positively believe in it; it's a new proposal in its own right. --> explicit strong atheism (closed; "it is impossible for a god to exist)

Do you see how whether how sure you are that God doesn't exist has little to do with whether you're a weak or a strong atheist? You can think that the theism is impossible and still be a weak atheist if you consider your belief to be nothing but the lack of a belief in theism, and you can be a nontheist who's very unsure about whether or not God exists and still be a strong theist if you consider your belief/mindset/world-view to only be the lack of theism, not a positive belief. Labeling someone who doesn't consider atheism a positive belief a "strong atheist" is a dangerous game indeed, and renders the term completely non-synonymous with "positive atheism"; if you want to define strong atheism that loosely, we should put "positive atheism" in a different section entirely, rather than acting like it's a synonym. -Silence 21:44, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

strong/weak atheism are sometimes called otherwise, but the other terms are not real synonyms. This is not defining it loosely, it's sticking to the way I've always seen it employed here and on every serious website where I looked for it. I think we should make that clearer.

Well, I do think that the definition we have for the moment is right:

"Weak atheism, sometimes called soft atheism, negative atheism or neutral atheism, is the absence of belief in the existence of deities without the positive assertion that deities do not exist. Strong atheism, also known as hard atheism or positive atheism, is the belief that no deities exist."

Now let's take wikipedia's very reasonable definition of belief as a "representational mental state that takes the form of a propositional attitude", an "assertion, claim or expectation about reality".

Then we can divide humanity between:

• Theists, who assert that "God exists"
• Strong atheists, who assert that "God does not exist"
• Weak atheists, who assert neither
• Those who won't answer, whatever the reason, are weak atheists too, because they assert neither.

Then you can add more labels, but do we agree on those, for the moment?

If you consider that god is impossible, then you consider that "there is no god" is certain. That is a propositional attitude, and therefore you believe that there is no god. Note that this doesn't mean anything: if it's also true and your belief is justified (inwhat way it can be justified is another matter), then it is even a knowledge. In any case, you are a strong atheist.

In the spiritual sense of the word belief, you can say that you believe something that you consider only very likely, but stricto sensu, in any other sense, if you believe something you don't think it's probable, you simply hold it to be a fact. If you look for definitions of "to believe", this comes out clearer. As for a nontheist being also a strong theis, I don't think that makes sense; and he's not a strong atheist either, if he's not believing "god does not exist"... Jules LT 07:48, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

"Atheism as lack of theism" section

In the "Types and typologies of atheism" section, we currently have:

• Atheism as lack of theism
• Atheism as immorality
• Beliefs that theism is inherently meaningless or irrelevant
• Agnostic atheism
• Atheism in philosophical naturalism
• Antitheism
• Spiritual and religious atheism

This fails to represent the plain and simple fact (see list of definitions above) that there are two widely accepted meanings to the word:

• S: I like some of these ideas (like moving "weak/strong atheism" out of "atheism as lack of theism" eventually), but I need to make a few clarifications and corrections. Also, this problem is the exact focus of ongoing discussion in the Atheism as conscious rejection section of this talk page, just above. I tried to begin a section on the second common definition of atheism, but was stopped cold by total deletion, accusations of being completely incorrect, and demands for citations. No good deed goes unpunished... I welcome you to try your hand at it.

• Atheism as lack of theism (weak atheism)

• S: Incorrect parenthetical association. You are describing atheism (if we're using the broad definition of "atheism"), a.k.a. nontheism. For something to fall under "weak atheism" it must also not contain a positive assertion of God's nonexistence.

• Atheism as belief that there is no God / denial of God (strong atheism)

• S: Incorrect parenthetical association. You are describing explicit atheism. "Strong atheism" requires positive belief; thousands of atheists would contend that you can deny theism without positively asserting anything.

The "denial of God" meaning is currently restricted to the bit on "strong atheism" in "weak and strong atheism" inside "Atheism as lack of theism". This is ridiculous.

• S: Incorrect. "Denial of God" is roughly equivalent to "explicit atheism", not "strong atheism", and "explicit atheism" is a subheading within "atheism as lack of theism" because the terminology is totally meaningless except within the context of defining atheism as nontheism (lack of theism). Outside of this definition, the terms "explicit and implicit" (which were the terms you meant to use earlier when you spoke of "strong" and "weak") have absolutely no meaning, as using the "denial of theism" definition of atheism, "implicit atheism" is not atheism at all (since by definition it cannot involve a "denial" of theism, merely and only a lack of it), so all atheism is "explicit atheism". Thus, if you were to make a section on "atheism as denial of theism", which you or someone else certainly should, you certainly wouldn't move explicit and implicit atheism out from under "atheism as lack of theism", the only definition within which they can be used. Moving "strong and weak atheism", on the other hand, might be conceivable if their text was reworked, since they can theoretically be used under the narrower definition, though I've never seen it happen.

What we need to do is separate again strong and weak atheism, like they were before the recent massive changes, then merge the intro to "Atheism as lack of theism" into "weak atheism".

• S: I see absolutely no need to divide "strong and weak atheism" back into two sections. They already have two articles; anything that requires enough in-depth analysis to merit a distinct section should just be put on one of those two articles instead. I thought we were trying to make this page more compact, not less? If we do divide them, we might as well divide "explicit and implicit theism" too, perhaps even give them their own articles so they have room to grow...

I would be in favor of a first major section titled "Major typologies of atheim" consisting of:

• Weak atheism
• Strong atheism
• Implicit/Explicit atheism (although not well-known, this distinction is semantically essential)

The rest can go in an "Other variants" major section. Jules LT 20:24, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

• S: "Implicit/explicit" cannot be moved from under "atheism as lack of theism"; if you do, you will destroy that section. "Weak/strong" can, if you rework the text so it's more universal (i.e., doesn't completely adhere to the "atheism as lack of theism" definition, but also acknowledges "atheism as denial of theism"), but there's absolutely no reason to separate either into two sections and further clutter up the page, especially in weak/strong's case, since they already have two whole friggin' articles to expand indefinitely in... If anything, we should possibly try trimming down the "weak/strong atheism" section a bit to only give the most important facts, and move the other stuff into their individual articles... One of the main reasons this page is too long is because it spends too many pages going into detail on things that already have their own distinct articles anyway. It needs only summarize and make the most important information clear when there are other pages to put the details on—and there should probably be one or two for explicit/implicit atheism soon, that would help cut down some and thus give us more room for information that would be harder to put on another page, like "distribution of atheists" and "reasons for atheism" and "criticism of atheism" and "religious views of atheism".... -Silence 22:32, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

Silence is correct on this, broadly, I think. I think we are apt to get confused between seeing weak/strong as synonymous with implicit/explicit, or as describing distinctions within explict atheism. The danger is that Smith, who uses implicit/explict (and it's a useful distinction), does not use weak/strong, and it isn't clear that the concepts map exactly. I'd welcome moving detail to the weak/strong articles, because those articles are pretty poor at the moment and need some beefing up with actual connection to the literature. --Dannyno 10:12, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

I see what I got wrong: I didn't consider the "is not a strong atheist" in the "weak atheism" definition; that would equate it with "nontheism". what you got wrong is mixing up explicit atheism and strong atheism.

Implicit atheism is defined by Smith as "the absence of theistic belief without a conscious rejection of it." Explicit atheism is defined as "the absence of theistic belief due to a conscious rejection of it".

So he considers that atheism is "absence of theism" (nontheism) in both cases, he does not address the case of strong atheists (belief that there is no God). Implicit atheism is the absence of belief because you didn't reflect about it and explicit atheism is the result of a conscious reflection.

I don't really care if it's going to "destroy the section": the implicit/explicit comparison has nothing to do in that "atheism as lack of belief" section (which I still think should be merged into the "weak atheism" section at the top. We can probably have a first section with "typical typologies and definitions", then:

• Atheism as lack of theism/As belief that there is no God (2 subsections)
• Weak/Strong atheism (no subsection; strong atheism can be addressed fast, since "as belief that there's no God" mostly covered it.
• Implicit/Explicit atheism.

Then, we put the "Variations" section.

File:Atheism schematic.jpg

To clarify: atheists in the broadest sense include strong atheists. A weak atheist is an atheist who isn't a strong atheist. So Weak atheist/Strong atheist is a non-overlapping categorization. See schematic. The round is atheism, and everything that's not implicit is explicit (you don't get implicit strong atheists, by definition). Jules LT 19:15, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

I saw a few things I got wrong, but never mind, I don't have the time or energy. Please go and make an exact schematic so it all gets clearer for everyone. I'm getting tired of semiotics. Jules LT 19:20, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

• I made some changes to the "spiritual and religious atheism" section to add Humanist Judaism as a group that is welcoming of atheists even though it would seem on the surface to be a theist organization. These changes were removed without explanation. I don't know if this group doesn't meet someone's definistion of atheism, or if my changes were perceived as anti-semitic and therefore reversed, or why. In any event, this section seems to me to be overly focused on Christian atheist groups, while it should be more evenhanded on non-Christian but religious atheist groups. (I profess my ignorance about atheists within Islam, but I think there should be some mention of them if they exist. I also think that Humanist Judaism qualifies as such a group.)

Images

File:Atheismimplicitexplicit.PNG

You are incorrect in saying that implicit/explicit does not belong in "atheism as lack of belief"; the implicit/explicit distinction is the only distinction on the entire page which REQUIRES being used with the "atheism as lack of theism" definition; all the others have at least some potential to be qualifiable as "atheism" using the "atheism as denial of theism" definition; only implicit/explicit atheism is a distinction that specifically requires being a subdivision of atheism-as-nontheism, because it groups the entire definition of "atheism as denial of theism" as one of TWO of the types of atheism, the other being "atheism not as denial of theism", general nontheism. Taking "implicit/explicit theism" out of "atheism as lack of belief" makes about as much sense as taking "christian atheism" out of "spiritual and religious atheism"; that is, no sense at all.

File:Atheismweakstrong.PNG

Merging "atheism as lack of belief" into "weak atheism" would also be a horrific idea; "weak atheism" and "strong atheism" are terms that have barely been popular for a decade, whereas "atheism as lack of belief" has been a definition for over 5,000 years. It would be unspeakably biased and distortive to try to restructure the entire field of atheism into a "strong atheism" and a "weak atheism" section just because they get a few more Google hits than some other terms. Ugh.

"Atheism as lack of theism/As belief that there is no God (2 subsections)" is an interesting idea, though if we did use it we'd need a much better title than that, of course. And if they're going to be subsectioned anyway, wouldn't it be just as easy to? Worry about getting the "atheism as denial of theism" section started before any of this. I don't know about the "Variations" section idea, though; what the heck makes any of the later types of atheism more "variations" than the first types? Seems like a very clumsy way to handle all the other typologies.

Hm. I like the idea of a schematic a lot! It would help alleviate a lot of confusion, methinks. I made two in paint just now, what do you guys think of using one of these (not both, as they're redundant). I prefer the implicitexplicit one, myself; the weakstrong one might give some people the distorted impression that explicit atheism is more common than implicit atheism. -Silence 23:57, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

Smith does in fact consider strong atheism. He divides explicit atheism into critical atheism and atheism for psychological or other reasons (which latter he's not interested in). He then notes subdivisions of critical atheism:

Critical atheism presents itself in various forms. It is often expressed by the statement, "I do not believe in the existence of a god or supernatural being." This profession of nonbelief often derives from the failure of theism to provide sufficient evidence in its favor. Faced with a lack of evidence, this explicit atheist sees no reason whatsoever for believing in a supernatural being. Critical atheism also assumes stronger forms, such as, "God does not exist" or, "The existence of a god is impossible."

The crucial question is, does the positive/strong - negative/weak distinction map Smith's explicit/implicit distinction, or does it map his subdivision of explicit critical atheism? There's at least a little ambiguity there. --Dannyno 09:33, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

Didn't read it all: as I said, I'm tired and busy. Just my little comment, though: your second chart is like mine, only you don't see as clearly that implicit atheism is included in weak atheism. Also, I've been advocating for a picture for ages, I'm happy you finally took on the idea. Good luck for future work, I might come back later, when this article won't be moving that much anymore. Jules LT 14:36, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

Uh, I know the second picture is like yours; both of them are based on the general design of yours, because someone said it looked good, but I figured it could use some souping-up (hence the color-coding). But as I said right above, I vastly prefer the upper picture to the lower one. I'm just showing two different versions so I can get an idea of what you all would prefer.

"Also, I've been advocating for a picture for ages, I'm happy you finally took on the idea." - "finally"? I independently thought "this article seriously needs some more images" the very first time I scanned through the page, I've never seen any of your requests for more images around here (if you want such things to be easier to find, why not add one of those "to-do list" things near the top, to keep track of our main priorities?), and I first began reading and editing this article only six days ago.

But we do agree: pics will help break up the blocks of text a lot more and make the page's size much less of a problem. It'll be harder to find suitable images for this article than for articles like history of atheism, though, what with the lack of unifying symbols of outfits or other things to illustrate in atheism... maybe some photos of the most discussed philosophers, like Smith and Nagel. -Silence 16:06, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

I greatly prefer the top image, as it clearly shows that implicit atheism is a subgroup of weak creationism. The pie charts don't do that for me, and I find them confusing, rather than enlightening. -- Ec5618 08:45, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

The top image is also a bland, small, low-quality, pixelated image, and the central dividing line isn't straight. Good idea, poor execution. If we changed the fourth-of-a-circle to just a smaller circle so that it's clearer that it's a subdivision, would that solve your confusion? -Silence 17:30, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

Also. It's certainly not clear in the top image how Explicit Atheism factors in to the layperson. Just stating "everything else is Explicit Atheism" isn't good enough. That's why the colors are important, aside from helping spiff up the article a bit. I also don't like the top or bottom image because they emphasize the strong/weak dichotomy over the explicit/implicit one, even though strong/weak is a pretty generic, almost randomly-used term with a whole slew of common meanings and no consensus as to proper usage, having little to nothing to do with the actual atheism debate and a lot more to do with ego wars between Usenet logicians who refuse to acknowledge that consciously, deliberately not believing that something exists is less than a hair removed from believing that something doesn't exist. Explicit and implicit, on the other hand, are indisputably valuable terms as a way to describe the two warring definitions of atheism: the stricter definition classifies only explicit atheism as atheism, and the looser one classifies both explicit and implicit. That's a more valuable thing to understand than the painful semantics of positivity/negativity disputes.

Though, of course, we could always use both versions in different parts of the article, if people think it's necessary. But eh. -Silence 17:36, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

Perhaps I just don't understand the distinctions between implicit/ explicit, weak/strong. But the top image seems to indicate that implicit atheism is a subgroup of weak atheism (or can be classified as weak atheism). Which makes sense, to me.

The other images (because they look like pie charts presumably) seem to suggest that there are 4 different forms or atheism, and that one must make a choice (as it were) between one of the four. One can either be implicitly atheistic, or weakly so, and so on.

I'm not quite clear on what your objection to the top image is. The quality of all three images can certainly be improved. You say the top image is inaccurate, but I don't quite follow your reasoning. Mind you, I'm hardly an expert, or even a regular contributor to this article. As for the colours, I don't like them. I would prefer a softer tone, perhaps even simply a light blue or gray. -- Ec5618 13:59, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

The top one I did in a couple of minutes, so obviously it needs improving. But now that Ec points it out I see what what was disturbung me in the other pictures: they do indeed look like pie charts, where there are no inclusions and each part is independant. Try with ensemblistic representation, whichever way you like, it's bound to get better. Anpother thing: the top and bottom pictures show the weak/strong comparison as a referrent to understand the implicit/explicit one. I think this is better than the other way around because people tend to know weak/strong better. Jules LT 17:51, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

Good job!

The article is certainly heading in the direction I envisioned long ago. I'm happy that I don't have to deal with the same constant vandalism and arguments in the articles to which I now contribute! Good luck, and dare I say, Godspeed. Adraeus 11:17, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

Atheism/Theism Charts

After seeing some interesting charts on Talk:Theism, I decided to try my hand at some, but without trying to cram everything into a single chart; instead I divided it into as many sections as necessary to fully explore the range of significant combinations. So, how's User:Silence/Theism look? Oh, now I've also made a one-chart version, User:Silence/Theism2. -Silence 19:40, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

The chart above (the image) seems incredibly simple, but its possible we can use it as the basis for this article. We needn't cover every aspect of atheism in the article, though we should mention that there is a wide spectrum of beliefs (or lack thereof). I can see how a chart of all options might be helpful to editors, but the diagram is probably so confusing/contentious to readers it wouldn't help the article. -- Ec5618 21:24, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

Militant Atheism?

Am I the only one that thinks this section was a poor addition? I've never heard of it -- and reading the section to me, it seems more, i dunno, "anti-theistic agnosticism" to me. --Quasipalm 03:57, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

I've seen it used "in the media" and had some discussions with people that see themselves that way and, as I said, it seems to be in reaction to the rise of so-called "intelligent design", so I added it here since it is specifically referred to as "atheism" by the users of the term. It is clearly not an clinical definition or label, but does that matter if that's what it's being called? If someone is looking for a description of the term they're not going to look under anti-theistic agnosticism or antitheism or whatever, are they? Someone removed it again anyway, so it hardly matters. -- 213.78.235.176, 16:20, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Karen Armstrong quote

"Colonization" was recently changed to the British spelling. I don't have any problem with this, and it makes sense that Armstrong would have written it that way as she's British, but can someone please just double-check that book and see that it really is spelled that way in the book?--chris.lawson 00:27, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

Hitler's Christian beliefs (was Factually inaccuracy)

Adolf Hitler wasn't actually christian, he was a theist, but not a christian, while there are a few historians who dispute this, I'd say most historians with an intrest in the area think he was an atheist, I suggest that "Adolf Hitlers Christian beliefs" or whatever it say's in the articile be changed to "Adolf Hitlers theistic beliefs". Apparently there's extensive evidence that he eventually planned to exterminate christianity.

From a brief search of literature online, it appears that Hitler did have Christian beliefs. See this site for more on that. At the very least, he cunningly appealed to Christian beliefs in his writings and speeches, and most Germans at the time were certainly Christians (Lutheran and Catholic, mostly) and did not find such appeals inconsistent with their religion. Christianity in Germany at the time had a very anti-Semitic tenor, owing much to Martin Luther, who himself derived much of his sentiment from New Testament portrayals of the Jews. Regardless of whether Hitler's appeals to Christian doctrine were sincere, the Christian beliefs of most Nazis provides a counterexample to anti-atheists' claims that the existence of unethical people who have a certain belief system indicates that the belief system itself is unethical. Rohirok 03:18, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

Hitler's Secret Conversations 1941-1944 seems to demonstrate that Hitler wasn't a Christian. The book may be POV, I don't know, but it certainly casts doubt on the assertion that Hitler was Christian. Personally I am almost sure he wasn't, but surely even you'd admit that there's a signficant chance that he wasn't christian, and qualified people dispute the claim that he was christian, so calling him Christian is also a violation of NPOV. To present him as being Christian with certainity is a factual mistake, better would be to talk about Hitler as a theist, as I don't think anyone seriously debates that he wasn't a theist.

anybody who self-describes as Christian is a Christian; I don't know of any other criterion. People's adherence may change in the course of their lives though. I suppose there is no doubt that Hitler self-described as Christian when he was young. He probably had other things than religion on his mind during the war, but he certainly discouraged the Germanic-Occult stuff that was going on in the Nazi party. Hitler is certainly not notable for being a Christian, so I don't see why he should specifically be mentioned as one. You may want to try to impose your standards of 'burden of proof' on List of gay, lesbian or bisexual people -- it seems anyone who ever so much as smiled at someone of the same sex is immediately featured there. Baad 16:05, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

"anybody who self-describes as Christian is a Christian; I don't know of any other criterion." Well, going to church would be one. Anyway, I'm taking out the Hitler reference since his status as a Christian is at best controversial. "Theist" works as a weasel word in context.--Chris 17:39, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

Actually, I chopped half the paragraph as highly POV.

Copyedit – Oct 19/05

I did this in a block, so I thought it might be prudent to list the changes I made. There are 33 in total.

• NPOV

Some politically motivated organizations that report or gather population statistics may, intentionally or carelessly, misrepresent atheists.

Changed "carelessly" to "unintentionally"

Some politically motivated organizations that report or gather population statistics may, intentionally or unintentionally, misrepresent atheists.

Aside from atheists who lack theism for philosophical reasons, there are some explicit atheists who lack theism for social, psychological, practical, and other reasons.

"Lack theism"? Rewritten.

As well as atheists with philosophical reasons, there are explicit atheists who cite social, psychological, practical, and other reasons for their beliefs.

Arguments that theism promotes immorality often center around the large number of wars and terrorism brought about by religious fundamentalists.

Changed to:

Arguments that theism promotes immorality often center around the contention that a great deal of violence, including war, has been brought about by religious beliefs and practices.

They consider that reason guided by humanism and rational thought leads to a more fully expressed ethical life. Of course, many modern liberal religions have such humanistic concepts as well.

Modified first sentence and removed last sentence for relevance.

They consider that reason guided by humanism and rational thought can lead to a fully expressed ethical life.

• Larger changes

When in the course of the history of ideas the denial of the existence of "speculative" atheism became unsustainable, atheism was nevertheless repressed and criticized by defining it very narrowly, casting it as unacceptably dogmatic or otherwise misrepresenting atheist positions.

Verbose, changed to:

When denial of the existence of "speculative" atheism became unsustainable, atheism was nevertheless often repressed and criticized by narrowing definitions, applying charges of dogmatism, and otherwise misrepresenting atheist positions.

Although both terms are most often used by explicit atheists, nontheists who consciously reject theism, weak atheism also includes some implicit atheists — that is, nontheists who have not consciously rejected theism, but lack theistic belief, arguably including infants.

Jumbled, changed to:

Although explicit atheists (nontheists who consciously reject theism), may subscribe to either weak or strong atheism, weak atheism also includes implicit atheists &mdash that is, nontheists who have not consciously rejected theism, but lack theistic belief, arguably including infants.

Having considered the evidence for and against the existence of deities, others (explicit weak atheists) may doubt or dispute the existence of deities, while not actively asserting that deities do not exist.

Removed first part of sentence, "Having considered" is assumed.

Others (explicit weak atheists) may doubt or dispute claims for the existence of deities, while not actively asserting that deities do not exist.

Agnosticism is distinct from weak atheism, though many implicit atheists may be agnostic, and implicit atheism falls under weak atheism.

Removed last portion of sentence. It is not applicable to the def.

Agnosticism is distinct from weak atheism, though many implicit atheists may be agnostic.

It is a popular view among many logical positivists such as Rudolph Carnap and A. J. Ayer (they didn't use this terminology), who hold that talk of gods is literally nonsense.

Removed parenthetic statement. Their use of terminology is a minor point that disrupts the sentence flow.

It is a popular view among many logical positivists such as Rudolph Carnap and A. J. Ayer, who hold that talk of gods is literally nonsense.

However, some ignostics dispute whether considering a nonsensical question nonsensical is a positive statement, any more than considering "What color is Sunday?" nonsensical would be.

Removed example, already used first par. of sub-section.

However, some ignostics dispute whether considering a nonsensical question nonsensical is a positive statement.

• Smaller changes

God may not exist, but the run-on sentence still does. Yikes. I changed 9 of them - you'll have to look them up yourself if you're worried.

Removed in text link to motherjones.com. The reference is still intact.

2001 The Czech Statistical Office – cleaned up grammar.

Added blockquote to quotes.

Oh, and I took off the copyedit tag.

Cheers --Bookandcoffee 03:35, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

Atheism as much a belief as Theism

But Atheism does not make a claim "there is no god", it simply does not believe the theist claim "there is a god". Be it Strong Atheism, Weak Atheism, whatever, they do not make a claim, they dispute a claim made (that of theism). Therefor, to say atheism requires a burden of proof, implies that any hypothesis, story or even fairytale must be "proven" untrue. Such an assertian is ridciulous, I can say I am God - try prove I'm not, it's completely irrational. Canderra 17:04, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

The above was left on the main article page, but appears to be a comment. I moved it here under this assumption. Fox1 (talk) 17:10, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

eeek, your right, sorry. Not sure how I posted this to the main article, I think it was meant to be in response to something else on this page but can't find it now. Canderra 16:25, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

The "Atheism is incoherent", "Atheism doesn't exist" "Atheism leads to poor morals and ethics" and "Atheism is a belief as much as theism is" could do with a lot more references and a lot less weasel terms though; whatever notable theists theologians said is fine I guess; the trick is to quote them, don't just prefix your own rant with "some theists". Baad 15:57, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

Irreligious vs. non-religious

JimWae insists that "irreligion/irreligious" connote hostility toward religion. He prefers that "non-religious" be used instead. He also objects to the link to irreligion, on the grounds that it is incomplete. Several people have reverted JimWae's change and reinstated "irreligious." JimWae is the only one I've seen who has reverted it back to "non-religious," and this seems to indicate a consensus against JimWae's contention, and an acceptance on the part of a greater number of editors of the word "irreligious" as a neutral term appropriate for the article.

I checked two dictionaries (American Heritage and OED Abridged). Both confirmed two meanings for the word: hostility toward religion, or lack of religion. While the word might be used to connote hostility toward religion, this is only one of the two possible usages, and the second meaning is clearly meant in the Wikipedia atheism article and the irreligion article. The terms "nonreligion," "non-religion," "nonreligious" and "non-religious" all redirect to the article on irreligion, which seems to indicate consensus on the part of Wikipedians that the terms are synonymous.

A possible negative connotation for a word does not indicate that all or even most usages must convey a negative connotation. The word "atheism" has been used to connote "godlessness" and immorality, but this does not render neutral usage of the word illegitimate, nor does it mean the atheism article must be renamed "non-theism." Similarly, the fact that some people use "irreligious" as if it meant "anti-religious" does not negate its neutral meaning, which is synonymous with "non-religious."

I prefer the term "irreligious" in the article, as it has greater currency than "non-religious." It appears that most others who have concerned themselves with the issue in this article prefer it also, perhaps for the same reason. In any case, JimWae's grounds for replacing one word with the other are faulty, and it should not be reverted on those grounds. If he can justify on this discussion page the use of "non-religious" instead of "irreligious" on other grounds, I will not object, provided his reasoning is sound, and the change actually improves the article. Until then, I suggest that he leave the original wording, to which I will revert the article.

And, regardless of the final wording, the link to the irreligion article must remain. If JimWae objects to its incompleteness, he ought to edit it so that it is more complete. If JimWae believes that "irreligious" and "non-religious" properly mean different things, he ought to justify this belief on the irreligion discussion page, and (provided his justifications are not found wanting) then proceed by transforming the "non-religious/nonreligous" redirects into their own, separate article. Rohirok 05:38, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

• Have you heard of the word "please" or are you used to people just doing everything you say? For starters, "irreligious" has more than connotations of hostility to religion - it is given as part of the definition - in some cases as the primary definition. There does not seem to be any good reason to use a word which expresses this hostility when a perfectly good word ("non-religious") exists which does not carry this baggage. It is not the job of wikipedia to change the connotations (no less the denotations) of a word. If you want to keep the link, go ahead, but recent changes to irreligion are one-sided - hostility is first ignored in the definition, then argued against. Btw, there was no mention in edit summary of any reasons when my first edit was first changed - it was part of someone else's reversion - so I do not see how consensus could have been established yet --JimWae 18:10, 30 October 2005 (UTC)--JimWae 18:40, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

I don't think "irreligious" automatically carries connotations of hostility to religion - in fact, I'd never heard that claim before you made it. Do you have some citations of that definition? I noted that none of the Merriam-Webster definitions indicates any hostility. I think it's largely subjective to the person writing the definition. MFNickster 19:14, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

• Aside from the two Rohirok discounts, here are a few more --JimWae 19:25, 30 October 2005 (UTC)
  1. http://www.onelook.com/?w=irreligious&ls=a
  2. http://www.askoxford.com/concise_oed/irreligious?view=uk
  3. http://www.wordsmyth.net/live/home.php?script=search&matchent=irreligious&matchtype=exact
  4. http://www.bartleby.com/61/92/I0239200.html
  5. http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=irreligious&r=66
  6. http://www.ultralingua.net/index.html?service=ee&text=irreligious
  7. http://www.rhymezone.com/r/rhyme.cgi?Word=irreligious
  8. http://www.allwords.com/query.php?SearchType=3&Keyword=Irreligious&goquery=Find+it%21&Language=ENG
  9. http://65.66.134.201/cgi-bin/webster/webster.exe?search_for_texts_web1828=irreligious
  10. http://poets.notredame.ac.jp/cgi-bin/wn?cmd=wn&word=irreligious
  11. http://lookwayup.com/lwu.exe/lwu/d?s=f&w=irreligious

• 1. http://hirr.hartsem.edu/ency/irreligion.htm

JimWae: There is rarely a clear distinction between the definition of a word and its connotations. Since dictionaries are descriptive of how a word is used, rather than prescriptive, connotations are often incorporated into a definition, even when such are not always or necessarily conveyed by the word, or supported by they etymologically parsed meaning of the word. Thus, we witness some people's use of "irreligious" to mean hostility toward religion (and the description of such use in dictionary entries), even though this meaning is not the only one recognized, nor is it exclusively supported by the word's etymology. The "ir" prefix is equivalent to the "in" prefix, which can be meant either to indicate negation or privation. Negation of something can indicate hostility toward it (but not always), while privation indicates mere absence of something.

I do not dismiss the dictionary entries for "irreligious" that I mentioned, nor do I dismiss the ones you list. I recognize them as accurate portrayals of how the word is used. I only differ with you about the claim that "irreligious" ought to be expunged from the atheism article on the grounds that it has a negative connotation. Since it is not always used with this connotation, and since the atheism article uses it in its neutral (privative) sense, there is nothing wrong with continuing to use it. Furthermore, I argue that it is preferable for the sake of clarity and quality of the encyclopedia article, as it is the most commonly used and recognized of the words indicating privation of religion. "Non-religious" is an acceptable word, but its currency is much more limited than the long-standing term "irreligious." In any case, "irreligious" should not be deleted entirely from the article on the grounds you mention, since the word is clearly used in the neutral sense, and the link to the irreligion article should remain, since it helps clarify what is meant by the word, and conveys accurate information on the topic.

As for consensus, I did not support a definitive conclusion on this, but expressed that certain facts "seemed" to indicate consensus (those being: the variety of authors who reverted your edit, compared with your as yet un-seconded view that "irreligious" is unacceptable; and the unchallenged content and redirects of the irreligion article). Consensus--and the reasoning behind it--will grow as it is more definitively explicated on this page, and perhaps on the Talk:Irreligion page. Rohirok 22:46, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

Indeed, it would be hilarious to expunge all instances of the word irreligion in Wikipedia to satisfy JimWae's belief that it's unacceptable in neutral contexts and there's a completely neutral alternative in "non-religious", when the exact same argument has been made—and failed miserably—in trying to use nontheism in place of the very loaded and very negatively-connoted atheism in many Wikipedia articles. Instead, the much more obscure and rare meaning of atheism is used throughout all of Wikipedia ("lack of theism" instead of "denial of theism"), purely because there are so damned many atheists on Wikipedia to fight for their specific, rare, unusual definition of the word, and atheists (and only some of them) are just about the only ones who use that definition of the word nowadays.

So, "atheism" gets to have its most common definition entirely ignored and its barely-even-existent definition included on just about every article on Wikipedia that could even remotely be linked to it (exactly as strong atheism and weak atheism are linked to on innumerable articles that have absolutely nothing to do with those terms just because of the atheist community trying to propagate their neologisms and make them more common than they really are; when I saw strong atheism mentioned on state atheism I almost fell out of my chair) even though it's a heavily loaded and complex word that 9 times out of 10 isn't used in the definition a handful of dedicated Wikipedia users demand it be used in, because the atheists demand it be so, ignoring the 100% suitable synonym for "lack of theism" nontheism, and meanwhile "irreligion" is getting flack because it is has negative connotations in certain contexts?! How absurd. Every term in existence that at all relates to lack of religion of lack of belief in god or anything similar has developed negative connotations over time simply because there are so many religious people and theists to attack those movements and belief structures! And there's nothing unusual or terrible about that—we don't need to create even more neologisms like "nonreligion" (17,800 Google hits to "irreligion"'s 161,000) to kill Wikipedia with political correctness. Not using the term "irreligion" just because it's been used in negative contexts in the past is almost as ridiculous as not using the term "Communist" because of its negative connotations. Anything with strong opposition will gain negativity in certain contexts; this is not one of those contexts, as anyone will very clearly realize in this article's context. -Silence 23:46, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

• Please do me the courtesy of not making a straw-man out of my position. I never said nor indicated that "irreligion" should be removed from wikipedia. I said that in this one sentence in the atheism article, "non-religious" was a more appropriate term since it is less ambigiuous. Methinks some do protest too much --JimWae 01:36, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
• As I see it the following reasons have been proposed to keep "irreligion" in that sentence --JimWae 01:36, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
  • etymology of the word
  • intention of the editor
  • most common usage
  • there's an article to link to
  • personal preferences
• The irreligion article needs an overhaul. Just as the atheism article does not present only one definition of atheism, the irreligion article, to truly represent use of the word, should present all meanings without expressing a preference for one - currently it expresses a clear preference. Once that issue is rectified, the ambiguity of its use in the atheism article will be apparent, and it will become more apparent that "irreligious" in the atheism article does not convey the intended meaning of its author - and never clearly did. --JimWae 01:36, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
• as for etymology, rarely do the roots of a word exactly equal the "fruits" of a word--JimWae 01:43, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
• as for "most common usage", no evidence has been presented - and even if such were the case, "non-religious" does not have the same ambiguity--JimWae 01:43, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
• the only reason I have not brought this up before is that it had seemed superfluous to have an article called non-religion; but I am starting to wonder what purpose an article called irreligion serves too - other than as a place for a short definition and a bunch of ==See also==s --JimWae 01:43, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

I apologize for misunderstanding your views; it looked to me like you'd only removed the one instance of "irreligion" because it was the one currently being edited, not because it was the only one you objected to. If that's the case, then I retract my above statements regarding that matter.

Of course, do keep in mind that atheism also exhibits a clear and unjustifiable preference: it spends the entire article defining atheism as "lack of theism" rather than "denial of theism", only even mentioning the vastly more common definition in two sentences, and refusing to include a section on the most common definition of atheism as "denial of theism" even though it spends multiple pages discussing the archaic meaning of atheism as "immorality" and the definition of atheism as "lack of theism" that no especially reputable or widely-used dictionary in existence has yet been able to corroborate. Furthermore, every other article on Wikipedia, having been commandeered by the online atheist community, uses the "atheism as lack of theism" definition plain-facedly, refusing to even acknowledge over viewpoints, definitions, or interpretations. So, to use only one term ("irreligion" over "nonreligion", "atheism" over "nontheism") and to favor one definition for "irreligion" is at worst merely being consistent. :)

"but I am starting to wonder what purpose an article called irreligion serves too - other than as a place for a short definition and a bunch of ==See also==s" - The same reason there is for an atheism article. -Silence 02:17, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

JimWae accuses the irreligion article of using a POV definition, and argues that "non-religious" is a better word to use in the intro section for the atheism article, since it is less ambiguous. He is wrong on both counts. Using one of two acceptable and widely recognized definitions for a word is not taking a specific POV stance. There are any number of words that have more than one definition or variation on the same definition, and it is inevitable that they should be used to mean different things depending on the context. "Black" can be taken to mean someone of African descent, or merely someone with dark skin (such as Australian Aborigines, and several other ethnicities). "Atheist" can be taken to mean someone who believes there is no God, or someone who does not believe there is a God. "American" can mean a citizen of the United States of America, but it is also used to refer to inhabitants of North or South America. An "agnostic" can be someone who is undecided on whether God exists, or it can be someone who believes that knowledge about God is impossible to ever attain. A "pie" could be a sweet fruit or custard-based dessert, or it could be a pizza, or any type of food that is fully or partially encased by a crust. A godless person could be an immoral person, or it could be someone who merely worships no god. I could go on and on.

The important point is this: Words with multiple definitions, or with variations on the same definition, or with popular baggage or connotations are unavoidable, but can still be used one way or another without necessarily introducing a POV on how the word ought always to be used, and can be used to convey a clear meaning based on the context. The Supreme Court used "irreligion" in the neutral sense indicating privation, naming it as the alternative to religion, not as a position necessarily hostile to it. Their meaning was clear, as was the meaning intended by the atheism intro as originally written. The same word "irreligious" is used later in the atheism article in the same sense. I am surprised it escaped JimWae's sanitation efforts.

In attempting to rid the atheism article of what he incorrectly terms a POV usage of the word "irreligious," JimWae is actually introducing a new POV, namely, that "irreligious" should not be used to convey privation of, but hostility toward religion. There are two meanings for the word, we've all agreed. JimWae prefers that we surrender to one meaning of the word "irreligious" (hostility toward religion), to avoid ambiguity, and introduces the newer and less recognized "non-religious" as its replacement. But by his logic, we could just as well surrender to the neutral sense of the word "irreligious," and replace all usages implying negation with the less ambiguous "antireligious." Or we could do away with the word "irreligious" altogether, using only "non-religious" and "antireligious," and rest easy with the satisfaction that there are no more ambiguities on the matter. And while we're at it, we could go around and sanitize articles that use "American" to mean United States citizen, or that use "Black" to mean of African descent, or that use that pesky and ambiguous word "agnostic" which can mean so frightfully many different things that we'd be better off if we eliminated it entirely and replaced it with words whose meanings are cut and dried and never subject to any ambiguity or connotation acquisition.

It's an absurd approach, because words will always be subject to ambiguity, and prone to acquisition of connotations, especially words that are used to refer to groups that are minorities and therefore tend to be largely misunderstood by the general public. If, in writing about the irreligious, we are reduced to using only terms that are unambiguous to the general public and connotation-free, we would be robbed of most of the terms used to refer to the irreligious. We would be forced to disregard the very terms that the irreligious use to define themselves, since these usually have a different meaning or connotation to the general public. This approach represents a failure to realistically recognize the inherent malleability of any language, and a failure to recognize the significance of context in reducing whatever ambiguity results form this malleability.

With that said, I contend that "irreligious" isn't nearly as ambiguous as JimWae says it is, and that it is usually used to indicate privation of religion, not hostility toward it. The latter meaning is covered quite well by the word "antireligious," and most usages of the word "irreligious" that I have encountered in real-world discussions and online writings have not implied disapproval, except when used by those who disapprove of any persons who lack religion, regardless of whether they are labeled "irreligious," "nonreligious," or "unreligious."

I do not find JimWae's replacement of "irreligious" with "non-religious" nearly so objectionable as the grounds by which he justifies it, so I will leave his edit as is, since it does not change the intended meaning of the sentence, and since it retains the link to the existing article on irreligion. I concede that the irreligion article ought to include both definitions for the word up front, though I will oppose any efforts to thoroughly eliminate usage of "irreligion" in its neutral sense, as it is a legitimate usage whose meaning is easily clarified by context. Usage of the word "irreligion" to imply hostility toward religion is not nearly as common in modern times as one might infer from the co-equal listing of both meanings in dictionaries, and "non-religious" or "unreligious" are by no means immune to the negative connotations that certain people are liable to attach to absolutely any term that implies a lack of religion. Rohirok 03:45, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

• Where did I ever say or suggest that the appearance or use of the term irreligion in the atheism article was POV? I said the irreligion article was POV. In the atheism article it is was unnecessarily ambiguous and those aware of the different meanings could not be certain from the context which meaning was intended (only by going to the one-sided irreligion article could one be sure what was meant) --JimWae 06:54, 4 November 2005 (UTC)
• Btw, there's a 3rd meaning for irreligious that should appear in the irreligion article - applied to people who profess a religion but do not act in accordance with that religion. See http://ctlibrary.com/4150. -- Also see http://www.bartleby.com/68/30/3430.html --JimWae 07:16, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

Alright. You make a persuasive argument, and now that you've clarified that only that you only found that one instance objectionable (because you didn't consider it clear enough from context which meaning was being used) and explained your related views on the matter, I have no problem with that change, nor with your trying to make the "irreligion" article more NPOV. Though I still say you should do exactly the same with "atheism"—there's no difference between atheism/irreligion and nontheism/nonreligion, and both should be completely neutral on definitions, neither claiming that "irreligion" primarily means lack of religion instead of lack of religious practice or antipathy to religion, nor that "atheism" primarily means lack of theism instead of denial of it or godlessness (though the former certainly has a vastly better case for it than the latter, since at least irreligion's "lack of religion" definition if a fairly common on in dictionaries, whereas atheism as "lack of theism" is almost nonexistent). But yeah, I'm satisfied with the change, at least. -Silence 06:19, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

dablink

Does it bother anyone else that some random band is getting free advertising at the top of this page? There was another article with a similar problem recently, but I can't remember what it was. Anyone have suggestions on how we could better handle that disambiguation?--chris.lawson 04:06, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

Well, it could be worded a little better, perhaps, but it seems to follow the wikipedia:disambiguation guideline properly. The band in question is named Atheist, and appears to be in line with the WP:MUSIC guidelines rather than a garage-band vanity article. As such, I think the current link is preferable to making Atheist a disambiguation page for the band and "A person who subscribes to atheism". The Literate Engineer 06:14, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, this has come up on talk: before and in previous iterations of the discussion no better solution has been proposed. I doubt one will come up this time either. Bryan 06:44, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

OK. I remember what the other page was now -- it was Television. The way they solved the problem there was as follows:

"TV" redirects here. For other uses, see TV (disambiguation).

The way it was before it was fixed was a little more blatant than is the case here. Until the word "atheist" needs to be further disambiguated, I don't really have too much of a problem with it.--chris.lawson 22:25, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

All right, I have added a link to the "Atheist (band)" article in the See also section, as was done for "Television (band)". MFNickster 00:36, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

Nontheism

what evidence do we have that "nontheism" is a widely accepted term? I fail to see how the substitution of Greek privative a with Latin non- changes the meaning of the term, beyond making it an etymological embarassement. Is it possible that yet again this is an attempt at using Wikipedia in order to coin a term? I will certainly advise anyone to avoid a term like "nontheism" like the plague. All it can do is add yet more confusion to terminology, and it is both historically and etymologically entirely indefensible. If we have to admit some respectable use of the term, it should still not figure in the intro, as if Wikipedia condoned its usage. dab (ᛏ) 22:10, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

I agree about streamlining the intro. However, there's probably enough support for nontheism as an accepted term that we can't ignore it. Check out http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/nontheism/. Alienus 16:56, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

I propose the following first sentence for the introduction: "Atheism is characterized by the lack of belief in, or denial of, the existence of gods." That covers the varied dictionary definitions, and leaves out any judgment on whether atheism is a philosophy, a state of mind, a religion, a worldview, etc. MFNickster

I'm sorry, but that's just a website. "Internet theology" if you like. I would prefer a reference to some theological dictionary. I agree we can mention the term "nontheism", preferably in quotation marks, on Ignosticism. Wikipedia should not be abused for the purpose of coining neologism (and misguided ones at that). "Atheism" already means "non"-"theism", literally, it is silly to use "non-theism" besides it, and it is extremely silly to use "non-theism" with a different meaning. dab (ᛏ) 20:35, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

Ironically, some (user Silence, for example) would argue that your claim that atheism equals nontheism is itself a product of "Internet theology." S/he bemoans the Wikipedian's preference in the atheism article for discussing atheism as lack of belief, rather than the more common ("real world") understanding of the word as denoting "belief that there is no God." Of course, these niggles give arbitrary preference to offline media, implicitly suggesting that any understanding of a word that tends to be accepted by online users but not others is intrinsically inferior. The vocabulary sets favored by Wikipedians and other online communities are just as legitimate as other vocabulary sets developed by other populations. The challenge to Wikipedians is to recognize the other vocabulary sets, describe them without indicating a POV, before settling pragmatically but transparently on one set for the sake of just getting some information down, instead of arguing incessantly over what the "right" meaning for a word is. "Atheist" cannot simultaneously mean both "one who believes God does not exist" and "one who merely lacks belief in God," so any article on atheism must at one point or another take a stand on which meaning it means. Rohirok 08:17, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

"Atheist" cannot simultaneously mean both "one who believes God does not exist" and "one who merely lacks belief in God." It can't? Why not? We have been over this and over this, and the consensus is that the term can apply to anyone who is not a theist. MFNickster 21:16, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

Look, this is a matter of logic, not language. Some people believe God exists; theists, deists, etc. Some people don't have this belief; atheists. Some atheists, furthermore, not only lack the belief — which suggests a provisional state of neutrality in the absence of sufficient consideration — but have actively evaluated the matter and concluded that disbelief is merited. This is the distinction between weak and strong atheism. It's possible to have different stances with regard to different conceptions of God. For example, you could be a strong atheist wrt the Christian God but a weak atheism wrt gods in general. Any questions? Alienus 18:18, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

I stand by that statement. It can mean different things to different people (who are using different vocabulary sets, and aren't really talking about the same thing when they say "atheist"), but within a coherent, unambiguous expression using a consistent vocabulary set (an ideal that sentences within Wikipedia ought presumably to aspire to), it cannot mean both one and the other, since they are different definitions. They aren't merely two ways to say the same thing. Even though, by the broader definition, a person could be someone who lacks belief in God and believes God does not exist, lacking belief in God and believing God does not exist are different things. By the popular definition of the word, an atheist is only the latter, but by the "Internet theology" definition of the word, an atheist is the former, and might or might not believe God does not exist. The broad definition incorporates individuals denoted by the narrow definition, but the definitions are themselves different and separate. Someone who wants to use the word "atheist" coherently and consistently must make a choice. Rohirok 00:55, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

• one could perhpas make such choice for oneself - but not for others, to whom one must still speak, understand, & be understood --JimWae 00:58, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

Of course, you can't choose how others are going to use the word, but you can and must choose how you use the word. Rohirok 02:30, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

Rohirok: many words have more than one meaning; these are known as polysemous words. To insist on a single definition is not reasonable, especially in light of the fact that whole books have been written on the meaning of the word atheism. Your argument is akin to saying that "Christian" cannot possibly mean both Protestants and Catholics, because they have different definitions. The realization that "atheist" covers more than one category of non/dis/un-belief is the reason that the distinctions "weak/strong," "implicit/explicit" etc. were coined in the first place. MFNickster 03:18, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

You are not understanding what I've been saying. A word can have different definitions, and I accept that "atheist" has at least two basic definitions. The article covers both definitions, and I do not dispute this at all. I am saying that, in a given sentence, the author must choose one meaning or the other of the word "atheist" for the sentence to be coherent. For instance, to say "I am an atheist," I cannot simultaneously mean that I merely lack belief in God and that I believe he does not exist. To believe God does not exist is more than merely lacking belief in God, and mere lack of belief in God does not imply believing God does not exist. The definitions are different, and I must mean one or the other to avoid ambiguity. This is not to say that one cannot mean one definition in one expression, and another in a different expression later, but only that in each particular usage, a particular meaning must be chosen. Rohirok 18:55, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

Okay, but then what did you mean above when you said that "any article on atheism must at one point or another take a stand on which meaning it means"? That seemed to me to refer to all-encompassing usage and not its usage in any particular sentence. Are there specific sentences in the article where you find the term is used too broadly, too narrowly, or incorrectly? MFNickster 19:16, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

I do not mean to suggest that the article ought in all instances to use a particular definition in preference to the other, but merely that each instance requires a choice as to what definition is being used. I have no objections to usages in the article as presently written. Rohirok 03:04, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

I disagree that "atheist" has two separate definitions, rather it is the case that we can subdivide the meaning into two categories. "Atheist" is someone who doesn't believe in God - this is true of both strong and weak atheists. Most of the time considering those who don't believe as one group is sufficient (just as, for example, we simply consider "people who don't believe in ghosts" - you never get people nitpicking the different between those who merely don't believe, and those who also believe ghosts don't exist). Mdwh 20:06, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

Then you favor the broad definition, and reject the narrow definition. Popular usage equates "atheism" with what you call strong atheism, and "weak atheism" under this usage is not atheism at all. The popular definition is different from your definition, and does not recognize a subcategory of atheists who lack belief without believing God does not exist. For whatever reason, this distinction between not believing in God and believing that God does not exist is very important to a lot of people. I think it has something to do with the burden of proof that those who believe God does not exist presumably must bear. I think that no such burden exists unless you are trying to convince someone else that God does not exist. I also think that there is no practical difference between lacking belief in God and believing he does not exist. But many disagree, which is why the distinction between the two definitions, and the distinction between strong and weak atheism are still being debated so vociferously. Rohirok 03:04, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

what is it with all the recent half-baked ad-hoc terms? dystheism ("maltheism!"), nontheism, nonreligion, apatheism? It seems like people are much more likely do believe they have come up with a new concept since, with the internet, disseminating ideas has become easier than receiving ideas. WP is an encyclopedia. We may have articles about random short-lived Internet-culture phenomena, but we will label them as such. Ignosticism is fine. The 'special flavour' of "apatheism" can be treated as a section there, if there is any evidence that it is a particular flavour. dab (ᛏ) 10:51, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

Does Google support the acceptedness and longevity of these terms? Alienus 16:56, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

Google? Excuse me, google has only just turned six years old; regarding 'longevity' I suggest you ask that question in another 25 years :) Terms the "acceptedness" of which google shows are an indicator for internet culture, but not theology. dab (ᛏ) 20:29, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

Though Google is young, it indexes stuff that is old, so it's quite relevant. Alienus 18:18, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

Nonreligious is certainly a term I've encountered a great deal in the "real world" of polling data and the like, though I haven't ever seen it as "nonreligion". And getting lots of hits on Google doesn't really mean much in the context of whether a word has been "accepted" by the culture at large. 129.59.52.135 05:57, 30 November 2005 (UTC)