Talk:Atheism/Archive 41

...affirmation of the nonexistence of ...

Can we agree that this is awkward & needs to go first? An argument could be made that it is also POV - that it is presented as if it were an affirmation of a fact. But most importantly, it is awkward to affirm a negative. The wiki-link in it is also not specific to this definition, including material for the 2nd def. How about, instead of

Atheism, as an explicit position, can be either the affirmation of the nonexistence of gods,...

we take a first step and put

Atheism, as an explicit position, can be either the assertion that there are no deities,...

--JimWae (talk) 09:27, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

The phrase "negation of the existence of" is indeed less stilted; but I know how afraid many atheists are of being denounced by the theists as "negativists" or "nihilists". And, of course, "yes" sounds more positive than "no", and likewise "to affirm" sounds more positive than "to negate".—Editorius (talk) 10:01, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

I fail to see what an "implicit position" might be, so what's the point in using "explicit position"?—Editorius (talk) 10:03, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

We can deal with explicit/implicit separately - but I'd like to get rid of that abomination ASAP --JimWae (talk) 10:19, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

I totally agree "affirmation of the nonexistence" is the thing that bothers me most in the current sentence. I can see that this was pushed because of politics (as it was explained because Atheists don't want to be seen as "negative") I support the change. man with one red shoe 13:09, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

I actually didn't waste time, since this is a clear improvement I made the change in the page. man with one red shoe 13:14, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

deities or gods, or deity or god, or god or gods

"god or gods" may be OK in a short sentence - especially in a dictionary that has only one meaning for atheism. However, it not only quickly becomes annoyingly redundant, but it screws up the parsing for sentences that include other "or"s. Uncapitalized, some people are offended by "god" (and even liberal wikipedia capitalizes it when monotheism is meant). I can myself remember long-long ago thinking that "god" was treating "THE God" as if he were just a minor god. While I do not believe in writing for dummies, usage of "deities" (in "the assertion there are no deities") conveys just as much meaning and is less off-putting to those who might be on the fence. "Deities" also circumvents edit wars over capitalization & the monotonous "god or gods" --JimWae (talk) 10:06, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Notice that the phrase in question is not "god or gods" but "God or gods"!

God is a god but not all gods are God. ;-)

—Editorius (talk) 10:18, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

As already discussed, "God or gods" is an extremely clumsy phrase. Ilkali (talk) 13:59, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Agreed, besides, that's not anymore there, I changed per the discussion above. man with one red shoe 14:34, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

P.S.: Michael Martin uses the phrase "(any) god or gods" (see above). I agree that this phrase is redundant, while "God or gods" is not.—Editorius (talk) 16:57, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

It is, however, ambiguous. Consider the following uses of or:

1. I don't like cats or dogs.
2. We can go left or right.

The first or has the same semantics as and, and occurs because the sentence is negative. The second or exemplifies exclusive disjunction; we can go left, or we can go right, but not both. In a sentence like Joe does not believe in God or gods, both readings of or are possible, but the natural reading is the first one, which you say is not the intended one. What's worse is that this reading contains redundancy, but is not so ill-formed that people will reject it and default to the less natural reading.

This ambiguity problem could be dealt with by a small rewording, but the intended reading (the one using exclusive disjunction) is also faulty in that it advances a definition of atheism that admits polytheists. So far, I have seen no consensus to include this definition and would personally oppose it as fringe. Ilkali (talk) 17:55, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Socrates

It's a little hard to see how Socrates' use of Zeus's name as an expletive "in the Republic" (surely he does it elsewhere) is more significant a piece of evidence regarding his theism than the fact that in the very first sentence of that work he recounts how he had yesterday been on his way to the Piraeus "to pray to the goddess"!!

You misread what the article here says. He is not using Zeus as an expletive, but as a sort of oath (for lack of a better word). --Tryptofish (talk) 19:34, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

"Self-description"?

The new lead is very good. I had voiced the sentiment, many moons ago, that it was hard to stomach the article being featured given just how poorly-worded the lead was. Now that the substantive philosophical issues and organization appear to be solved (at least for the moment), I have a more picayune grammatical issue to raise. In the sentence "the term began to gather a more specific meaning and has been increasingly used as a self-description by atheists", self-description appears to me to be incorrect. I think it should be "self-descriptor" in the present formulation or, if it is to remain self-description, then it should read "the term began to gather a more specific meaning and has been increasingly used for self-description by atheists". "Self-description" is to my writer's ear the act of self-describing, and we don't mean here "and has been increasingly used as an act of self-describing". Whereas self-descriptor is the noun form.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 21:44, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Although "description" is also a noun, I agree with you that "for self-description" reads better, and I've made that change. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:31, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

absence of belief in deities, or in existence of deities?

The current intro starts out as follows:

Atheism is broadly defined[1] as any absence of belief in deities, ...

Isn't it more accurate to say the following:

Atheism is broadly defined[1] as any absence of belief in the existence of deities, ...

? --Born2cycle (talk) 07:36, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

I think either way of saying it is correct, but in this context it is very clear to any reader (I think!) that "belief" (as part of the phrase "belief in deities") refers to "belief in existence," so I prefer the less wordy form. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:22, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

"[B]elief in God is not the same thing as belief that God exists, or that there is such a thing as God. To believe that God exists is simply to accept a proposition of a certain sort—a proposition affirming that there is a personal being who, let's say, has existed from eternity, is almighty, perfectly wise, perfectly just, has created the world, and loves his creatures. To believe in God, however, is quite another matter. (...) Belief in God means trusting God, accepting Him, committing one's life to Him. (...) So believing in God is more than accepting the proposition that God exists. Still, it is at least that much. One can't sensibly believe in God and thank Him for the mountains without believing that there is such a person to be thanked, and the He is in some way responsible for the mountains. Nor can one trust in God and commit oneself to Him without believing that he exists."

(Plantinga, Alvin. God, Freedom, and Evil. 1974. Reprint, Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1977. pp. 1-2)

So, "x believes in God or the god X" implies "x believes that God or the god X exists".

But to conclude from "If p then q" that "If not-p then not-q" would be a logical fallacy. So one cannot validly conclude from the implication above that "x does not believe in God or the god X" implies "x does not believe that God or the god X exists". That is, it is at least logically possible for one to believe in God's existence withouth believing in Him in Plantinga's sense. One could believe in God's existence and yet refuse to worship Him and to commit one's life to Him.

Anyway, the phrase "the absence of belief in the existence of deities" has the advantage that the bloody word "any", which seems to cause a lot of confusion, doesn't occur therein.

—Editorius (talk) 19:37, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Plantinga is, as usual, presenting his personal view as fact. This isn't a matter of academic theological terminology, it's just plain English. He doesn't get any more say than anyone else. Ilkali (talk) 19:33, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, but the only editor who seems to be confused about "any" is Editorius. And the quotation here conflates "God" with "deities." For our purposes here, which are not the same as the apparently theist POV of Plantinga, "belief in" must automatically presuppose "belief in the existence." I agree with Ilkali. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:40, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

I just mention "any absence of belief ...". So who's the confused one here?!

Plantinga's argumentation concerning this point is fully convincing: one really cannot sensibly believe in a god without also believing in his existence.—Editorius (talk) 19:44, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

No, because they're the same thing. Ilkali (talk) 20:14, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

By the way, do you know any reliable, authoritative text on atheism in which the phrase "any absence of belief" is used instead of "the absence of (any) belief"?

(GoogleBooks hits for "any absence of belief in" = #3; GoogleBooks hits for "the absence of belief in" = #613!)

—Editorius (talk) 20:04, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

You wrote: "the bloody word "any", which seems to cause a lot of confusion," and that's what I was referring to. As I said before (twice now, I think), please see Atheism#Practical atheism for a listing of multiple absences. I suppose an alternative way of writing the sentence in question could be: "broadly defined as the absence, for any reason, of belief in deities." It means the same thing and suffers from verbiage creep, but I could perhaps go along with it. But I'm sure that if there are ANY other editors who are troubled by "any," they will say so here. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:27, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

I suggest we simply delete "any": "Atheism is broadly defined as the absence of belief in deities ...". It is perfectly clear that this alone means "The number of deities an atheist in the broad(est) sense believes in is zero".—Editorius (talk) 20:50, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

And what was the reason again for replacing "gods" with "deities"?—Editorius (talk) 20:52, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

If you write "any absence of ...", then why don't you analogously write "any rejection of ..."?!—Editorius (talk) 21:36, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

GoogleWeb hits for "any absence of belief in" = #8 (including duplicates #309)

GoogleBooks hits for "any absence of belief in" = #3.

GoogleWeb hits for "the absence of belief in" = #10300.

GoogleBooks hits for "the absence of belief in" = #613.

—Editorius (talk) 21:43, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

"... the definition of atheism as the absence of belief in a god or gods ..."

(George H. Smith, "The Scope of Atheism")

—Editorius (talk) 21:50, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Clearly "the absence of belief" is a lot better than "any absence of belief" because the latter means anyone who disbelieves any god of any religion would be an atheist... and since nobody can as a practical matter believe in all gods that definition would mean everyone is an atheist. Even if there weren't that bit of confusion in terms and someone would argue that "any" and "the" have the same effective meaning, "the" would be much smoother writing. DreamGuy (talk) 22:43, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

You are using the words cleverly, but that is untrue. Someone who disbelieves any god of any religion, but does believe one religion, is not absent of belief. Please pay attention to the lengthy previous talk about what had been the "third" definition. And don't call a disagreement about the meaning of the words incorrect grammar, when there was nothing wrong with the grammar. But I've modified the sentence to, I sincerely hope, put this matter to rest. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:07, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

If you want to put the matter to rest, you'd best listen to people when they explain problems to you instead of accusing them of just being clever with words. This statement "Someone who disbelieves any god of any religion, but does believe one religion, is not absent of belief." is true, but not what the sentence in question means. They are not absent of all beliefs, but they fall within the "any absence of beliefs" criteria. DreamGuy (talk) 23:17, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

From the logical point of view, "absence of belief in all deities" doesn't exclude belief in some gods. A Christian would then count as an atheist, because he doesn't believe in all gods he could believe in. So, a proper formulation is "absence of belief in any gods". But again, "absence of belief in deities" is already sufficient: there is the (general) belief in deities and there is its absence, the latter of which means atheism (in its broadest sense).

Here's Professor Martin's formulation again:

"Negative atheism in the broad sense is then the absence of belief in any god or gods, (...).

(Martin, Michael, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Atheism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. p. 2)

—Editorius (talk) 23:34, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

I am appalled by the conduct above, and hope that other editors will get involved in this. Comments directed at me in recent edit summaries are very unfair. There has been very extensive talk above about the lead sentence. I made a point of NOT changing anything on the actual page until there was ample time for discussion. I would expect the two editors above to do likewise. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:52, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Christians are atheists - they are Islamic atheists, for example, in that within them a belief in the existence of the Islamic deity is absent, just as Jews are Christian atheists in that within them a belief in the existence of the Christian deity is absent. "We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in." -Richard Dawkins --Born2cycle (talk) 00:02, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Yes, yes, the Christians are relatively atheistic with regard to the God of Islam, and the Muslims are relatively atheistic with regard to the Christian God. But neither are absolutely atheistic. Absolute atheism is atheism simpliciter, i.e. atheism with regard to any gods one could believe in. So we have:

(1) Broad absolute atheism =def the absence of belief in (the existence of) gods

(2) Narrow absolute atheism =def the belief in the nonexistence of gods

(3) Broad relative atheism =def the absence of belief in (the existence of) the god G or the gods {G1,...,Gn}

(4) Narrow relative atheism =def the belief in the nonexistence of the god G or the gods {G1,...,Gn}

(Remark: One kind of relative atheism is particularly important, namely the absence of belief in (the existence of) the transcendent personal god of monotheism. This is what Martin calls 'narrow negative atheism', see above.)

—Editorius (talk) 01:11, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

"The absence, for any reason, of belief in deities"—Come on, let's delete "for any reason" because the phrase "the absence of belief in deities" shouldn't be torn apart!—Editorius (talk) 01:26, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

You said "let's delete" and then you went right ahead and deleted it yourself, rather than waiting for any other editors to voice an opinion, hardly a collective "let's." "Shouldn't be torn apart" is a pretty thin reason without further explanation. At this point, it sounds like you just want to disagree for the sake of disagreeing. I repeat: There has been very extensive talk above about the lead sentence. I made a point of NOT changing anything on the actual page until there was ample time for discussion. I would expect you to do likewise. -Tryptofish (talk) 04:47, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

I agree with Editorius too, I think the "for any reason" is superfluous. man with one red shoe 04:53, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Well, then I'm sorry that I ever tried the compromise of "for any reason", and I'm changing it back to what it was before the most recent string of edits occurred. --Tryptofish (talk) 04:58, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

For the umpteenth time, anyone who has a problem with "any" (in the short, pre-compromise form), please note that there is nothing wrong with it in English grammar, and see Atheism#Practical atheism for a list of some of the multiple forms that "absence" can take. And "absence" does not mean the presence of belief in the deities of one religion while not believing in others -- that simply is not absence. --Tryptofish (talk) 05:02, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

But here is a possible compromise: it could be reasonable to say "any absence of belief in all deities." I don't feel it's really necessary, but if it helps bring agreement, I think there's nothing wrong with it. --Tryptofish (talk) 05:14, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

What's wrong with "the absence of belief in deities"? Why do we have to add "for any reason"? I think that's superfluous, we talk about the absence of belief here not about the reasons of the absence. man with one red shoe 06:08, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Tryptofish wrote: "You said "let's delete" and then you went right ahead and deleted it yourself, rather than waiting for any other editors to voice an opinion."

I at least waited 90min, during which no objection was raised. And, by the way, did you wait for my opinion before inserting "for any reason"?! So please don't behave like a hypocrite!

Tryptofish wrote: ""Shouldn't be torn apart" is a pretty thin reason without further explanation."

Actually, it's a good reason. Where are your "thick" reasons in favour of an insertion of "for any reason"?!

Tryptofish wrote: "I repeat: There has been very extensive talk above about the lead sentence. I made a point of NOT changing anything on the actual page until there was ample time for discussion. I would expect you to do likewise."

Then why do you keep on changing things on the page?!

I know that in Wikipedia "consensus" is often used synonymously with "my opinion", and you somehow seem to be one of those guys doing so (correct me in case I'm wrong).

—Editorius (talk) 06:12, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

man with one shoe wrote:"What's wrong with "the absence of belief in deities"?"

Absolutely nothing! All reliable and authoritative sources write "the absence of" (or "the lack of")!

(And take a look at the Google statistics above!)

And even if "any absence of" is not grammatically incorrect in the strict sense, it is and remains a bad phrase.

man with one shoe wrote: "We talk about the absence of belief here not about the reasons of the absence."

Right you are!

—Editorius (talk) 06:21, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

"Any absence of" is not a bad phrase. It allows for the inclusion of relative atheism as well as absolute atheism (see below) (not to mention implicit as well as explicit), which is why we say this is atheism broadly defined. Why should we open with a more restrictive definition? --Born2cycle (talk) 07:15, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

I'll agree with other editors here who've objected to the word any. "absence of belief in deities" is clearer and better. We don't really need to represent relative atheism in the first sentence. Ilkali (talk) 12:49, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Why I feel so strongly about the word "any." First, I have decided that I will refrain from making any edits to the page for a few days, instead only commenting here on the talk page. We are on the brink of an edit war, and I think it best to step back before it escalates. Normally, I'm all in favor of being bold, but, given the extent of sincere disagreements, it's better to talk things out in this case. Also, I am very sorry that I recently permitted myself to get angry at the words of other editors. It's not worth it, and wrong. Now I want to explain more clearly (I hope) why I feel so strongly about "any" over "the." Let's consider the first part of the first sentence, as a sentence by itself: "Atheism is broadly defined as any absence of belief in deities." Alternatively: "Atheism is broadly defined as the absence of belief in deities." Now let's take that second version, and delete "broadly." "Atheism is defined as the absence of belief in deities." Not a perfect definition (what is?), but not bad. So, let's then delete "defined as." "Atheism is the absence of belief in deities." Even more decisive. So what's wrong? If you follow the talk above, you'll see that I repeatedly argued in favor of simplicity and clarity, over detail and nuance, so what's up now? What's up is that I also said very early on that I wanted to be sensitive to the views of editors who were here before. Although I'm happy to lose some detail and nuance, I don't want to sacrifice meaning if it's important. Now using the word "the" above is a process of creating an overall definition of atheism, and as such, it's not unreasonable. But way back maybe a week ago, we were evaluating whether to change the order of what were three definitions. What was then the third was intended, not as simply a "broad" definition, but as an introduction to what were previously described with the clumsy word "implicit" as forms of atheism. Moving that clause to the beginning is reasonable, but changing it to a general definition, as opposed to an introduction of concepts covered in the article and not included in the "explicit" definitions, creates problems. The point was made, and I think it's a good one, that the lead has an important responsibility to reflect the article as a whole. That doesn't mean every detail and nuance, but the parts of the article that the "definition" approach would marginalize (see Atheism#Practical atheism for a partial list, relative and so on) are not minor parts of the article. Since this is an encyclopedia and not a dictionary, that's important. I first suggested "any" (as a comment in talk, not a page edit) as a way of avoiding a list (like the list of reasons for rejection of theism). Other editors have argued, instead, that we should just start with a dictionary-style definition, and I am arguing that that would undo some of the consensus it took to get as far as we have. And let's keep in mind that there is no consensus in the outside world about a single definition; that's not just my opinion, but what it says in footnote 1. Actually, I'm pleasantly surprised that no editor has (yet!) reverted the lead back to the earlier two-sentence form (but maybe that takes more than "90 minutes")! Let me repeat that there is nothing wrong grammatically with "any," whatever one may think about its meaning. The criticism has been made that the "the" version scans more smoothly. I agree that's a valid observation, but would argue that meaning should count for more. Can we find, through talk here, a better wording? I also want to comment (because I haven't yet) about the Google search argument. I think the data presented do not support the conclusions drawn. (What does "including duplicates #309" mean, anyway?) There were a lot of hits for "the," and a smaller number of hits for "any." What I think that shows is that "the" is used much more frequently (whatever the exact context), and "any" is used sometimes too. I would argue that this actually shows that either can be correct. If we use "any" here, we are using a less common formulation, but a correct one for the specific purpose -- a lead that introduces the reader to the article as a whole -- we need. And when we consider a wording that is very close to a published source, editors raise issues of plagiarism. The question was posed of whether I or others can cite a published source that uses "any." I think the Google hits show that you already found some sources that do! I realize that the argument can then be made that maybe those hits were not high-quality sources, but then that would raise the same question about the rest of the Google results. In the heat of the recently escalating edits, I tried to use "for any reason" as what I thought was a compromise that would satisfy the editors who disagree with me, but they rejected it, and I'm now sorry I did it. But can we discuss thoughtfully and collegially a better wording? --Tryptofish (talk) 14:26, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Since I'm commenting here, I note that the most recent edit to the page goes to "the absence of belief in any deities" (emphases mine). I want to point out that putting "any" there has a different meaning that does not address the issue I raised above about reflecting the article. Also, (sorry!) wouldn't it be proper grammar to say "any deity" rather than "any deities?" Of course that, then, brings back the singular/plural issue. And, deleting what had been reference 4, should we also delete "immoral?" --Tryptofish (talk) 14:42, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

And now, someone has gone even further and taken it all the way to the "atheism is" definition. Succinct, admittedly, but even worse! --Tryptofish (talk) 18:36, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

And now, worse still: "in general terms" (clunky and near-meaningless), and "an absence" which even fails the Richard Dawkins formulation (not that adherents of the various religions would accept Dawkins' description of them). My mistake: "an" was in the reference, not the main text, and now corrected in the reference, sorry. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:42, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

I note the most recent edit has an edit summary to the effect of something like "what part of 'plagiarism' do you not understand?" I want to point out to all, and not pointing a finger at anyone in particular, that it would be better to turn down the heat here. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:06, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

There really is no point in adding the phrase "in general terms".

Talking about "any", when Michael writes

"Negative atheism in the broad sense is then the absence of belief in any god or gods."

is this to be read as

"Negative atheism in the broad sense is then the absence of belief in any god or belief in any gods"

or as

"Negative atheism in the broad sense is then the absence of belief in any god or belief in gods"

???

—Editorius (talk) 21:12, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

I don't see why you are using a quote only about negative atheism; the point is about all forms of atheism, including but not limited to, the negative. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:33, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Wow. For someone who extolls the virtues of being succinct... wow. Anyway, thanks for explaining why you feel so strongly about it. I agree with you, and think one of the "any" absences is so-called "relative atheism", and the "any absence of" verbiage includes it, while "the absence of ..." excludes it, as well as many of the other meanings of atheism covered in this article. --Born2cycle (talk) 22:49, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Thank you!!! --Tryptofish (talk) 22:55, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Absolute versus Relative Atheism

"We must distinguish (.) between two types of atheism: relative and absolute. Relative atheism is the denial of some particular, contingent, conception of 'God' in the interest of promoting what is regarded as being a more adequate conception. Such, for example, was the atheism of the ancient Greek philosopher Xenophanes (570-475 BCE), who rejected what he regarded as the anthropomorphic and amoral representations of the gods found in Homer whilst at the same time suggesting, as a counterpart to this rejection, a conception of God as 'one, eternal and unchanging'."

(Clarke, Paul B., and Andrew Linzey. Dictionary of Ethics, Theology and Society. London: Routledge, 1996. pp. 61-2)

"[T]here are at least two different forms of atheism. I call them absolute atheism and relative atheism. Absolute atheism is the rejection of any and all notions of God or the sacred. Relative atheism means being an atheist in relation to, that is, relative to, a particular notion of God. This distinction matters because some people who think they are 'atheists' might in fact be only 'relative atheists'."

(Borg, Marcus. "Seeing God Again: What's at Stake." In God at 2000, edited by Marcus Borg and Ross Mackenzie, 1-26. Harrisburg, PA: Morehouse, 2002. p. 8)

Shouldn't this distinction be mentioned in the main text? What I found therein is:

suitab::"Absolute metaphysical atheists subscribe to some form of physicalism, hence they explicitly deny the existence of non-physical beings. Relative metaphysical atheists maintain an implicit denial of a particular concept of God based on the incongruity between their individual philosophies and attributes commonly applied to God, such as transcendence, a personal aspect, or unity. Examples of relative metaphysical atheism include pantheism, panentheism, and deism."

This seems similar. For example, pantheists are relatively atheistic with regard to the belief in a transcendent personal god.—Editorius (talk) 02:01, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

To put our main point of contention in these terms, in its broadest sense atheism encompasses both relative and absolute atheism. In other words, it is "any absence of belief in deities", which includes both absolute and relative atheism. If we changed it to what you favor, "the absence of belief in any deities", then that would limit the opening definition to only absolute atheism, and would exclude relative atheism. Consensus is to define atheism in its broadest sense in the opening, so it must not exclude absolute or relative atheism. --Born2cycle (talk) 05:44, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

I think I get your point, but I strongly doubt that "Atheism is any absence of belief in deities" is a proper expression of "Atheism is the disbelief in all or some but not all deities".

If you want to include both absolute and relative atheism in one sentence, it must be formulated disjunctively:

"Atheism is the absence of all or some but not all beliefs in a deity."

But notice that this definition, which covers both absolute and relative atheism, turns all theists into atheists, since all theists disbelieve in some but not all deities. And so this definition is likely to appear paradoxical to most readers, misleading them by implying that all theists are atheists. Even though it is not untrue to say that all theists are nonabsolute, i.e. relative, atheists, such a complicated formulation of the introductory statement is hardly appropriate. The only alternative I see is that we present two separate definitions: one of absolute atheism and another one of relative atheism:

1. "Absolute (negative) atheism is the nonbelief in all deities."

2. "Relative (negative) atheism is the nonbelief in some but not all deities."

—Editorius (talk) 19:46, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

You're finally catching on!

To me, "atheism is any absence of belief in deities" is nearly semantically equivalent to "Atheism is the absence of all, or some but not all, beliefs in deities.'". Certainly the former includes the latter, and arguably includes even more.

And yes, that turns all theists into atheists, but that's what relative atheism does. And if the opening is paradoxical to some, good, perhaps then they will be enticed to read the whole article to achieve a more complete understanding. This article is about any and all forms of atheism, including that which makes all theists atheists (in some contexts); it is not only about the more narrow forms of atheisms. And the opening sentence should say that. --Born2cycle (talk) 22:59, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

And, it's actually 3+ definitions in the lead sentence. And not definitions in the dictionary sense. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:02, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

First sentence

After checking to see what the latest ridiculous edit to this page was about, I checked link number to discover that the first sentence was nearly identical to the sentence referenced on about.com but lacked quotes, which constitutes plagiarism. I fixed that.Chuck Hamilton (talk) 11:57, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, I didn't see this post before undoing your edit; I'll review my undo. Hadrian89 (talk) 12:24, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Ok, I understand the caution when it comes to plagiarism, but definitions are often going to appear very similar anyway - there's only so many ways of saying something in one sentence. Also, I would rather find a unique wording than quote another source directly in the lead, which looks awful - it suggests we can't be bothered/are too thick to come up with our own definition, and (as in the edit summary), if we did feel the need, it shouldn't be about.com, which is hardly scholarly. Hadrian89 (talk) 12:32, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

The phrase "broadly defined" at the beginning made the sentence almost exactly like Austin Cline's on about.com. I changed that to "generally speaking", which makes the sentence different enough not to be plagiarism, and without having to say "According to about.com...". Chuck Hamilton (talk) 18:50, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

How about "encompasses?" --Tryptofish (talk) 18:59, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

That works. How about, "Atheism, in its broadest sense, encompasses any absence of belief in deities, ...". The current wording (courtesy of Natty4bumpo) excludes relative atheism again, but someone else should revert him this time, or change it to this wording. --Born2cycle (talk) 21:11, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Or just "Atheism encompasses any absence of belief..." Don't really need "in its broadest sense" then. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:22, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Perfect. --Born2cycle (talk) 23:08, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

It's not plagiarism, as Hardian89 explained above. --Born2cycle (talk) 21:05, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. Ilkali (talk) 21:06, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Plagiarism is not a matter for debate, it's a potential legal problem. The first sentence as it stood before I changed it was almost exactly the same as Austin Cline's first sentence on about.com, without quotes, and since there are FIVE citations for that ONE sentence, it's not very clear to what the citation of Cline's article applies. Without clear attribution, and in this case quotation marks, it's plagiarism. As I mentioned on to Born2cycle my Talk page, the first sentence as it was before has been referenced to a Wikipedia adminstrator, so it's now up to that administrator whether or not it is plagiarism. As for the exact wording of the sentence, I couldn't care less, so if y'all want to change it to something else, that's fine by me, as long as it isn't simply reverted to what it was. It isn't about style, it's about legality.

As for "generally speaking" being exclusive of relative atheism, that term means the exact same thing as Cline's use of the phrase "broadly defined". And speaking of "relative atheism", I don't see a reference to that in the article, so there's your exclusion. Chuck Hamilton (talk) 21:28, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Your opinion (nor the opinion of one administrator) does not make it (or not make it) plagiarism.

It's not "generally speaking" that excludes relative atheism, it is "the absence of belief in deities" (as contrasted with "any absence of belief in deities"), that excludes relative atheism.

As to "relative atheism" not being mentioned in the article, I'm just using that term here now because Editorius provided that term for us to use, but in the article the concept is covered, at least in the last sentence of the Range section:

With respect to the range of phenomena being rejected, atheism may counter anything from the existence of a deity, to the existence of any spiritual, supernatural, or transcendental concepts, such as those of Hinduism and Buddhism.

To encompass this meaning of atheism as well as all the others covered in the article, the wording "any absence of belief in deities" does that, while "the absence of belief in deities" does not. --Born2cycle (talk) 22:14, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

I think we should use the simple "The absence of belief in gods/deities" and forget about those bloody "anys".

"Atheism, the absence of belief in gods, ..."

(Chapman Cohen, "Deity and Design")

—Editorius (talk) 21:43, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

That's a narrow definition, since it would exclude relative atheism, would it not? --Born2cycle (talk) 22:15, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

About "any": I wish editors in addition to Born2cycle would note what I wrote about "why I feel so strongly about 'any'" above. I'm not hearing a response that reveals understanding of it. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:29, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

How about striking "the" from "the absence of belief in deities", and just leaving it at that? I'm ok either way but thought that might be a compromise. The clause would then read, "Atheism in general terms is absence of belief in deities". Chuck Hamilton (talk) 22:39, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

That might work, or "Atheism in general is absence of belief in deities." (Don't really need "terms" in that case.) The issue that some editors have raised, on the other hand, is that it might be construed as making a person who believes one religion but rejects others an "atheist," although I believe that's a misreading of "absence." Thanks. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:47, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Yes, but what most if not virtually all "normal" people understand by "atheism" is atheism simpliciter, i.e. absolute atheism, isn't it?

Do you want to confuse the readers with a statement implying that theists are atheists?

—Editorius (talk) 22:46, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Simpliciter??? I don't understand. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:50, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

See: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/simpliciter

Simple? I'm not a lawyer, but I do speak (U.S.) English as a first language. If this boils down to not wanting to call people who reject some but not all religions atheists, absence means rejecting all religions (except in Dawkins' formulation, in which he is making a point, rather than creating a definition.) --Tryptofish (talk) 23:31, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Yes, Dawkins is not creating a definition, but in making a point he is using a definition of atheism (relative atheism) that I think is important to represent here, if nothing else because it makes absolute atheism more understandable for those who have trouble grasping it. By pointing out that "one is an atheist with respect to the Greek god Thor" (to which most people can relate because it applies to them) it makes "one is an atheist with respect to the Abrahamic god" easier to comprehend for someone who otherwise has trouble with that. From that the step to the absolute "atheist with respect to all deities" becomes more manageable. --Born2cycle (talk) 00:14, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

I have no problem with that (though others might, including devoutly religious people who would not call themselves atheists). I'm just making the overall point that we shouldn't say "the absence," and I think you and I agree about that. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:21, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Whether they have problems with it or not, and semantics aside, a very important point to convey (since it is not realized by many despite it being a tautology) about atheism here is that with respect to every deity but one, the absence of belief of monotheists and atheists is the same. --Born2cycle (talk) 00:40, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

In other words, even with respect to belief in the existence of deities, monotheists have much more in common with atheists than not. For every deity for which a monotheist's belief is absent, the reasons for that absence are probably often comparable to the reasons for that absence in an atheist. It's just that for the atheist, those same reasons also apply to the deity in which the monotheist believes. Again for the theist puzzled about atheism coming here to try to understand, I think this point needs to be clearly made, and introduced from the outset. --Born2cycle (talk) 00:50, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

At this point, a suggestion. I hope everyone has been reading all the comments (not easy, given multiple threads), and I repeat that I am not going to edit the actual page myself for a few days. Here is the first sentence, as it is now: "Atheism, in general terms,[1] is the absence of belief in deities,[2] but can also be the explicit view that there are no deities,[3] or the rejection of theism as being immoral, meaningless, incoherent, unwarranted, or false.[4][5]" I suggest deleting the two words (and commas) I've shown as strike-through, and also replacing reference 4 with the Christopher Hitchens quote. If you read around this talk page, all of that is explained. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:24, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Are you native speakers sure that "Atheism is absence of belief" without an article is grammatically acceptable?—I'm not!—Editorius (talk) 23:33, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Yes, at least I and Chuck/Natty think so. Anyone disagree? --Tryptofish (talk) 23:35, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

For example, we can say "our goal is absence of hunger" or "my goal is absence of edit wars" without an article. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:42, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

The grammatical/ungrammatical dichotomy is unhelpful here. It is unnatural and unsightly. Ilkali (talk) 00:02, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

THE POSTS SHOULD BE IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER; OTHERWISE IT'S HARDLY POSSIBLE TO FOLLOW THE THREAD OF DISCUSSION!—Editorius (talk) 05:47, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I agree with that very much. It's extremely difficult to follow the thread, and I think some editors (I'm not pointing at anyone in particular) are just talking at one another, without understanding each other. --Tryptofish (talk) 14:56, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

The posts are in chronological order, each indented from the comment to which it is responding. This is standard format for WP talk pages. --Born2cycle (talk) 18:33, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

defining words, wp:rs

I just reverted DreamGuys's change, which he explained with the following comment:

might be some people here declaring "consensus" on definition, but words are defined by world at large and experts, not Wikipedians, so go with what they say -- plus blogspot is not a WP:RS

Here's why I reverted.

1. The current wording, "Atheism is broadly defined[1] as any absence of belief in deities,[2] but can also ..." is not a new definition, but a synthesis of all the definitions out there, which is exactly what an encyclopedia is supposed to do: synthesize and explain the information out there.
2. WP:RS is a guideline, and is meant to be applied with common sense. How reliable a source has to be depends on the fact or claim that is being sourced. To illustrate with an extreme example, if the claim is that something was said on Twitter (which may be relevant to some article, say about Twitter, or an article about someone notable who said something notable on Twitter), then a reference to that being said on Twitter is perfectly reasonable, even though Twitter entries are not WP:RS. In this case the claim is that some reject theism on the grounds that it is immoral. A blog by a professor making exactly that argument is a perfectly legitimate example of that, and perfectly fine to source, even though blogspot, like Twitter, is generally not a WP:RS.

--Born2cycle (talk) 17:23, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

If this person is supposed to be representing a significant portion of society, we need more than a blog entry. Ilkali (talk) 17:44, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Just before someone else points it out, I'll point out that we should not do WP:SYNTH. That's actually a very good reason not to try to define atheism, but rather, adhere to what ref 1 says, and acknowledge the multiple forms of atheism (as the article itself does, even if the lead no longer does so). But I would suggest -- just suggest -- that if other editors want to be constructive about this, it would be reasonable to go the the version that Born2cycle most recently reverted to. That's because it was, though not consensus, a form that was reasonably well received by all but two editors, and so it could be a reasonable, for the time being, starting point from which to work, via discussion on this talk page, and hopefully not edit wars. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:48, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Well, there is "light" synthesis in concert with common sense and which is impossible to avoid in an encyclopedia, and there is the heavy duty serious kind of research synthesis that WP:SYNTH discourages. The wording here is clearly of the former kind. --Born2cycle (talk) 19:20, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I agree with you about that. I just wanted to point it out before someone else jumps on you about it. And to point out that other recent versions are more like heavy synth. Thanks for your edits on the page! --Tryptofish (talk) 19:33, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Ilkali, not every single little obvious detail needs to be cited at all, much less with sources that show a given view represents a significant portion of society. Sometimes just an example like this one can be useful. For someone who might not be aware of this particular pro-atheism argument (theism is immoral), a citation to a presentation of the argument by a professor accessible on the web, is arguably more useful than, say, a reference to Hitchens' bestselling book, "God is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything". --Born2cycle (talk) 19:20, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

References are for verification purposes. They're not "you might also be interested in"s. Even if the blog qualified as a reliable source, it's not a reliable source for the statement in question. It's being used to cite the claim "atheism is sometimes defined to include belief that theism is immoral", but the blog post just argues the claim "theism is immoral". Not the same thing! Ilkali (talk) 20:03, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

No, other citations are used to cite that claim that atheism is sometimes defined as a rejection of theism. This one is being used to cite the claim that theism is sometimes rejected for being immoral. --Born2cycle (talk) 21:03, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Rather than arguing about a blog, how about that book by Hitchens. Page 205: "There are, indeed, several ways in which religion is not just amoral, but positively immoral." Doesn't that meet the criteria of a citable source that rejects theism as being immoral? --Tryptofish (talk) 20:40, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Firstly, no. Secondly, we're not looking for a source for "theism is immoral". Ilkali (talk) 20:53, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Sources supporting the claim that theism is sometimes rejected for being immoral are relevant here. --Born2cycle (talk) 21:03, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Ilkali: what does "firstly, no" mean? (Calm down.) And I'm pretty sure that the reference that was first added by Born2cycle and subsequently deleted by DreamGuy and others was a reference specifically for theism being rejected as immoral. It had been ref 4, was originally right after the word "immoral," and I had subsequently moved it to the end of the sentence. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:18, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Which is why I put it after the word immoral - to be clear that it is a reference for that... :-) --Born2cycle (talk) 22:38, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

"what does "firstly, no" mean?" It means you're wrong. My terseness means I'm tired of having to explain basic things, like that theism is not the same thing as religion. Ilkali (talk) 00:04, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Actually, I think your terseness means you are annoyed. I'm sorry about that. Please do not talk down to me. As Born2cycle made clear, the reference is about "immoral." And please don't try to argue that Hitchens is rejecting religion while accepting theism. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:14, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

"Please do not talk down to me". I don't feel like you're giving me much choice. Now I have to convince you that "religion is immoral" doesn't entail "theism is immoral"? It shouldn't be this much of a struggle, guys, and I haven't the patience for it. Ilkali (talk) 00:51, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Come on Ilkali, there really is no need for this. We can't read your mind, and the written word is not a flawless mechanism for conveying thought from one mind to another. Words that may seem clear to you are not necessarily clear to others, and may mean something different. Only through civil discourse can we get on the same page.

I don't think that Hitchens explicitly states that theism, or mere belief in God, is in and of itself immoral, but it certainly is the implication of his book, which title is "god is not Great" (it's not "religion is not great"). --Born2cycle (talk) 01:10, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Ilkali, a choice available to you is to assume good faith and be polite. After all, you were apparently wrong to think that the reference being discussed was about something else in the sentence. I, and most of us here, do understand that, in general, a person can reject either religion or theism separately, or reject them both. And, although Hitchens happens to use the word religion rather than the word theism in that particular sentence, it is absolutely clear to anyone familiar with his writings that he is rejecting both of them, and so, the citation does apply to the issue at hand. On the other hand, a possible work-around could be to drop "immoral" from what has become a lengthy list. Born2cycle, how strongly do you feel about keeping it (just asking)? --Tryptofish (talk) 15:05, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Strong. The opinion that theism is immoral and should therefore be rejected is a common reason for rejecting theism. It's also an important theme in various books on atheism, including god is not Great. --Born2cycle (talk) 21:11, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

I hear you! Agreed! --Tryptofish (talk) 21:47, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Natty4bumpo/Chuck Hamilton

Can someone else please revert Natty4bumpo (a.k.a. Chuck Hamilton) and encourage him to discuss his changes to the intro here on this page before applying them to the article? If I'm the only one who objects to what he's doing, then it doesn't matter. Thanks. --Born2cycle (talk) 21:03, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

As I've said elsewhere, on this page and on my Talk page, plagiarism is a legal concern, not a matter for debate. I'm fine with the wording I replaced into the first sentence being altered, but what it replaced was plagiarism. Had that not been the case, I would not have done so without debate. In any case, as I've referred the matter to a Wikipedia administrator, and if he says it's not plagiarism, then so be it. The same goes if he says it is. There wouldn't be any problem if the citation were more clear, which is hard when there are FIVE citations for ONE single sentence. Chuck Hamilton (talk) 21:38, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Again, how about "encompasses?" --Tryptofish (talk) 22:20, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

"Atheism"—Proper Noun or Common Noun?

In the German language there is the noun "Atheismus" and the noun phrase "der Atheismus" with the definite article "der" = "the". "The phrase "der Atheismus" is not a concept but a name referring to one thing. What's the situation in the English language? Is "atheism" a common noun, i.e. a concept, or a proper noun, i.e. a name? In sentences such as "Atheism is the absence of belief in gods" it must be a name, because the "is" is the "is" of identity: "(The?) Atheism = the absence of belief in gods". And if atheism is a name, then "Atheism is/= any absence of belief in gods" is ungrammatical! —Editorius (talk) 23:50, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Actually, the way you posed the question is very useful in answering it. We never say "the atheism" (as in "I believe the atheism."). It actually sounds odd. That would make it a common noun, a concept. On the other hand we do say "the atheism of Richard Dawkins" (for example) to name a particular, specific, type of atheism, but the lead sentence is about the concept form. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:56, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

The sentence, "Atheism is the absence of belief in gods" in no way requires "atheism" to be a proper noun. It's no different from saying "Belief is the psychological state in which an individual holds a premise to be true," or "Art is the process or product of deliberately arranging elements in a way that appeals to the senses or emotions." "Belief" and "art" are still common nouns. Powers ^T 00:08, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

In "Belief is the psychological state in which an individual holds a premise to be true" the noun "belief" names a type of psychological state, and so it is used therein as a proper noun. But in the alternative formulation "A belief is a psychological state in which an individual holds a premise to be true" it is used as a common noun.

And in "Art is the process or product of deliberately arranging elements in a way that appeals to the senses or emotions" the noun "art" names a type of process or product, and so it is used therein as a proper noun.

And in "Atheism is the view that there are no gods" the noun "atheism" names a particular view, and so it is used therein as a proper noun.

In logic, an identity statement of the form a = b becomes ill-formed if "a" and "b" are not both replaced with some proper nouns (names or definite descriptions). (For example, "Barack Obama is identical with the president of the USA" is well-formed, while "Barack Obama is identical with president of the USA" is not. [Notice that the latter sentence is different from "Barack Obama is a president of the USA", which is not an identity statement!])

I still doubt that "atheism" always, i.e. context-independently, functions as a concept.—Editorius (talk) 01:07, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

You are apparently using a definition of "proper noun" with which I am unfamiliar. Regardless of what you call it, "belief," "art," and "atheism" are only capitalized if they appear at the beginning of sentences; in English, that makes them common nouns, not proper nouns. Powers ^T 12:01, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

The atheism of Jews with respect to the Christian god is a good example of relative atheism, and is also one of the atheisms included in the broad sense of the term as covered in this article. Parse that, Batman. --Born2cycle (talk) 01:30, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

I'm sorry but I find this very silly. Everybody is a "relative atheist", Christians are atheists relative to Polytheist gods, Jews are atheists relative to Christian's God, Muslims are atheists relative to Christians's God (and his son which is God too) and so on... Indians are atheists relative to Jewish God and so on. Can you find somebody who is not a "relative atheist"? Since I doubt you can I find all this category irrelevant -- a category that encompasses everybody is utterly useless. man with one red shoe 03:37, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Yes, everybody is a relative atheist, but it's still a very useful concept, particularly in the context of explaining atheism, which this article is supposed to do, because there are so many different kinds of relative atheism.

Some people have had little exposure to atheism and have trouble even relating to it. I know that applied to me in my teens. I just didn't get it because at that time I could not conceive of not believing in God. A very important point to convey about atheism here is that with respect to every deity but one, the absence of belief of monotheists and atheists is the same.

In other words, even with respect to belief in the existence of deities, monotheists have much more in common with atheists than not. For every deity for which a monotheist's belief is absent, the reasons for that absence are probably often comparable to the reasons for that absence in an atheist. It's just that for the atheist, those same reasons also apply to the deity in which the monotheist believes.

For the theist puzzled about atheism coming here to try to understand, I think this point needs to be clearly made, and introduced from the outset. A theist might ask, "How can you not believe in God? How can you be so sure God does not exist?" An atheist might wisely respond in terms of relative atheism... "How can you not believe in Thor? How can you be so sure Thor does not exist?" That why I think relative atheism is a very powerful and useful concept. Do you still think it's silly? --Born2cycle (talk) 18:46, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

So, this is a way to further a POV? While I understand the desire to see things this way, I don't understand the reason of including such category here in Wikipedia other than pushing a POV, using that definition everybody would be an atheist (relative or absolute) which is a fringe way to look at things. The common understanding is that there are "theists" and "atheists" people in the first category believe in some kind of God(s) while the rest doesn't believe in any. That's the (simplified) dictionary definition and that's the common understanding, pushing here a propagandistic point of view that is not commonly accepted falls right under the WP:NPOV definition. man with one red shoe 19:39, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

It's not pushing or furthering a POV, it's explaining a concept. Very different. And unless someone has animosity for the word "atheist" itself (which would be their POV problem), they should have no issue with accepting the fact (not a POV) that they are atheist with respect to, for example, Thor (unless they happen to believe in Thor, of course). --Born2cycle (talk) 20:46, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

I'm all for explaining, only that's not the common meaning of "atheist", if you can convince editors that Christians in general define themselves as "atheists in respect to Thor or atheists in respect to Hindu gods" or that Muslims define themselves as "atheists in respect to.." it's nothing more than pushing a concept that's not widely accepted and most likely WP:OR and/or WP:SYNTH that because most of the people say "I believe in ... God, I don't believe in ... gods" they don't define themselves as "atheists regarding those gods" I see here a pretty clear case of WP:SYNTH: you deduce something by making an unwarranted synthesis. While I don't doubt some authors push this concept for the same reasons as you do, I fail to see how is this anything more than a marginal POV. man with one red shoe 21:58, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

It might not be the most common meaning of atheist, but the concept of relative atheism is neither fringe, marginal or even new, and it is helpful in explaining absolute atheism (the more common usage). Whether Christians in general define themselves as "atheists in respect to Thor" (or whatever) is neither here nor there. You keep saying this is pushing a POV. Please describe the POV that you think explaining the concept of relative atheism is pushing. --Born2cycle (talk) 22:05, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

The point of view that somebody who believes in some god is called an atheist relative to other gods. That to my understanding is not a common view, people who believe in any god are in general called "theists" not "relative atheists", they are called "believers" not "relative unbelievers" (although theoretically that's perfectly correct), right? man with one red shoe 22:55, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

"That somebody who believes in some god is called an atheist relative to other gods" is not a POV, but an example of using a paricular definition of atheism (so-called relative atheism). It's not a fringe definition. There are chapters of books devoted to it. You can check books.google.com and find references to "relative atheism" that date back to the 19th century at least. Near the top of this talk page it states: "The current revision attempts to put forward all definitions without favoring any particular definition.". That's all I'm suggesting. The only violation of WP:NPOV would be to intentionally not cover this topic. --Born2cycle (talk) 23:19, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

I think it's a minor use of the term (beside, this article is about "atheism" not "relative atheism") and should not be covered in the introduction, but it's up to other editors and how they see things. man with one red shoe 23:31, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

I agree it's a minor use of the term. So what? Minor does not mean insignificant or not notable. There are certainly much less notable topics all over WP that are covered never-the-less, even within this article. Contending that this particular is somehow not sufficiently notable, in comparison, would be in violation of WP:NPOV.

The point about this article being about "atheism" and not "relative atheism" could be made about "strong atheism", "weak atheism", "practical atheism", or any of the other minor definitions of atheisms covered in this article. I'm not suggesting that they all be covered in the intro, just that the intro be an "umbrella" that includes all meanings covered by this article, and that the concept of "relative atheism" (not necessarily by that name) should be one of those.

Yes, it's up to all the editors, but you're one of them. Again, from the top of this talk page, we're supposed to "put forward all definitions without favoring any particular definition." Are you doing that? --Born2cycle (talk) 23:48, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

man with one red shoe wrote: "Can you find somebody who is not a 'relative atheist'?"

Yes of course, all absolute atheists who disbelieve in all gods are not relative atheists.—Editorius (talk) 18:58, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

I see this a bit different, a so called "relative atheist" is atheist relative to a particular God, an atheist (or how you call it "absolute atheist") is somebody who doesn't believe in any god and thus doesn't believe in that specific God either. However, my point was simply that if we define atheism this way then everybody would be an atheist (either relative or absolute) unless there's a religion (that I'm now aware of) that believes in all the Gods even the ones that were not invented yet, and as I explained above that's a fringe way to look at things and we shouldn't push it here. man with one red shoe 19:39, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

I'm almost afraid to step in here, but is anyone suggesting an actual edit to what the page says? If so, what is it? If not, this is just a forum for discussion and not about improving the article. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:41, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

I don't yet have a specific suggestion, but in general I think it's important the topic be explained clearly here. --Born2cycle (talk) 23:19, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Another arbitrary break(3)

Rather than have arguments about relative atheism, and about proper and common nouns (in English, atheism is absolutely the latter), I'd like to continue to try to get to common ground. It's clear that there continue to be sincere disagreements about "is any absence of belief" versus "is the absence of belief." (I do wish very much that everyone would read what I wrote about "why I feel so strongly about the word 'any'" near the end of the "absence of belief in deities, or in existence of deities?" section above.) Recently, an editor suggested dropping the article (the/any) to have "is absence of belief." At first, I supported that as a possible compromise, but I see there is limited enthusiasm, and my own enthusiasm for it is decreasing, sort of like a weak second choice (but for me, still better than "the"). There is also disagreement about "broadly defined." Some editors feel strongly that it ends up being plagiarism, while others disagree. An alternative version uses "in general terms" or "in general." On reflection, that seems to me to be wiggle words, not really capturing the idea of broad versus narrow definitions. So I'd like to made a suggestion.

Here is what it says now:

Atheism, in general terms,[1] is the absence of belief in deities,[2] but can also be the explicit view that there are no deities,[3] or the rejection of theism as being immoral, meaningless, incoherent, unwarranted, or false.[4][5]

I suggest:

Atheism can be any absence of belief in deities.[1][2] It can also be the explicit view that there are no deities,[3] or the rejection of theism as being immoral, meaningless, incoherent, unwarranted, or false.[4][5]

This way, the first part uses an inclusive "any" formulation that is faithful to the article, and gets around all of the grammar/syntax questions that have been raised. It uses two sentences, but for those of us who favor simplicity, it is actually a little shorter than what we have now, because it prunes out wiggle words. I also suggest that we change ref 4 to the Christopher Hitchens book (see the section on "defining words, wp:rs" above), and maybe combining it into one reference with ref 5. --Tryptofish (talk) 15:37, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

I don't agree that "broadly" is being used as a "wiggle word" here. In many cases, it (but more commonly "generally") is used to indicate that a particular definition is the most widely accepted of several. Here, though, it's not a "wiggle word" at all; it is used to indicate that this is the definition that encompasses the greatest number of concepts, not the one with the most acceptance. As such, I don't think it's as expendable as you do. Powers ^T 18:22, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, I guess I wasn't clear. I agree with you about "broadly." However, "broadly" was criticized by another editor as being plagiarism. What I'm calling wiggly is "general terms." --Tryptofish (talk) 18:27, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

I agree with that, but more importantly, "in general terms" is not a suitable synonym for "broadly". I'm not sure there's any concise and accurate way to paraphrase it without using "broadly". Powers ^T 18:31, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

(ec)Please take a second look. I also agree with you that "in general terms" does not work. It's what the page says now, and I'm proposing we get rid of it. If you want to use "broadly," you will have to convince some other editors (look earlier) that it is not plagiarism. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:35, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

I was just thinking how much easier it might be to write a lead if the article was at atheist instead of atheism. =) Powers ^T 18:33, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

I like it, but instead of "Atheism can be any absence of belief in deities.", how about Atheism is any absence of belief in deities."? That simple sentence would encompass all forms of relative atheism as well as absolute atheism. Then we can move on to describe the more specific uses of "atheism". --Born2cycle (talk) 18:56, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. I actually thought about that a lot. The reasons I'm not endorsing it are: (1) see the concerns about grammar and proper nouns recently raised; "can be any" avoids all of that; and (2) see the discussion much, much earlier about how "can be" was originally preferred over "is" or "is defined." I agree with that for the same reasons that I said recently that I don't want this to be a dictionary definition so much as an inclusive lead sentence in an encyclopedia. Of course, "is any" works better than "is" by itself, but it still has the other problems. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:04, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Well, I think the opening sentence should fully describe in general (not in detail, of course) the topic of this article, and I don't think this statement does it. I think we can definitely say that there is no use of "atheism" (within the scope of the article) that does not refer to some kind of absence of belief in deities. Right? In that case, "Atheism always refers to some kind of absence of belief in deities". --Born2cycle (talk) 19:17, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

1. There's no difference between the view that there are no deities and the rejection of theism as false.

2. One finds the phrase "any absence of belief" nowhere in the relevant literature.

So what makes you believe that this formulation is better than the ones one does find in the relevant literature?—Editorius (talk) 19:11, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Most references in the literature are about one or another kind of atheism - this article is more general that most references in the literature (in that it encompasses all of the atheism topics covered in the literature), and the opening should reflect that. --Born2cycle (talk) 19:17, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

1. Editorius, I agree with you. That's what the page already has said for a while now, not anything I'm proposing. Other editors put it in. OK with me to shorten that list, but I can't speak for the others. Speaking of which, Born2cycle, did you see my earlier question about deleting "immoral?"

2. I suppose we can go around and around on that. See what happened when some editors felt that using what it says in the literature was plagiarism. I do think it summarizes what the literature says, and more importantly (for an encyclopedia, not a dictionary), it summarizes the article, and does so without being synthesis. (Did you mean the Google hits? Please see what I wrote about "why I feel so strongly about the word 'any'" near the end of the "absence of belief in deities, or in existence of deities?" section above.) --Tryptofish (talk) 19:23, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Born2cycle, I'm answering here what you wrote above. (Please do keep comments in chronological order, because otherwise it's real hard to keep track. I initially didn't see your question to me.) You wrote, in part: "I don't think this statement does it." I'm having trouble seeing how changing "can be any" to "is any" would change that. I think "can be any" includes everything you are saying should be included, while leaving open what comes next, and "is any" really doesn't improve that, but does raise issues that bother other editors, and which I'd very much like to get past. (And what about, see above, deleting the word "immoral?") --Tryptofish (talk) 19:49, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

1. There is a difference. Someone who is unfamiliar with the concept of a deity does not believe in one, but also has not rejected theism.

2. "any absence of belief" implies that there can be more than one absence. That makes no logical sense. Powers ^T 20:33, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

There can be more than one absence, and there are different kinds of absences. The absence of milk at the grocery store is distinct from the absence of celery at the grocery store. That is, key to the nature of any absence is the nature of that which is absent. An absence of belief in the Christian God is not the same as the absence of belief in Thor. Either or both absences can apply to a given person. --Born2cycle (talk) 20:51, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

@LtPowers:

ad 1. What I wrote is that there's no difference between the belief in the nonexistence of gods and the rejection of theism as false. Of course, not everybody who rejects theism does so because he considers it false.

ad 2. My point! There are various kinds of theistic belief that may be absent from one's mind, but there aren't various kinds of absence. The difference between the absence of belief in Allah and the absence of belief in Zeus is not due to two different ways of being absent but to two different beliefs.

Again, I don't accept the phrase "any absence of belief".

Even "An atheism (a case of atheism) is an absence of belief in a deity" appears better to me than "Atheism is any absence of belief in a deity".

—Editorius (talk) 21:04, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Editorius, the differences might be due to two different beliefs, but the absence of one belief is distinct from the absence of the other belief never-the-less. Say the last time you checked your wallet you had a $1 bill and $100 bill. Now one of the bills is absent. Are you telling me it matters not which bill is absent, since absence is absence? --Born2cycle (talk) 21:06, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Trypto, the reason "Atheism can be any absence of belief in deities" doesn't "do it", while "Atheism is any absence of belief in deities" does do it is that the former implies atheism can be also be something other than any absence of belief in deities. What would that be? The intro sentence should describe the topic in full (in general, not in full detail). The latter form describes it in full. The latter essentially states that atheism is any form of "absence of belief in deities" which is an umbrella description that completely frames all of the material in this article. --Born2cycle (talk) 21:06, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

I'll try to respond to the multiple points above.

First, about whether there is a difference between "the view that there are no deities" and "the rejection of theism as being false." I think Editorius is right about this. Where LtPowers wrote: "Someone who is unfamiliar with the concept of a deity does not believe in one, but also has not rejected theism," that is true, but the point here is about the explicit view that deities do not exist, not the so-called "implicit" position of being unfamiliar and thus never having decided to reject. The point here is that, in what I'm suggesting as the second sentence (as well as the way the page reads now), the first part of the sentence already covers what "false" does in the second half of the sentence, and so "false" might as well be deleted.

Two of you have objected to "any absence" on the grounds that you feel that there cannot be more than one kind of absence. Please take a look at Atheism#Practical atheism. There is a list there of four distinct types of absence of belief, and that is the way I intend it. For that matter, the explicit view that there are no deities, and the rejection of theism as being immoral or unwarranted etc., are absences of belief that this article treats as distinct, too. Would it be better to say "any kind of absence of belief"? That would work for me.

Born2 has raised a different issue about "can be any" versus "is any." Your explanation was very helpful to me, in that I now understand that you meant that the phrase implies that atheism can also mean something else besides absence of belief, which of course is not what I intended. My reasoning was that it "can be" any absence including the "implicit" forms, and also "can be" the explicit forms that come in the next sentence. But I now see your point. Now if we change the first sentence to be "is any," then we will have a problem with the second sentence implying that those two explicit forms are something other than an absence of belief, which is not intended either. A solution to that would be to change the beginning of the second sentence from "It can also be" to "It can more specifically be." Do you think that would work?

Taking all of this together, a possible approach would be: "Atheism is any kind of absence of belief in deities.[1][2] It can more specifically be the explicit view that there are no deities,[3] or the rejection of theism as being immoral, meaningless, incoherent, or unwarranted.[4][5]" Can we work with that? For what it's worth, I hope all involved realize that some flexibility and compromise is expected and necessary. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:33, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Very good! --Born2cycle (talk) 22:43, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Thank you!!!--Tryptofish (talk) 22:45, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

This isn't good, because it gives the "absence of belief" definition as the base definition, something that relatively few people would agree to. We can't present the explicit definition as a subset of the "absence of belief" definition- it is a different definition altogether. johnpseudo 13:53, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

I think you mean strong vs weak, not implicit vs explicit? The "absence of belief" atheism can be just as explicit as the "belief in absence" atheism.

Do we agree that strong atheism entails everything that weak atheism entails, and that it is therefore logically (if not linguistically) a subset? Ilkali (talk) 14:14, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

The distinction you're missing is that "strong" atheists might be a subset of "weak" atheists, but one definition cannot be a subset of another definition. Atheism is either defined as anyone who doesn't believe in gods, or it's defined as only people who believe that there is no god. If "Absence of belief" is given as the definition, that relegates the "Belief in absence" definition to a sub-group, not the actual definition. johnpseudo 15:07, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Not only am I not "missing" that distinction, I specifically mentioned it by contrasting logical with linguistic subsumption.

There is no "the" definition. Atheism is defined lots of different ways and we need to deliver all the major interpretations. Putting one of the definitions first doesn't say that all the other definitions are wrong. The argument for putting weak atheism first is that it makes the text easier to understand by establishing a common baseline and expressing all other forms as simple logical subsets. It's just the easiest way to describe taxonomies. Ilkali (talk) 15:24, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Yet Another Intro Suggestion

I've been thinking about some of the comments and objections made above, and despite the progress we've been making, am wondering if something like this doesn't address all of the concerns better:

Atheism most often refers to either the explicit view that no deities exist or to the rejection of theism as being immoral, meaningless, incoherent, or unwarranted, but it can also be the implicit absence of belief in any deities, or the absence of belief in any one particular deity.

This is one sentence, frames the scope of the entire article, and I believe emphasizes the more common meaning of the term first, yet still encompasses the more minor meanings. --Born2cycle (talk) 02:20, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

I like it, thought it's a little unwieldy as a single sentence. Can we break it up? Powers ^T 03:04, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Why the hell don't we put things simpler?!

"The term 'atheism' is ambiguous. In its absolute sense, it can denote either the absence of the belief in deities, the rejection of this belief, or the negation of the existence of deities."

or alternatively:

"The term 'atheism' is ambiguous. In its absolute sense, it can denote either the negation of the existence of deities, the rejection of the belief in deities, or [simply] the absence of this belief."

—Editorius (talk) 04:06, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

What do we mean by "in its absolute sense"? Is there any other sense, not covered by the definition you provide? And why is that sense less "absolute"? I would suggest a version of your first proposal in this last suggestion:

Atheism refers to either the explicit view that no deities exist or to the rejection of theism as being immoral, meaningless, incoherent, or unwarranted. However, it can also mean the implicit absence of belief in any deities, or the absence of belief in any one particular deity. Allinthebrain (talk) 06:10, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Allinthebrain wrote: "What do we mean by "in its absolute sense"? Is there any other sense, not covered by the definition you provide?"

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Atheism#Absolute_versus_Relative_Atheism

—Editorius (talk) 06:26, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

• I am sorry, I should have read that. However, my comment still makes sense in light of that distinction. I think that the description In its absolute sense, it can denote either the absence of the belief in deities, the rejection of this belief, or the negation of the existence of deities. includes forms of "relative" atheism. I still prefer your first formulation, or something like what I have suggested:

"Atheism refers to either the explicit view that no deities exist or to the rejection of theism as being immoral, meaningless, incoherent, or unwarranted. However, it can also mean the implicit absence of belief in any deities, or the absence of belief in any one particular deity"

Absolute vs. relative should be discussed later, under "definitions and distinctions"

Allinthebrain (talk) 06:54, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

This is very good, Allinthebrain, but what we're losing now is what we've been attempting to achieve - convey the (broadest) sense of atheism that is a superset of all meanings: any absence of belief in deities. This is hard. !--Born2cycle (talk) 14:34, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

These recent attempts are describing the word "atheism" rather than the concept of atheism. Saying "The term 'atheism' is ambiguous" is fine for a disambiguation page, but not good when we're trying to explain the concept. Powers ^T 14:47, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Well, I think there is one thing we can all agree about: as Born2cycle so correctly said, this is hard! Let me make some observations. Where one editor said something like "why the hell don't we..." that's the kind of frame of mind that makes it harder for all involved. I think it would help if we take a look at the WP official policy at WP:Wikipedia is not a dictionary. The point is that our role here is to explain, as opposed to define, what atheism is. This is not Wictionary! That's what this is not; part of what this is, is at WP:Lead section. Note the importance of introducing the article as a whole, again in contrast to a dictionary entry. I'm pointing this out because a lot of the problems we are having come from trying too hard to define, without doing enough to summarize. And please remember that reference 1 says that there is no single generally accepted definition of atheism! Accept that, get past it, and maybe things get easier.

I'll try now to go through several of the comments above, individually. At the end of the section before this one, johnpseudo questioned putting absence first. In my opinion, Ilkali is correct in responding that the strong forms are also absences, although I also realize that "absence" by itself can be understood to refer only to the weak forms. For that latter reason, I think we really do need to steer clear of the definitional formulations that use "is the absence." Those comments, in turn, led Born2 to suggest the version at the top of this section, putting the explicit/strong forms first. I'm afraid we have to realize that any order we use will have some strengths and some weaknesses, and there will always be some editors who want a different order. We are never going to find an order that satisfies everyone. I agree with Powers that this version is a little unwieldy and should be made two sentences. I also want to get rid of "most often refers to" (where's the data for frequency of referral?) and "implicit" (consider all the talk above -- those who forget talk page history are doomed to repeat themselves!). I agree strongly with several editors that we should avoid "atheism is ambiguous" as a lead sentence, and avoid phrases like "its absolute sense." I like Allinthebrain's idea of "refers to." However, I think previous talk has pointed out problems with "deities exist," "implicit," and separating out absence of belief in one deity from absence of belief in any.

Taking all this together, let me suggest:

Atheism refers to any kind of absence of belief in deities.[1][2] It can more specifically be the explicit view that there are no deities,[3] or the rejection of theism as being immoral, meaningless, incoherent, or unwarranted.[4][5]

That would include changing ref 4 to the Hitchens book. At this point, we've written a book about writing a sentence or two! --Tryptofish (talk) 15:49, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Change "refers to" to "is" and I'd be on board. Powers ^T 15:56, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Please re-read where I wrote: "For that latter reason, I think we really do need to steer clear of the definitional formulations that use 'is the absence.'" But "can be" is just as good for me as "refers to." The page, before the present revisions, used "can be" for a very long time. Born2 objected to "can be" by itself, but I think "can be any kind" gets around his previous concerns. Works for me either way, "refers to" or "can be," but not "is."--Tryptofish (talk) 16:01, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

I'm good with this version too, and I second your objection to the use of "is". Everyone, please read Trypto's entire explanation here, and in the previous section, to understand why he (I assume not she, but don't know for sure) he selected this particularly careful wording. --Born2cycle (talk) 17:25, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks! (And I'm going to leave the gender thing unanswered. I like keeping my online life separate from my real one, and of course it's not relevant to the arguments here. The traditionally "neutral" he works fine for me.) --Tryptofish (talk) 17:31, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Do we need to reconsider the first sentence for the reason that it's not really accurate? I mean, atheism does not really refer to an absence of anything, but, rather, to a worldview or paradigm that is itself absent any belief in deities. In other words, something like:

Atheism refers to any worldview with any kind of absence of belief in deities.

--Born2cycle (talk) 17:41, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Or:

Atheism refers to any world view absent of belief in deities.

Or:

Atheism refers to any world view absent of belief in deities, or that denies the existence of deities.

--Born2cycle (talk) 17:54, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Interesting! I'm not sure. Maybe shorten to:

Atheism refers to any world view absent belief in deities.

I sort of like world view, but I can also see objections that the implicit/weak forms are not world views, and least not world views by choice. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:59, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

(ec) Well, world views need not be explicit. I'd say most are implicit, and implicit/weak atheism is arguably a world view that is absent of belief in deities, while strong/explicit atheism is a world view that explicitly denies the existence of deities. More problematic, I think, is relative atheism. But even there, a Jewish world view is atheistic with respect to the Christian god, so even relative atheism is really a world view that is absent belief in the existence of a particular deity. --Born2cycle (talk) 18:13, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

I've looked quickly at the world view page. There's a section on world view#Worldviews in religion and philosophy which is somewhat dense, and not clear to me how it would apply to atheism. But the section world view#Structural aspects indicates that a world view is "a comprehensive set of opinions, seen as an organic unity," which might not really fit with some "weak" forms of atheism. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:11, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

You know what, I think what I just said might not be a problem. People with implicit/weak/relative views do have world views, and those views are absent belief, even if the absence of belief did not come about deliberately during the development of the world view. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:34, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

To summarize so far:

Atheism refers to any world view absent belief in deities.[1][2] It can more specifically be the explicit view that there are no deities,[3] or the rejection of theism as being immoral, meaningless, incoherent, or unwarranted.[4][5]

That would include changing ref 4 to the Hitchens book. (On the other hand, it occurs to me that this iteration might be losing johnpseudo's point about the narrow meaning of "absence." Am I right that "absent" as used here does not connote only the weak/implicit/relative forms, but rather, all forms, including those and the strong/explicit ones as well?) --Tryptofish (talk) 18:44, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

I guess an alternative approach would be:

Atheism refers to any kind of absence of belief in deities.[1][2] It can more specifically be the explicit world view that there are no deities,[3] or the rejection of theism as being immoral, meaningless, incoherent, or unwarranted.[4][5]

Either would be fine with me, although I think the first one might be better. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:16, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

I much prefer the version with "world view" in the first sentence. Then "view" is essentially short for "world view" in the second, without being repetitive. Or this:

Atheism refers to any world view absent belief in deities.[1][2] More specifically, it can be the explicit view that there are no deities,[3] or that which rejects theism as being immoral, meaningless, incoherent, or unwarranted.[4][5]

--Born2cycle (talk) 21:01, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

That is an improvement! Although I understand your reasoning behind "that which rejects," I think it becomes awkward that way, without gaining enough. So:

Atheism refers to any world view absent belief in deities.[1][2] More specifically, it can be the explicit view that there are no deities,[3] or the rejection of theism as being immoral, meaningless, incoherent, or unwarranted.[4][5]

Now, we can wait for someone else to say they hate it! --Tryptofish (talk) 21:52, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Here I am! What the hell is this: "any world view absent belief in deities"?!

If that's not linguistically bad, I don't know what is.

In German there's a nice verb: "verschlimmbessern" = "to improve for the worse".

—Editorius (talk) 22:06, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Unless you explain what exactly is "linguistically bad", much less suggest alternative wording, that's not helpful or productive at all. --Born2cycle (talk) 22:10, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

The phrase above even doesn't even seem grammatically well-formed.

Or did you mean something like "any worldview free of belief in deities"?—Editorius (talk) 22:19, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

As I said earlier today, please do not use language like "what the hell is." It only creates bad will, and makes it harder to reach consensus. Persuasion by temper tantrum does not work. Some of us actually speak English as a first language, and there is nothing wrong with the grammar. "Free of" and "absent" both have very similar meanings; however, "free" connotes a subtle POV that there was something oppressive to be free of. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:31, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

(unindent/ec) Yes, that was what was meant, but LOL, I kind of like "free". How about:

Atheism refers to any world view not blinded or crippled by delusional belief in deities.[1][2] More specifically, it can be the explicit view that there are no deities,[3] or the rejection of theism as being immoral, meaningless, incoherent, or unwarranted.[4][5]

Just kidding! Seriously, though, this is worth considering:

Atheism refers to any world view free of belief in deities.[1][2] More specifically, it can be the explicit view that there are no deities,[3] or the rejection of theism as being immoral, meaningless, incoherent, or unwarranted.[4][5]

--Born2cycle (talk) 22:34, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Tryptofish wrote: "The point is that our role here is to explain, as opposed to define, what atheism is. This is not Wictionary!"

Really?!—The point is that the complex explanation of atheism needn't and certainly shouldn't be squeezed into the introductory statement, which thereby becomes more and more inflated, since it is followed by an entire article that offers ample room for explanations.—Editorius (talk) 22:38, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Editorius, please read WP:Wikipedia is not a dictionary. That's official policy, not my personal opinion. Born2, I think we all need a good laugh! But I'd rather not do the "free of" POV, because it is a POV. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:44, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

To reiterate:

Atheism refers to any world view absent belief in deities.[1][2] More specifically, it can be the explicit view that there are no deities,[3] or the rejection of theism as being immoral, meaningless, incoherent, or unwarranted.[4][5]

With ref 4 changed to the Hitchens book. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:50, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

(ec) Fine. As of the moment, I think "free of belief" does not violate NPOV, and agree with with Editorius that "absent belief" is clumsy, but you seem to feel more strongly than I about this, so I will defer. --Born2cycle (talk) 22:55, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Tryptofish wrote: "Some of us actually speak English as a first language, and there is nothing wrong with the grammar."

Yes, there is: "Atheism refers to any worldview absent [of/from?] belief in deities."

This would be correct: "Atheism refers to any worldview from which (the) belief in deities is absent."

Also correct is: "Atheism refers to any worldview free of/from (the) belief in deities."

But not: "Atheism refers to any worldview absent (from) belief in deities."

Reason: This would mean that what is absent is not the belief but the worldview.

Tryptofish wrote: "... however, "free" connotes a subtle POV that there was something oppressive to be free of."

Sorry, can't follow. (Would you prefer "devoid of"?)

—Editorius (talk) 22:52, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

I think "devoid of" would work alright. The word "absent" need not be followed by a preposition, for example: "absent any objections, we will do so-and-so." --Tryptofish (talk) 22:59, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Come to think of it, "devoid of" obviates the issue of misconstruing "absent" as meaning only the weak/implicit/relative forms. How about that! So:

Atheism refers to any world view devoid of belief in deities.[1][2] More specifically, it can be the explicit view that there are no deities,[3] or the rejection of theism as being immoral, meaningless, incoherent, or unwarranted.[4][5]

With ref 4 changed to the Hitchens book. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:04, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Okay, I just saw that "absent" can function as a proposition. See: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/absent

But "atheism" names only one worldview and not many: atheism itself. And one may call into question whether atheism as such deserves to be called a worldview, for, normally, a worldview is a whole set of connected beliefs.—Editorius (talk) 23:08, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

I should probably let Born2 take this one, but world views are generally understood as containing beliefs, being made up of beliefs, rather than as "doing" the believing, whereas it is the person who has the world view who believes or not. The page on world views has a lengthy discussion of religions as world views. I do not think that atheism, by being a non-belief, somehow loses status as a world view. Rather, it is a world view, a view of the world, that does not include belief in deities. And since we are saying there are multiple forms of atheism, it is appropriate to say that there are multiple world views: the world view that there are no deities is not the same as the world view that rejects theism as being immoral. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:18, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Call me b2c... Good points. Actually, atheism may or may not be an aspect of a given world view, but it is not a world view in and of itself. Ugh, this is clumsy... please to fix!

Atheism refers to an aspect of a world view that makes it devoid of belief in deities.[1][2] More specifically, it can be the explicit view that there are no deities,[3] or the rejection of theism as being immoral, meaningless, incoherent, or unwarranted.[4][5]

With ref 4 changed to the Hitchens book. --Born2cycle (talk) 23:28, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

I'm not a big fan of the phrase "world view"; I don't think it's well-defined and implies the presence of an active thought process. (I realize it doesn't require such, but I think it has that connotation for many.) Also, my objection to the "refers to" construction is because it treats "atheism" as a word rather than as a concept. Atheism doesn't refer to anything; the word "atheism" refers to something. Powers ^T 23:29, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Powers, good point about "refers." I'm also not good with "refers to an aspect" and "that makes it." And b2c, that's also a good point about being only an aspect. Maybe we have to circle back to:

Atheism is any kind of absence of belief in deities.[1][2] More specifically, it can be the explicit view that there are no deities,[3] or the rejection of theism as being immoral, meaningless, incoherent, or unwarranted.[4][5]

With ref 4 changed to the Hitchens book. We could change "view" to world view in the second sentence, perhaps. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:47, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

(ec) Powers, how would you solve the problem that using "world view" solves without using "world view"? Just "view"? Without "refers to" we're back to "is" and defining it rather than describing it. Criticisms without alternative suggestions are not very helpful... Never-the-less, how about this...

Atheism implies a view of the world devoid of belief in deities.[1][2] More specifically, it can be the explicit view that there are no deities,[3] or the rejection of theism as being immoral, meaningless, incoherent, or unwarranted.[4][5]

With ref 4 changed to the Hitchens book. --Born2cycle

No wait, it's even better than that! With "view", we can whack "belief" altogether, because that's implied!

Atheism is any view of the world devoid of deities.[1][2] More specifically, it can be the explicit view that there are no deities,[3] or the rejection of theism as being immoral, meaningless, incoherent, or unwarranted.[4][5]

With ref 4 changed to the Hitchens book. --Born2cycle (talk) 23:59, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Although I think it's clear that "implies" doesn't work, that last one is very good, maybe my favorite so far. But I should point out that it might exclude relative atheism. I suppose there could also be (tortured) arguments that it doesn't exactly allow for rejection of theism views as well. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:08, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Born2cycle wrote: "Atheism is any view of the world devoid of deities."

Here you define "atheistic", not "atheism".

And if deities existed, they would be part of the world, not of any worldview. Sets of beliefs can contain the belief in deities but they cannot contain deities.—Editorius (talk) 00:12, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

"Atheistic" is an adjective; "atheism" and "view" are nouns, so describing it as a "view" does describe atheism, not atheistic. But that second point is clearly correct. It brings us back to "aspects of a world view" etc etc, and I increasingly think it's a reason to go back to "is any kind of absence of belief in deities." --Tryptofish (talk) 00:18, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

+1 on the first point. As to the second point, it's correct, but it's not implied by the statement. Parse it like this: "Atheism is any view of the world devoid of deities." That is, what is devoid of deities is the world that is viewed. --Born2cycle (talk)

This whole debate is exhausting ... :-(

I just don't get it: why can't we keep things simple and clear?!?

There's a whole chapter in the article (ch. 2.: Definitions and Distinctions) that is the right place for all further explanations!

So, again, why not simple and clear (and neutral)?

"In the narrow sense atheism is the negation of the existence of deities, in a broader sense it is the rejection of the belief in deities, and in the broadest sense it is simply the absence of this belief."

Or even shorter (since everybody who rejects theistic belief for whatever reason is a negative or a positive atheist):

"In the narrow sense atheism is the negation of the existence of deities, and in the broad sense it is the absence of belief in deities."

I really fail to see what might be intolerable about these sentences in the role of an introductory statement. (Additional subtleties such as the distinction between absolute and relative atheism ought to be mentioned in ch. 2).

—Editorius (talk) 00:42, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I agree that it is exhausting! In part, we are going around in circles. As I said earlier, those who do not remember talk page history are doomed to repeat themselves :) Anyway, I think there has been a lot of discussion of why certain parts of those constructions are seen by some editors as too superficial or otherwise flawed. Let's try to work within the iterations discussed so far, rather than proposing to jettison it all and keep starting over. --Tryptofish (talk) 01:09, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

I agree, Trypto. We all want simple and clear, Editorius, but getting there is easier said than done. I don't know if I would say these sentences are "intolerable", but surely our standard is higher than that? I could go into specific objections, but, unless there is consensus to work with these, I'd rather focus on the version that has been evolving... Hope that okay... --Born2cycle (talk) 01:45, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

BE BOLD! :-)

(Dou you really think my suggestions are "low standard"?)

—Editorius (talk) 01:49, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

"Hope that okay ..." — What not so okay: waste of time! (And we've all already wasted a lot of it!)—Editorius (talk) 01:52, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Born2cycle wrote: "We all want simple and clear, ..."

But what I find unfortunately is a discrepancy between wanting and doing.

"Editorius, but getting there is easier said than done."

Actually, it's easily done:

"In the narrow sense atheism is the view that there are no deities, and in the broad sense it is the absence of belief in deities."

Done! ;-)

—Editorius (talk) 02:37, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Another arbitrary break(4)

So, continuing what I just said, I suggest:

Atheism is any kind of absence of belief in deities.[1][2] More specifically, it can be the explicit view that there are no deities,[3] or the rejection of theism as being immoral, meaningless, incoherent, or unwarranted.[4][5]

With ref 4 changed to the Hitchens book. And we've written a book about writing two sentences. --Tryptofish (talk) 01:09, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Whoa. What happened to "Atheism is any view of the world devoid of deities.[1][2]"? I like that much better. --Born2cycle (talk) 01:45, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

I think this variant is OK, I still don't like that "any kind of" I would use "the" instead. man with one red shoe 02:00, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Again, atheism, and only its positive form, is a view: the view that there are no deities.

This single view can be part of many worldviews, but it itself is not a complex worldview.

And again, even if atheism may rightly be called a worldview, "Atheism is any worldview devoid of the belief in deities" implies that any atheistic worldview is named "atheism", which is certainly not the case.

For example, Marxism is an atheistic worldview but "atheism" is not a name of Marxism, i.e. atheism is not Marxism—see?

—Editorius (talk) 02:18, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Okay, so then what 'is' atheism. It's not a philosophy. It's a world view. What is it? A "disbelief". What the heck is that? How can something be that is a dis'something'? Is it a belief. It has been said that if atheism is a belief, then bald is a hair color. What is atheism? --Born2cycle (talk) 02:26, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

I think he just made a point that's a "view" not a "worldview", I prefer "view" too. man with one red shoe 02:57, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

If atheism is defined in terms of belief, then, at least if it entails negation or conscious rejection, it is a particular kind of mental state:

"Most contemporary philosophers characterize belief as a 'propositional attitude'. Propositions are generally taken to be whatever it is that sentences express (see the entry on propositions). For example, if two sentences mean the same thing (e.g., "snow is white" in English, "Schnee ist weiss" in German), they express the same proposition, and if two sentences differ in meaning, they express different propositions. (Here we are setting aside some complications about that might arise in connection with indexicals; see the entry on indexicals.) A propositional attitude, then, is the mental state of having some attitude, stance, take, or opinion about a proposition or about the potential state of affairs in which that proposition is true."

(http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/belief)

Then, atheism is the mental state of having a negative or rejective attitude towards the proposition "God exists" or "Gods exist" or "Theism is true".

Of course, this is true only of positive atheism plus explicit negative atheism, while purely implicit negative atheists, who don't even know the propositions "God exists" or "Gods exist" and their meanings, i.e. who are unware of the concept "god" or "deity" and so of theism in general, have no attitude towards those propositions at all—not even a rejective one. Therefore, the very broadest form of atheism, implicit negative atheism, is a nonattitude, i.e. the mere, and possibly even unconscious, lack of an attitude.

There are many theists and some atheists, who deny that implicit negative atheism may justifiably be subsumed under "atheism". For them, if not an outright denial, a conscious rejection of god-belief is the minimal condition for being an atheist. In their view, calling an ape an atheist is nonsensical.

But it is important to stress that it's not up to us Wikipedians to decide this contentious issue here!

We must remain neutral, refraining from declaring some interpretations of atheism "true" and some others "false".

—Editorius (talk) 03:28, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

So since someone brought it up, let's look at how Wikipedia describes baldness: "Baldness involves the state of lacking hair where it often grows, especially on the head." So, following that lead, we could say "Atheism involves the state of lacking belief in deities." Is that too circuitous? Powers ^T 14:18, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Too circuitous and besides hair is something natural for almost all the people, belief in God is not, so there's not a perfect parallel there. man with one red shoe 14:57, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Man with one red shoe commented above about preferring "is." Please read what I wrote earlier about "Why I feel so strongly about the word 'any'" towards the end of the section called "absence of belief in deities, or in existence of deities?" and let me know if you refute what I said there. Much higher up, johnpseudo commented on whether one definition can be a subset of another. I agree very much with Ilkali, who correctly points out: "There is no 'the' definition... Putting one of the definitions first doesn't say that all the other definitions are wrong." I would add that the consensus seems to have evolved over time to favoring the order here. B2c asked about what happened to "devoid." Fair question, I sensed that there was too much resistance and that it wouldn't gain consensus, but maybe I jumped too fast. What I suggested most recently was:

"Atheism is any kind of absence of belief in deities."

I could tweak the "devoid" formulation, to get something I think may be pretty good:

"Atheism is any view of a world devoid of deities."

I'm just suggesting "a world," but "the world" works for me too. (But b2c might want to weigh how a world devoid works with relative atheism.) I'm fine with any of the three approaches directly above. In contrast, look at what the page says now:

"Atheism, in general terms, is the absence of belief in deities."

Vague, weasel words. I submit that any of the three changes would be a big improvement over what the page says now (just as what the page says now is an improvement over what it said a few weeks ago). --Tryptofish (talk) 17:40, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

"Deities"

• I am sorry to add another scholastic comment to the lengthy discussion, but I would replace "deities" with something like "supernatural agents and forces", or simply "the supernatural". Ghosts, for example, are not considered deities. Dead people who communicate with the living in seances are not deities. Similarly, astrology is a religious system, but does not usually involve any deity, but simply supernatural agents or forces. Atheism reject all that.--Allinthebrain (talk) 02:28, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

There is a distinction between atheism and antisupernaturalism (naturalism).

All antisupernaturalists disbelieve in all and a fortiori in all divine supernatural beings, but not all atheists must disbelieve in all nondivine supernatural beings.

One could say that atheists are relatively antisupernaturalistic with regard to deities.

But an atheist needn't be an absolute antisupernaturalist/naturalist.—Editorius (talk) 02:51, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

For example an atheist could believe in "the Force" :D (although my example is borderline, depending on what the "Force" is deemed to be). Or an atheist could believe in Karma I guess or even reincarnation, am I wrong? man with one red shoe 03:02, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

It's pretty natural for an atheist, who disbelieves in all divine spirits, to also disbelieve in all nondivine spirits; but, strictly speaking, atheism doesn't entail naturalism, while naturalism certainly entails atheism.—Editorius (talk) 03:34, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

(Of course, if a pantheist equates God with Nature, then the naturalists do not disbelieve in this merely so-called, merely nominal god.—Editorius (talk) 03:37, 5 March 2009 (UTC))

I wonder if we can defer the "deities" versus "supernatural agents/forces" decision to the next page edit. (No problem with continuing this talk, of course!) Where Allinthebrain says, "Ghosts, for example, are not considered deities," I agree with that, but that argument actually seems to me to support staying with "deities." There are some forms of religion (ancestor worship, for instance) that are based on not-exactly-typical-deity worship, and that would be rejected by most forms of atheism, but a lot of belief in the supernatural is really not at all what atheism specifically rejects. To put it trivially, disbelieving in Casper the Friendly Ghost (or Dicken's Ghost of Christmas Present) does not an atheist make. One could just as well say that a view that is devoid of the supernatural is what science is, not atheism. On the other hand, rejection of the supernatural is something appropriate to be discussed in an article on atheism, but maybe not in the lead sentence. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:09, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Going with proposition

I like what Editorius noted above about atheism being a proposition. How about something this:

Atheism is the explicit proposition or implicit assumption that a given assertion about the existence of deities (or any one deity) is false, or lacks sufficient evidence to be considered true, and can be the rejection of theism as being immoral, meaningless, incoherent, or unwarranted.

I know it needs work and citations, but are there any fundamental objections to it? --Born2cycle (talk) 18:26, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

I suppose we could just have a permanent process of thinking up alternative ways of saying things, and never actually edit the page. I actually think that this new approach has merits, and may have long-term promise, after someone finds citations etc etc. But for now, I guess I have the "fundamental objection" that "it needs work and citations," and most importantly, is wordy and clunky. I would need to see it in a more ready-for-prime-time form, before considering jettisoning what we have discussed so far. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:36, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

I'm low on spare time today or I would have made a more complete presentation. I was hoping someone like you would run with it... If I had more time, I would also summarize all the problems with the version we're working with. I have come to the conclusion that it does need to jettisoned, and that "Atheism is the proposition that ..." or "Atheism is a proposition that ..." or "Atheism is any proposition that ..." is given a chance. I just think that

"Atheism is the explicit proposition or implicit assumption that a given assertion about deity existence lacks sufficient evidence to be considered true"

is perhaps exactly what atheism is. Bye for now. --Born2cycle (talk) 18:49, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Just look at the length of this talk page! At this time, I, for one, have zero interest in working from scratch on something new. Remember, nothing at WP is permanent, we can improve the page now, and then, later, improve it some more. So don't let the perfect become the enemy of the good. Within what we have been working on, I think it would be fine to change "it can be the explicit view that" in the second sentence, to "it can be the explicit proposition that." But for now, there are tons of problems with "implicit assumption," "a given assertion," "deity existence," and "lacks sufficient evidence." There is no way that this is going to become usable in a short period of time. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:05, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Born2cycle wrote: "I like what Editorius noted above about atheism being a proposition."

Atheism as a kind of belief is not a proposition but a propositional attitude. Please re-read the quote from the Stanford Encyclopedia above.—Editorius (talk) 20:06, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Propositional attitude it is

How about this:

Atheism is any propositional attitude [Stanford Encyclopedia] devoid of belief in deities.[1][2] More specifically, it can be the explicit view that there are no deities,[3] or the rejection of theism as being immoral, meaningless, incoherent, or unwarranted.[4][5]

--Born2cycle (talk) 20:10, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Welcome back! I could go along with that, so long as editors agree that "propositional attitude" is not too jargony or stiff for the first sentence. We also need to assess how well that term applies to the implicit/weak forms of atheism. The cite to the encyclopedia could go at the end of that sentence. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:16, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

In the interest of summarizing our choices, I think we are getting close to a consensus that the second sentence above may work. As for the first sentence, what the page says now is:

"Atheism, in general terms, is the absence of belief in deities.[1][2]"

The choice just suggested is:

"Atheism is any propositional attitude devoid of belief in deities.[1][Stanford Encyclopedia][2]"

And three other possibilities recently discussed are:

"Atheism is any kind of absence of belief in deities.[1][2]"

"Atheism is any view of a world devoid of deities.[1][2]"

"Atheism is any view of the world devoid of deities.[1][2]"

I think a fourth variant could be:

"Atheism is any view devoid of belief in deities.[1][2]"

I think we have options that are better than what the page says now. Can we work with one of these five? --Tryptofish (talk) 20:30, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Guys, I'm getting dizzy ...!

The sentences above are ill-formulated and confusing.

Again and again, why not keep it simple and clear:

"In the narrow sense atheism is the belief that there are no deities, and in the broad sense it is the absence of belief in deities."

—Editorius (talk) 20:53, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

I have no problem with considering that as an option with the others. But I think you'll find resistance from some who will consider it too simple. Please remember what the response was when I first proposed: "Atheism is the lack of belief in any god, or the belief that there is no god." --Tryptofish (talk) 21:46, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Propositional attitude? Atheism is not just a propositional attitude because newborns do not consider propositions. Modocc (talk) 22:15, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Which is why in previous section I had "or implicit assumption" --Born2cycle (talk) 22:34, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

I agree here with Modocc. I don't think newborns make "assumptions" either. And I think that, even though we know what "implicit" means, the general reader will not know what an "implicit assumption," as opposed to other assumptions, is. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:51, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

A newborn's absence of explicit assumption about deities is what makes it an implicit assumption. Maybe "implicit assumption" isn't the best phrase. What is? --Born2cycle (talk) 22:55, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

@Modocc: Please read my post from 03:28, 5 March 2009 in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Atheism#Another_arbitrary_break.284.29 —Editorius (talk) 23:14, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Better phrase? That's a difficult question. I note that, earlier, there was discussion that it might not be necessary to actually separate out the various weak/implicit forms in the first sentence, at least partially because it is indeed hard to capture without getting lengthy, and that, instead, we should state a description (and NOT a definition, please, everyone!) that is broad and inclusive, so that it would include everything, including, but not limited to, the weak/implicit. So, as I continue to think about it, I'd rather not try to find a better phrase for that. However, I think that the propositional etc discussion has led to a very good insight. I really like the way that construction brought in the words "devoid of belief in" ("any propositional attitude devoid of belief in deities"). That wording had eluded me until then, but I think it really works. When I tried to list a summary of the choices just above, it occurred to me just as an afterthought to suggest "Atheism is any view devoid of belief in deities." As I think about it more, I am warming to it more. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:17, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

@Tryptofish: "Too simple"???

"If its subject is amenable to definition, then the first sentence should give a concise definition."

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Lead_section#First_sentence)

As well I know! No need to convince me. Just look at the response way above, when I suggested a similarly simple lead. The difference between my approach and yours is that I try to consider what all editors are saying (whether I succeed or not), rather than just insisting on exactly what I want. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:38, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Simple first sentence

Atheism is being devoid of belief in deities. --Born2cycle (talk) 01:11, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

So, how is this for the complete intro?

Atheism is being devoid of belief in deities.[1][2] More specifically, it can be the explicit view that there are no deities,[3] or the rejection of theism as being immoral, meaningless, incoherent, or unwarranted.[4][5]

With ref 4 changed to the Hitchens book. --Born2cycle (talk) 03:18, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

I think we would have to write: "Being an atheist is being devoid of belief in deities."

By the way, here's another simple suggestion of mine:

"Atheism is the absence or rejection of belief in deities, or the belief [view] that there are no deities."

—Editorius (talk) 03:31, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

I strongly support Editorius' variant. Otherwise I will cease watching this page, I'm afraid that we can't escape of "design by community" syndrome. man with one red shoe 03:33, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

The "absence or rejection" phrase is, e.g., used here on a website belonging to the university of Cambridge:

"Perhaps the most obvious meaning [of 'atheism'] to many people now is the absence or rejection of a belief in a God, or gods."

(http://www.investigatingatheism.info/definition.html)

—Editorius (talk) 04:24, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

And I wouldn't mind if we wrote:

"Atheism is the absence or rejection of belief in deities, or the explicit belief [view] that there are no deities."

—Editorius (talk) 04:33, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

I think that's my favourite:

"Atheism is the absence or rejection of belief in deities, or the explicit belief that there are no deities."

Concise, simple but not too simple.—Editorius (talk) 05:49, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Shell we go with this one? Let me make a comment, there will never be a "perfect" definition for every person who edits this page, however this is simple, clear, and pretty complete, for any additional nuances and clarifications editors could use the body of the text, but in my view this is as good as it gets as a definition. man with one red shoe 15:42, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

I agree very much with what man with one red shoe just said (and I hope that you will not become discouraged and leave this page, because your comments have been very helpful here.) And, I too like this version very much. If I may suggest a small tweak, it would be that "view" is better than "belief," because others have pointed out that "belief" connotes religious faith, but admittedly that is really a hairsplitting point. Also, it is repetitive to say "belief" in both parts of the sentence. That makes:

"Atheism is the absence or rejection of belief in deities, or the explicit view that there are no deities."

We still would need to figure out the links within the sentence, and the placement of references. I have to say that I'm amused by this, because, after writing a talk page that I think is now longer than the actual article, mostly about writing just a sentence or two, we have come full circle back to something very similar to something I suggested at the beginning, although the version here is much better, because it incorporates ideas that have come out through this talk. I do, however, feel a need to point out that the reason this talk has gone on for so long has been a sincere attempt by me and many others to respectfully listen to all editors' concerns, and I'm pretty sure that some editors are soon going to object strongly to such a simple construction. But, that said, I want to say that I strongly support this version, and I hope we can accept it. --Tryptofish (talk) 16:35, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Again, "if atheism is a belief, then bald is a hair color". But I wholeheartedly endorse Tryptofish' version with the slight tweak, and note that this was an optional variant in one Editorius wrote above. --Born2cycle (talk) 17:38, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for that. I mentioned above that we would still need to figure out the links and references. To attempt to help with that, here is my suggestion:

"Atheism is the absence or rejection of belief in deities,[1][2][5] or the explicit view that there are no deities.[3]"

Or would it be better to:

"Atheism is the absence[2] or rejection[5] of belief in deities, or the explicit view that there are no deities.[3][1]"

The links are same as what is on the page now. The numbers for the refs are the numbers as they are on the page now, not the numbers as they would be after putting them in order. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:26, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

It looks very ugly when the footnotes are squeezed into the sentence. Let's do it this way instead:

"Atheism is the absence or rejection of belief in deities, or the explicit view that there are no deities.[1]...[n]"

—Editorius (talk) 18:36, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

I agree with Editorius that it looks and reads much better with the refs at the end (with [1][2][5][3], in that case). I also now think the option I wrote first is the worst. Keeping in mind that some editors are going to object that what we are doing is too simple, and blurs (allegedly, because I don't really think so) the distinction between absence, view that there are no deities, and rejection of theism, the option I wrote second may have to end up as a compromise. It's fine with me either way, and not worth rejecting the whole idea over. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:51, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

You lost me. Which two options are you referring to here? The only difference I see between the two options you last provided are where the references go, yet you're saying you agree Editorius' third option (refs all at the end) reads "much better". I'm fine with all refs at the end. --Born2cycle (talk) 18:56, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

OK to me, this is the best version that I've seen in this page. man with one red shoe 19:44, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

BTW, for people who participated in this discussion, I think we've made a huge progress, remember the "affirmation of nonexistence"? Yuck! man with one red shoe 19:49, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. And once this change is implemented on the article, if anyone attempts to change it, we can point to this discussion which records how this version evolved, which should help keep it stable. One can hope... --Born2cycle (talk) 20:01, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Man with, right on! It is huge progress. And it sure wasn't easy! (May not be still.) B2c, sorry I lost you, I think I'm showing edit fatigue. Anyway, the "options" I was referring to were the different ways of ordering the references. Only that, and all within the framework of this new, shorter version. So, I'm agreeing that the best option is to put all the references at the end of the sentence, in the order I indicated. I'm sort of withdrawing my suggestion of putting refs 1,2,5 at the end of the first clause and ref 3 at the end of the sentence. And I'm pointing out that the ordering that puts ref 2 at "absence," ref 5 at "rejection," and so on, instead of putting them all at the end of the sentence, should stay on the table as a possible compromise, in case some editors complain about oversimplification, because that format, although very slightly less readable, offers the compromise of drawing attention to the fact that "absence," "rejection," and "there are no deities" are three distinct ideas, each with its own supporting literature. About that last point, I think it would be courteous to wait a day or two before making the edit, but that's just my suggestion. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:06, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Noting that your efforts and calm guidance through this whole process are probably the reason it went as smoothly as it did, I hereby defer to your judgment and suggest that everyone else refrain from making the change to the article, allowing you to do it when you deem it appropriate to do so. Thank you Tryptofish! --Born2cycle (talk) 20:25, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

How did that become my volunteering to do the edit? Anyone else who wants to do it, please go ahead (and be the one who experiences being reverted!). (smile) And I'm not so sure that it went so smoothly! (another smile) But seriously, thank you very much for the kind words. I appreciate that a lot. Cheers! --Tryptofish (talk) 20:31, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

I would change it right now, but I'm to lazy to set up the references right :D man with one red shoe 21:04, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

I think three references for the first sentence are sufficient:

For "absence":

"Atheism, in its basic form, is not a belief: it is the absence of belief. An atheist is not primarily a person who believes that a god does not exist; rather, he does not believe in the existence of a god."

(Smith, George H. Atheism: The Case Against God. Buffalo, NY: Prometheus, 1979. p. 7)

For "rejection":

"Atheism. The rejection of belief in God, whether on the grounds that it is meaningful but false to say that God exists, or, as the logical positivists held, that it is meaningless and hence neither true nor false."

(Flew, Antony. A Dictionary of Philosophy. Rev. 2nd ed. New York: Gramercy, 1999. p. 29)

And for "negation"/"positive disbelief" (either Audi or Blackburn):

"Atheism (from --greek a-, 'not', and theos, 'god'), the view that there are no gods. A widely used sense denotes merely not believing in God and is consistent with agnosticism. A stricter sense denotes a belief that there is no God."

(Audi, Robert, ed. The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. p. 59)

"Atheism. Either the lack of belief that there exists a god, or the belief that there exists none."

(Blackburn, Simon. Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005, p. 27)

(And we could perhaps add the following link, for this page is really good and highly informative: http://www.investigatingatheism.info/definition.html)

—Editorius (talk) 21:54, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

I feel pretty flexible about that. I wonder, though, whether editors who are going to be unhappy with the proposed change will be further unhappy with the loss of references. I'm just thinking in terms of keeping peace. After all, the sentence reads the same in either case. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:11, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Sometimes when I try to read discussions onf this page, I feel like I'm watching Bill Clinton trying to define the word "is". Chuck Hamilton (talk) 22:35, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Me too. But it's better to play nice with others. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:43, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

I'VE DONE IT! PEACE! :-) — Editorius (talk) 00:37, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

BIG mistake, not waiting a few days, as I suggested. Personally, I prefer the short version, but I'll let the rest of you sort this out. --Tryptofish (talk) 15:53, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

Paragraph 2

Paragraph 2 currently states:

Many self-described atheists are skeptical of all supernatural beings and cite a lack of empirical evidence for the existence of deities. Others argue for atheism on philosophical, social or historical grounds. Although many self-described atheists tend toward secular philosophies such as humanism and naturalism, there is no one ideology or set of behaviors to which all atheists adhere; and some religions, such as Jainism and Buddhism, do not require belief in a personal god.

My problem is with the 3rd (last) sentence:

Although many self-described atheists tend toward secular philosophies such as humanism and naturalism, there is no one ideology or set of behaviors to which all atheists adhere; and some religions, such as Jainism and Buddhism, do not require belief in a personal god.

I sense an implication here that there is an expectation that there be "one ideology or set of behaviors to which all atheists adhere". Do theists have "one ideology or set of behaviors to which all theists adhere"? Of course not Heck, not even Baptists, Muslims, Jews, or Catholics have "one ideology or set of behaviors to which all atheists adhere". Why is it even worth noting that atheists don't either? I propose tweaking this sentence to say the following:

Many self-described atheists tend toward secular philosophies such as humanism and naturalism,, but, as for theists, there is no one ideology or set of behaviors to which all atheists adhere. Some religions, such as Jainism and Buddhism, are arguably atheistic, since they do not require belief in a personal god.

Any objections or suggested further alterations? --Born2cycle (talk) 01:50, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

It's fine by me. Another change is needed here Atheism#Implicit_vs._explicit: "As noted in the introduction above, atheism has also been defined as synonymous with any type of non-theism" does this refer to the initial introduction that we changed? In general it's not a good idea to refer like this to another part of the page lest it gets changed and the reference remains dangling... man with one red shoe 02:29, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

And one comment about Jainism and Buddhism I don't think that saying "are arguably atheistic" is 100% correct. A religion/philosophy that doesn't discuss or is not concerned with God and still lets followers the personal choice to believe in God(s) is not atheistic, unless it clearly prescribes "there is no God" which I don't think Jainism/Buddhism do, so actually they don't treat the issue of God and followers could potentially have Atheistic views without faulting the percepts of the specific religion, but the religion itself is not Atheistic. Buddhism is simply not interested in the idea of God from what I understand that doesn't make it Atheistic just like lets say Mathematics is not atheistic because it doesn't say "there's a God". See the difference? Followers can be atheists, the religion itself is not unless it prescribes that there's no God. At least that's how I seethis issue. We could say that there are Atheists who practice Jainism/Buddism because those religions don't require a belief in god(s) but we can't say that the religions are atheistic (arguably or not) man with one red shoe 02:38, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

See e.g.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/jainism/beliefs/god.shtml

Whether or not a religion is atheistic depends on how the concept "deity" or "god" is defined.

(See: "Deity" in the Catholic Encyclopedia)

If "god" means "unique transcendent personal creator-god", then Jainism and Buddhism are doubtless relatively atheistic in terms of such a god.—Editorius (talk) 03:06, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

My point was that they are just not concerned with God, just like Mathematics or Economics are not concerned about God but we don't call them Atheistic while people who practice any of them can be theists because there's not clear percept "there's no God" in either of the religion (AFAIK) man with one red shoe 05:40, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

I agree with b2c's suggested change. It's an improvement. I also agree with man with's point about the implicit-explicit section, and have made an edit to hopefully fix that. I also think that man with makes a good point about Jainism/Buddhism. Maybe b2c's idea of "arguably" helps with that, or maybe it could be made more explicit. Maybe an easy way to fix it is to simply delete the reference to atheism in the sentence, and say: "Some religions, such as Jainism and Buddhism, do not require belief in a personal god." That way, there is no issue of mischaracterizing them, but the context is still (I think?) clear. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:38, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

Good edit, thanks. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:19, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

Where do we stand with the lead?

I have to say that my jaw dropped on seeing the amount of talk over the past 12 hours or so! We are writing a book about how to write a short paragraph. I would like to push this talk to focus more specifically on what to write in the lead. After reading above, it seems to me that we do agree on the deletion of the phrase that Man-with-one-red-shoe made. Personally, I agree with JimWae about the benefit of "deity" over that of "god," and it's fine with me also to say "can be either" in place of "is either." I'm afraid I don't understand what, specifically, JimWae wants to say about "unpacking" the second definition, so if you could please explain that succinctly, that would help. I take the point about not needing to have a single sentence because we don't need to save paper etc., but I note that the present version of the page uses the second sentence for the third (implicit) definition, not for the second, so I'm not sure where that leaves us. Also not clear to me whether we feel we need the words "explicit" and "implicit." There may be things in the most recent talk that, frankly, went over my head, so there may be things I'm missing, but out of confusion, not disrespect. With that caveat, let me now suggest: "Atheism can be either the view that there are no deities, the rejection of theism as meaningless, incoherent, or unwarranted, or the absence of belief in, or awareness of, any deity." Please let me suggest, in lieu of lengthy talk about background theory, editors suggest specific alternatives to wording. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:26, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Frankly now, after the change I made (proposed by JimWae), I feel like the worst was eliminated and it's actually a pretty good variant without obvious problems. The current variant doesn't contain "God or gods" so there's no problem with the "or" and capitalization it also eliminated that atrocious "affirmation of nonexistence". So basically I'm fine if it remains like how it is right now. man with one red shoe 21:09, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

As I see it, there are two remaining problems, although I do agree that it is much improved already. The first problem is that it is not clear what the second definition, "the rejection of theism" really means. Why is theism being rejected? Because deities do not exist? (No.) The second problem, in the second sentence, is that it is unclear whether "absence of belief in deities" and "nontheism" (the latter a rather jargony word to use in a lead) are two distinct things, or synonyms. A much less important quibble I have is that "assertion" carries a slight (unintentional) POV (as though the editors want to distance ourselves from some dubious claim), whereas something like "view" is more neutral. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:46, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Also, I just noticed that your edit unintentionally lost the link to Existence of God. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:51, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Well, as we discussed before we can detail in the article what "rejection of theism" means. I agree about nontheism (although I see that's covered by a separate article in Wikipedia), we could remove it, where should we put that Existence of God link? man with one red shoe 21:59, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think there was any consensus that "rejection of theism" can stand on its own. The link had been where you now have deities. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:50, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

To clarify, here is my most recent previous (and still preferred) version:

"Atheism can be either the view that there are no deities,(ref 1) the rejection of theism as meaningless, incoherent, or unwarranted,(ref 2) or the absence of belief in, or awareness of, any deity.(ref 3)(ref 4)"

Here is what the page says now:

"Atheism, as an explicit position, can be either the assertion that there are no deities,(ref 1) or the rejection of theism.(ref 2) It is also(ref 3) defined more broadly as an absence of belief in deities, or nontheism.(ref 4)"

As a sort of compromise, I could suggest this combination:

"Atheism, as an explicit position, can be either the view that there are no deities,(ref 1) or the rejection of theism as meaningless, incoherent, or unwarranted.(ref 2) It is also defined more broadly (ref 3) as an absence of belief in, or awareness of, deities.(ref 4)"

Might that third version (or "my" first) be an improvement over what we have now? --Tryptofish (talk) 23:14, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

I'll throw my hat in and suggest a wording as well:

Atheism in its broadest form is synonymous with nontheism, and entails not believing that any deity exists. More specific forms involve positive belief in the non-existence of deities, or require the additional belief that theism is meaningless, incoherent or unwarranted.

I think the variants of atheism are a little easier to conceptualise if we first establish a baseline - a set of features common to all variants - and then describe the stronger variants as extensions of that. Ilkali (talk) 23:40, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

The issues that I can see with that are describing it as a "belief" and particularly as a "positive belief," the problem with "non-existence," and the opinion that some editors have expressed that the "explicit" definitions need to come first. Whether I'm succeeding or not, I'm trying hard to keep track of and reflect all of the comments that have come before. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:48, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

"describing it as a "belief" and particularly as a "positive belief"". What's the problem here? Why does it matter if we describe strong atheism as a belief or a view? "the problem with "non-existence"". What problem? "and the opinion that some editors have expressed that the "explicit" definitions need to come first". A quick scan of the talk page didn't throw up any real discussion on this point, and I don't see any reason to introduce the implicit/explicit distinction in the first sentence, especially since these terms already seem to cause confusion. Ilkali (talk) 00:08, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Regarding your preferred version: 1) I'm personally uncomfortable with either being used for a list of more than two items, but I'm not sure how much my intuitions match those of the average reader. 2) Talking about 'unawareness' of a deity weakly implies that deity's existence. 3) I still think it makes sense to describe the essential features first, then the features that are specific to more restrictive forms. Ilkali (talk) 20:14, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Trypofish wrote: "The first problem is that it is not clear what the second definition, "the rejection of theism" really means. Why is theism being rejected? Because deities do not exist? (No.)"

Unfortunately, "theism" has two meanings:

"1. the belief in one God as the creator and ruler of the universe, without rejection of revelation (distinguished from deism ).

"2.belief in the existence of a god or gods (opposed to atheism )."

(Source: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/theism)

In the definition of "atheism" the phrase "rejection of theism" certainly isn't used to mean "rejection of theism but not necessarily of deism or of other god-beliefs".

One possible reason for somebody's rejection of theism (in sense 2) is that he believes that there exist no gods. So the positive atheists belong to the people who reject theism.

—Editorius (talk) 00:16, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

I just discovered that "theism" can even have three meanings:

"1. belief in a god or gods

2. belief in one God; monotheism

3. belief in one God viewed as creator and ruler of the universe and known by revelation"

(Source: http://www.yourdictionary.com/theism)

—Editorius (talk) 00:16, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

And... where's the problem? If you say you "reject theism" it means that you reject any of its meanings. man with one red shoe 00:55, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

The only sensible reason for using "deity" rather than simply "god" is that some might complain that "god" means "male deity", and that, strictly speaking, "Gods do not exist" doesn't imply "Goddesses do not exist". Anyway, if deities are spiritual, i.e. incorporeal, beings, then they certainly do not have any sexual characteristics in the physical sense. Would it make sense to ascribe a purely psychological gender to them instead so that one could still distinguish between male and female deities?—Editorius (talk) 00:39, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

"The only sensible reason for using "deity" rather than simply "god" is that some might complain that "god" means "male deity"". It doesn't, though. And I think the reasons Tryptofish gave are perfectly sensible. "Would it make sense to ascribe a purely psychological [...]". Please. No more tangents. Ilkali (talk) 00:45, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

"God" may well connote "male deity" (especially in the presence of "goddess"), but nevertheless I think that virtually everybody easily understands that "god" is used "ambisexually" in "belief in gods".—Editorius (talk) 01:00, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Ilkali, I strongly agree with your call for no more tangents! Thank you for that! Now to answer your questions to me after my previous comment, you asked about "belief" versus "view." The issue was first (I think) raised by JimWae on Feb. 23, so please see (very far) above. The problem as I understand it is that "belief" might connote the kind of belief involved in religious faith, whereas "view" is more neutral (admittedly, that's hair-splitting, I think, but no big deal to say "view"). You asked about "positive" and "non-existence." Just see the section above about "affirmation of the non-existence of," and note the edit that has already been made to the page; I think there are very strong reasons for that. About "explicit" coming before "implicit," you have to go all the way back to early comments above by JohnPseudo, but I gather that there was a lot of now-archived discussion about it, so why undo and revisit it? Speaking more broadly, I personally just don't care whether the words "explicit" and "more broadly" are included or not, although I don't have any big objection to leaving them there. And my impression is that the weight of discussion is now favoring "deities" over "god," although I have to say that I'm getting tired of discussing it. For the reasons I stated in my second comment of this section, I think that it helps the general reader understand the reasons why "rejection of theism" differs from "there are no deities" to spell out "meaningless, etc" and not just leave "rejection of theism" hanging there unexplained (even if, logically, it means rejection for any reason). At the top of this section, I suggested two alternatives to the present version. I definitely think either of them would be a big improvement. Again, without going off on tangents, what do other editors think about that? --Tryptofish (talk) 15:37, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

I would go with this one: "Atheism can be either the view that there are no deities,(ref 1) the rejection of theism as meaningless, incoherent, or unwarranted,(ref 2) or the absence of belief in, or awareness of, any deity.(ref 3)(ref 4)" However I have a problem with how "the rejection of theism as meaningless..." can read, one could I think mistakenly read that the "rejection of theism" is meaningless, it also complicates things unnecessarily, as I said, we can explain in the text of the article what is the "rejection of theism" and its various nuances. man with one red shoe 16:24, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

"The issue was first (I think) raised by JimWae on Feb. 23, so please see (very far) above". Thanks for the directions. If I have the right comment, what he says is this: "The most important definition, the one that includes everyone who would call himself an atheist, is lost in the shuffle - and I especially dislike calling it a "belief"". Here he's talking about weak atheism - the baseline, lack-of-belief form - which is indeed not a belief. The thing I described as a belief in my proposed wording was strong atheism.

"You asked about "positive" and "non-existence." Just see the section above about "affirmation of the non-existence of"". Done. The main objection seems to be to the stiltedness of the wording, and while I don't see that personally, I wouldn't object to a rewording of that part of my proposal (involve positive belief that deities do not exist). I don't see a problem with positive, though. It's not meant to say anything about how nice or how optimistic a belief is - it's not that kind of positive. It's just to accentuate the distinction between ¬Believe(GodsExist) and Believe(¬GodsExist).

"my impression is that the weight of discussion is now favoring "deities" over "god"". Agreed. It avoids a few annoying recurring problems.

"About "explicit" coming before "implicit," you have to go all the way back to early comments above by JohnPseudo". His comments exemplify the confusion about what explicit and implicit mean with regards to atheism, as he seems to use them as synonyms for strong and weak. Anyway, the opinion seemed to be that strong atheism is the form that most people are familiar with, and that therefore it should be the first described. I find this questionable, both because I don't think that's actually the case and because I don't think there's any strong reason to order our definitions by popularity unless we're being explicit about it (atheism usually means [...]). Ilkali (talk) 17:04, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Ilkali: I don't think we're that far apart, and I think we can get there via the alternatives I'm discussing. If you have an objection to the alternatives I've suggested, please explain. Man-with: Thank you for that answer. The point you raise about the second definition hadn't occurred to me. Would a fix be to change it to either: "the rejection of theism as being meaningless..." or "the view that theism is meaningless..."? (I'm guessing that some editors will want to retain "rejection" and so would prefer the first of those.) Alternatively, is the option that I offered third clearer about that (because it only has the first two definitions in the first sentence)? It is probably closer to what other editors would prefer, and is less of a change from what we have now. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:19, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Ilkali: You have subsequently inserted some more comments higher up, to which I'll reply here. You wrote: "I'm personally uncomfortable with either being used for a list of more than two items, but I'm not sure how much my intuitions match those of the average reader." I think that could be a good argument for the third "compromise" alternative form, because it uses two sentences. You wrote: "Talking about 'unawareness' of a deity weakly implies that deity's existence." Good point. (See the "practical atheism" section of the article to see where I got it from.) A solution could be to say: "absence of belief in dieties, or no awareness of religion." You also wrote: "I still think it makes sense to describe the essential features first, then the features that are specific to more restrictive forms." I guess I don't have that strong a stake in that issue, but other editors have wanted the definitions in this order, and it does occur to me that reordering would put the "implicit" form first, when that is not what you call an "essential" feature so much as, arguably, the "weakest" form. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:39, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

"You have subsequently inserted some more comments higher up, to which I'll reply here". I think it makes more sense to keep discussions threaded. Makes them easier to follow.

"it does occur to me that reordering would put the "implicit" form first, when that is not what you call an "essential" feature so much as, arguably, the "weakest" form". No, implicit atheism is atheism in the absence of knowledge regarding gods. The base form I describe is weak atheism. The former entails the latter, but not vice versa. By "essential", I mean that it (the absence of belief in gods) is the feature common to all atheists, with other features distinguishing different subtypes. Ilkali (talk) 01:13, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

My shot at it

Here's my shot at it:

Atheism is the absence of believing that any specific deity, that is believed by at least some theist to exist, exists.

In other words, atheism only has meaning relative to the beliefs that others hold. And this is what Dawkins means when he says that atheists have much more in common with monotheists than we are different. That is, every monotheist is an atheist with respect to all deities but the one he or she happens to believe exists. "Some of us just go one god further." 1 --Born2cycle (talk) 21:14, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Here is another way to word it:

Atheism is the absence of believing in the existence of any specific deity that at least some theist believes exists.

--Born2cycle (talk) 21:18, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

I think this is the concept we need to convey:

Monotheism is the lack of belief in the existence of all deities but one; atheism is the lack of belief in the existence of that one too.

Atheism is meaningless without theism, and so can only be defined in terms of it. --Born2cycle (talk) 21:22, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

This is like saying that standing is meaningless without sitting. man with one red shoe 22:13, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

I agree with that criticism. I also think this version disregards too many of the issues discussed above. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:21, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

No, it's like saying unconstitutional is meaningless without constitutional. Without theism, 'a'theism would be meaningless. Atheism only has meaning in terms of theism. As far the other issues discussed above, those are different. This is just a fundamental point that I think is missing. --Born2cycle (talk) 22:44, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

It could be argued that that's OR. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:49, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Huh? That what is OR? That atheism only has meaning in the context of theism? That's simply true by definition. The literal word itself is formed from "theism". --Born2cycle (talk) 23:38, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

It's nothing personal, and I'd really prefer not to go on too long about this. Can you cite a reference for this way of defining it? --Tryptofish (talk) 23:42, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, in your post right below this one where you assert that "rejection of theism" is part of the definition of atheism. You can't define atheism without theism. That's not an opinion, it's plain fact of definition. --Born2cycle (talk) 00:29, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Please also note that we are all including "rejection of theism" as part of the definition. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:58, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

I completely disagree with this - whilst some have made the point that we're all atheists with respect to at least some gods, this is by far from the main definition. I'd also argue that people who make this point don't really accept it as a meaningful or useful definition of atheism, they are just making a point against people who think that atheism requires evidence/faith/belief, and so on. It also ignores the three definitions that we currently cover.

And even if there existed a possible non-atheist, who believed in every deity that was believed by at least one theist, it seems rather odd that his state of being an atheist or not could change by the wavering belief of one theist on the other side of the planet... Mdwh (talk) 00:01, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

I'm not saying the definition of atheism is "we're all atheists with respect to at least some gods". That's a use of the term, not a definition of it! I'm saying that that use exemplifies the most fundamental meaning of the term, and it illustrates that the term only has meaning in the context of what theists do believe. If there were no theists, then the term atheist would be meaningless. Likewise, the term "a-unicornist" (people who do not believe in the existence of unicorns) has no meaning or relevance because there are (practically) no unicornists... people who believe in the existence of unicorns. --Born2cycle (talk) 00:29, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Okay I misunderstood, but how is your definition different from the usual "absence of belief in any deity" definition? I'd argue that your definition is also ill-defined - consider someone who believes in a specific deity, but where no one else believes in that deity: Is this person an atheist? If he's an atheist because no theist believes in it, then firstly this seems dubious (surely someone who believes in a deity is not an atheist in any meaningful sense, even if no one else believes in that deity?) and secondly it's a circular definition - the only reason no theist believes in it is because we decide that he's an atheist. But if instead we agree that he's a theist, why not say "Atheism is the absence of believing that any specific deity exists"? The extra clause about theists believing it is at best unclear, and at worst, circular, since it's not clear if the person we're considering counts as that theist or not. And what reliable source do you have for this definition? Mdwh (talk) 02:52, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Born2cycle wrote: "Atheism only has meaning in terms of theism."

Just for your information: The term "atheism" is older than the term "theism", so it has an independent meaning. (I'm not saying it is independent of the Greek word "theos".)

As far as I know, "atheism" first occurred in the English language in 1540 (in John Cheke's translation of Plutarch's "On Superstition"), while "theism" first occurred in 1678 (in Ralph Cudworth's "The True Intellectual System of the Universe").

Born2cycle wrote: "If there were no theists, then the term atheist would be meaningless."

If all people were atheists, the statement "We are all atheists" would still be perfectly meaningful. It would be meaningless only if the concept "god" didn't exist.

—Editorius (talk) 01:16, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Okay, not meaningless, but useless.

The statement "We are all atheists" would only have meaning and utility if there were at least some theists in the past. If there never were any theists, then "we are all atheists" would be meaningless, or at least useless.

Consider the statement, "we are all azeist", where a zeist is one who believes in the existence of a "zei". Without zeists, there would probably be no conception of a zei, and so "azeist" would be meaningless.

Now, one could conceive of a deity without believing in the existence of that deity, just as we can all conceive of a unicorn without believing in the existence of unicorns, but without people who believe in their actual existence, a term which means a non-believer in their existence is useless, if not meaningless.

Anyway, okay, fine, "atheism" would be meaningless if the concept of "god" didn't exist. But there is no one concept of "god". There are a plethora of conceptions of "god" - and "atheism" really only has meaning in the context of those conceptions. So, I return to what I said above:

Monotheism is the lack of belief in the existence of all deities but one; atheism is the lack of belief in the existence of that one too.

Or, if you prefer:

Atheism is the absence of belief in the existence of each and every one of the various deities that theists claim exist.

--Born2cycle (talk) 01:46, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

That just proves his point - the reason why "we are all azeist" is meaningless is because there is no conception of a zei. As for the claim that a lack of any believers implies there is no conception of it, this is clearly false: I can easily conceive of some imaginary being that I made up a few moments ago, even though no one believes it exists. Now sure, in practice the word atheism only came about because there existed people who believed in deities. But it's not clear how this should be worked into the lead definition, or how it relates to your proposed definitions? I still don't see why the "each and every one of the various deities that theists claim exist" is necessary - we cover this if we say that an atheist doesn't believe in any deities. Even if no one claims the deity exist, the atheist still doesn't believe in them, so it doesn't matter. Furthermore, if it was true that a concept is only meaningful if people believe in it, then there is also no need to specify that at least one theist must believe in the deity. Mdwh (talk) 03:08, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Another arbitrary break(2)

At this point, I'm taking another stab at seeing if we can improve on the existing lead. Here is what it says now:

"Atheism, as an explicit position, can be either the assertion that there are no deities,(ref 1) or the rejection of theism.(ref 2) It is also(ref 3) defined more broadly as an absence of belief in deities, or nontheism.(ref 4)"

I've thought about the comments elicited by the two alternatives I set forth above, and here is what I think. I, and I think at least one other editor, really like the one-sentence option, but there have also been issues raised about it. The two-sentence option represents less of a change from what we have already, and I think it is improved in this form:

"Atheism, as an explicit position, can be either the view that there are no deities,(ref 1) or the rejection of theism as being meaningless, incoherent, or unwarranted.(ref 2) It is also defined more broadly (ref 3) as any absence of belief in deities.(ref 4)"

I really think that is better than the status quo, particularly in being clear to the non-specialist reader. Maybe it can be improved upon further, but the status quo would not be better. Can we do this? --Tryptofish (talk) 23:56, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

It's an improvement, but I still think it's too convoluted, and the opening sentence should be more fundamental. Anyway, can we at least remove the "as an explicit position" clause? What does it add? --Born2cycle (talk) 00:32, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

I agree that the phrase "as an explicit position" is redundant; and I still have no idea what an "implicit position" might be. We could simply write "Atheism is the view that there are no gods/deities" instead.—Editorius (talk) 01:27, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

See Atheism#Implicit_vs._explicit. Mdwh (talk) 03:00, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

@Tryptofish: The problem with "the rejection of theism as being meaningless, incoherent, or unwarranted" is that this is not the only possible reason for rejecting theism, since you can do so because you think that theism is meaningful, coherent but false. As I already wrote, every positive atheist is a rejecter of theism too—Editorius (talk) 01:27, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I agree with this. We should remember that we are not listing three groups of atheists under some common single definition (where, e.g., the set of explicit weak atheists wouldn't include strong atheists), rather, we are listing three separate definitions, where each definition also includes the previous ones as a subset (so, e.g., the second definition includes explicit weak atheists and strong atheists).

Whilst I appreciate that Tryptofish wants to clarify what "rejection" means, I think there's a danger of missing out a particular reason. Atheism, by this second definition, is any rejection of theism, and is not qualified by a particular reason. Mdwh (talk) 02:59, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Slight rewording of the above

How about this:

Atheism is broadly defined as any absence of belief in deities, but can also be the view that there are no deities, or the rejection of theism as being meaningless, incoherent, unwarranted or false.

--Born2cycle (talk) 01:55, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

I like this. man with one red shoe 02:31, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

I feel it's better to list them ordered either narrow->broad or broad->narrow? Mdwh (talk) 03:14, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

I think this is really good progress. I like it too, but would tweak it very slightly, thus:

"Atheism is broadly defined(ref now 3) as any absence of belief in deities,(ref now 4) but can also be the explicit view that there are no deities,(ref now 1) or the rejection of theism as being meaningless, incoherent, unwarranted, or false.(ref now 2)"

Aside from my trivially indicating where the references would go, the only real tweak I made was reinserting "explicit." I actually don't feel at all strongly about it, but I'm trying to be sensitive to editors who haven't talked here in the past few hours, but have earlier (see way above). The change in order is actually fine with me. Adding "false" at the end is acceptable to me, although I challenge anyone to explain clearly how that differs from both "there are no deities" AND "meaningless, incoherent, or unwarranted." But it's ok anyway. To the comments that some have made that "rejection of theism" should stand by itself, I increasingly think that's just wrong. The most obvious reason to reject it is that it is false because deities don't exist, and a general reader will benefit from having it explained. And I challenge anyone to name another reason, not yet included, for rejecting it, without hairsplitting. But anyway, I think this is getting very good! --Tryptofish (talk) 18:01, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

"I challenge anyone to explain clearly how that differs from both "there are no deities"" - but "there are no deities" is not part of that definition. The "rejection of theism" definition still needs to, itself, include the people who believe there are no deities. I still think that listing reasons shouldn't be done as a part of the definition - consider, if it's true that these reasons cover all possibilities, then there is no need to require this to be part of the definition. Reasons for atheism should be covered after that, or later in the article, I feel. The way I read it at the moment suggests that if someone conceivably rejected theism for another reason, it wouldn't be atheism. Mdwh (talk) 21:16, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Okay, I've skimmed through the references to "explicit" above and now have a better understanding of what they meant. How about this slight tweak:

"Atheism is implicitly defined(ref now 3) as any absence of belief in deities,(ref now 4) but can also be the view that explicitly holds that there are no deities,(ref now 1) or rejects theism as being meaningless, incoherent, unwarranted, or false.(ref now 2)"

--Born2cycle (talk) 19:40, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

To me, that ends up getting a little wordy. I didn't mean, by suggesting we put "explicit" back, that we devote more emphasis to it than that. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:44, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Also, I really like the way we collectively came up with "broadly defined as any" at the start of the sentence. For me, that works really well, and I wouldn't want to lose it to jargon. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:55, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

"broadly defined" works better for me too, one thing though, do we have a reference for that? That is broadly defined as absence of belief? man with one red shoe 20:27, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

I don't think a citation for "broadly defined" is necessary, but I just found and added a citation/reference for it from about.com: http://atheism.about.com/od/definitionofatheism/p/overview.htm --Born2cycle (talk) 21:01, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Boldy assuming that the last version by Tryptofish is closer to consensus than the current version, I went ahead and changed the intro sentence accordingly, with one additional reason for rejection, "immoral", which I cited independently. I also wikified "any absence of belief" to link to nontheism. So, we have:

Atheism is broadly defined[1] as any absence of belief in deities,[2] but can also be the explicit view that there are no deities,[3] or the rejection of theism as being immoral[4], meaningless, incoherent, unwarranted, or false[5].

--Born2cycle (talk) 20:52, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

I disagree with this new version, and it's not clear there's consensus.

I think it would be better to break down this into the various changes made between the current version, and the new version - it could be that some editors agree with some changes, but not others. Can I ask what is it specifically about the current version, that is improved by the new version? I see that one reason is giving more explanation for the "rejection" definition, but if we agreed on that, then we could put that into the existing version by saying:

"Atheism, as an explicit position, can be either the assertion that there are no deities,[1] or the rejection of theism as being meaningless, incoherent, unwarranted, or false.[2] It is also[3] defined more broadly as an absence of belief in deities, or nontheism."

What is the reason for swapping the ordering? Do editors agree that "view" is better than "assertion" (if so, we could easily put that straight into the current version, without needing any other changes)? Lastly, I think the new version has the problem that it's not clear if "explicit" only apples to "explicit view that there are no deities", or if it also applies to the rejection definition. The current version I think is better, because it's clear that both of these definitions are explicit positions.

I know that one of the discussed problems is that we break the definition over two sentences, but then the new versions here have the same problem, just joining the sentences with a "but" clause, which I'm not sure is an improvement. In both cases, we still have the problem of saying "Atheism is this ... but, it can also be this!" We could easily combine the two sentences in the current version with a "but" if we wanted. Mdwh (talk) 21:03, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

I've proposed a fix for the "explicit" issue I mentioned above. Another thing that concerns me is that the "but" seems to imply that the "absence of belief" definition is the primary definition. I guess the problem is that "but" can imply that it's just an exception to the rule - how about "and" or "or"?

On a grammatical note, should "but can" be "but it can"? Mdwh (talk) 21:11, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Although I like the direction this is going, and I'm all in favor of being bold, that may have been a little too bold! I'll edit directly on the page now for what I think is wrong. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:57, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

(ec) Sorry, I thought we were closer. I tried to address all of the above concerns with this wording:

Atheism is broadly defined[1] as any absence of belief in deities,[2] and can also by defined by either of the more explicit views that there are no deities,[3]or that which rejects theism as being immoral[4], meaningless, incoherent, unwarranted, or false[5].

The "broadly defined" atheism is the primary definition, since it applies to all uses of the term (hence "broadly"), however I went with "and". I also did not think the "can be explicitly defined as..." wording was accurate since it's not the defining that is explicit, but the view itself, so I went with "either of the more explicit views that... or that which rejects...". Whether an "it" needs to be inserted there I will leave for someone else to determine! Hope this is considered by all to be an improvement... --Born2cycle (talk) 21:59, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Well, I'm happy with it now (for whatever that's worth). If anyone has any questions about the changes I made, just ask. I suspect that this won't be the end of it though. But I really do think what we have now is a LOT better than what we had a few days ago. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:18, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

"Atheism is broadly defined as any absence of belief in deities ..."

I doubt this is good English. I think it should read:

"Atheism is broadly defined as the absence of belief in deities ..."

And I still think that the reasons for the rejection of belief in deities shouldn't be already mentioned in the introductory statement.

And I still think that "explicit" in "the explicit view" is damn superfluous.

—Editorius (talk) 22:35, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Either is proper English, I think. But they have different meanings. The latter excludes the Dawkins usage: "Monotheists are atheists with respect to all gods but one" (paraphrased). --Born2cycle (talk) 22:36, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

No, please do NOT change "any" to "the." The grammar is fine, and that change would undo much of the near-consensus we have now. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:40, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

I do not believe that Dawkins seriously considers Christians and so on to be "atheists" (do you have a source?) - the idea of "all theists are atheists with respect to some gods" is meant to get people to think about the reasons for atheism, and isn't seriously meant to define every theist on the planet (since all of them, even the polytheists, have some gods they don't believe in) as atheists! This isn't something that should be in the lead as a definition of atheism. So I would prefer "the" to "any". Mdwh (talk) 13:01, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

(ec) So, this is what we have now:

Atheism is broadly defined[1] as any absence of belief in deities,[2] but can also be the explicit view that there are no deities,[3] or the rejection of theism as being immoral,[4] meaningless, incoherent, unwarranted, or false.[5]

Since we're at a version that I think everyone agrees is better than before, let's continue the discussion on the talk page, shall we?

This latest version does not address Mdwh's concerns about the "but", or that "explicit" only modifies the "view", but not the "rejection" clause. That the rejection is explicit I think is obvious, and so I don't that matters much. But I do agree the "but" implies a conflict that doesn't exist. How about something like this:

Atheism is broadly defined[1] as any absence of belief in deities,[2] and can also be more specifically defined as the explicit view that there are no deities,[3] or as the rejection of theism as being immoral,[4] meaningless, incoherent, unwarranted, or false.[5]

--Born2cycle (talk) 22:36, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Responding to several of the comments made: I think "explicit" does need to be there, but it also is obvious that the rejection is explicit too. Leaving out the "explicit" completely would result in losing the distinction between what is now the first (broad) definition, which does not have to be an explicit choice by the proponent, and the other two, which are explicit choices of opinion. I think, for the same reason, that "but" works better than "and," but the difference is a hair-splitting one, and I don't think "and" really addresses the complaints of editors who still want two sentences. "View" is better than "assertion," because "assertion" implies a dubious belief. As for the ordering, it seems to me that if (and only if) we keep the "broadly defined as any" construction, then it makes good sense to use the order here. Consensus changes over time, and I think the consensus (if not unanimous) has evolved to prefer the new order, for good reasons. But let's not bog the new version down in a lot of verbiage about specifically defined explicit views. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:53, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

1. Yes, "view" is more pleasant than "assertion".

2. Please define "implicit view" and correspondingly "nonimplicit/explicit view" so that I can understand what the difference is!

3. Again, since (negative) atheism is one kind of absence of something, I'm pretty sure that "the absence of belief in deities" is the better or even the proper formulation. "The absence of any belief in deities" appears kosher to me too but "any absence of belief in deities" does not.

(GoogleBooks hits for "any absence of belief" = #4; GoogleBook hits for "the absence of any belief" = #320)

—Editorius (talk) 23:47, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

If you search for "explicit" on this talk page, as I did, you should get your answer to (2). But I think essentially the simple absence of belief in something is an implicit view (my belief that next week's winning lottery ticket will not be comprised of the digits in my birthday is implicit), while a conscious rejection is explicit (as is the case with respect to my view about the existence of unicorns). Even if this is accurate, it is a subtle distinction, and perhaps it's a bit much to expect the average reader to understand this when they come to this page.

As to (3), there are different kinds of absence of belief in deities. For example, there is a) absence of belief in all deities, b) absence of belief in some deities, c) absence of belief in the deities of Greek mythology, d) The Jewish absence of belief in the Christian god, and e) The Christian absence of belief in the Mormon god, etc. In the broad sense of the term, atheism applies to all of these, and that is what is meant by "any absence of belief in deities". Again, Richard Dawkin's quote exemplifies this broad sense too: "Monotheists are atheists with respect to all gods but one. Some of us just go one god further" (paraphrased from memory). Or at least that's how I understand it. --Born2cycle (talk) 00:09, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

@Born2cycle:

1. I'm sorry, but I couldn't find a satisfying answer on this talk page.

I know George Smith's acceptable distinction between implicit and explicit atheism, but this is not the same as the alleged one between implicit and explicit beliefs/views:

"implicit atheism" =def "the absence of theistic belief not due to a conscious rejection of it"

"explicit atheism" =def "the absence of theistic belief due to a conscious rejection of it"

A rejection of something is always explicit. Somebody who rejects the belief in gods not only lacks the belief in gods but also consciously refuses to believe in gods.

On the other hand, the mere absence of belief in gods is implicit. Of course, all positive atheists also lack the belief in gods, but their disbelief is explicit.

2. "In the broad sense of the term, atheism applies to all of these, and that is what is meant by 'any absence of belief in deities'."

Fine, but the proper expression really seems to be "the absence of any belief in a deity/deities".

There are different kinds of belief in a deity/deities, which may be absent from one's mind, but there aren't different kinds of absences of such beliefs—absence is absence! So I maintain that "any absence of belief in deities" is a case of bad English.

—Editorius (talk) 01:23, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Editorius, your references to George Smith's explicit/implicit distinction seem to me to be consistent with the distinction made in the current wording, yet you contend it's not the same, without explanation. I don't know what to do with that.

Everyone here, AFAIK, agrees rejection is always explicit. In fact, at least two of us have essentially said that's so obvious there is no need to spell it out. Yet you're stating it here as if someone needs to be convinced of this. Not sure what to do with that either.

Finally, I'm sorry, but I just don't know how to have a discussion with someone who states "there aren't different kinds of absences" after I listed five such kinds (even labeled each with a separate letter, a-e), and without even acknowledging, much less addressing, the point that I made by listing them. I mean, I could copy/paste the same words, but what point would there be in that? You'd probably just ignore it again.

I've also mentioned the Dawkins usage twice now, to illustrate how your tighter definition would exclude such usage of the term atheism, and you've restated your position each time without acknowledging, much less addressing, that point either. That's not discourse. That's talking to a wall.

Perhaps I'm missing something, and I apologize in advance if I am, but I genuinely don't know how to respond except to explain the above as I just did, and put the ball back in your court. --Born2cycle (talk) 01:49, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Well, the wall you're taking to tells you again that "Atheism is broadly defined as any absence of belief in deities" is a case of bad English.

Of course, there's a difference between absolute atheism as the absence of (any) belief in a god/gods" and relative atheism as the absence of belief in the god G or in the set of gods {G1,...,Gn}. In the introductory statement we want to define "atheism" in its absolute sense, don't we? If so, then "Atheism is broadly defined as the absence of (any) belief in deities" or "Atheism is broadly defined as the absence of belief in any deity/deities" are proper formulations.

"Atheism, broadly defined, it is the absence of belief in the existence of any gods."

(http://atheism.about.com/od/aboutatheism/p/atheism.htm)

"Negative atheism in the broad sense is then the absence of belief in any god or gods, not just the absence of belief in a personal theistic God, and negative atheism in the narrow sense is the absence of belief in a theistic God."

(Martin, Michael, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Atheism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. p. 2)

It's your turn again ... —Editorius (talk) 02:36, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

You're still not addressing any of the points I've made in an effort to explain this to you. But let me try it like this. Yes, it is true that "the absence of belief in the existence of any gods" is atheism broadly defined. I think it's safe to say that everyone here agrees with that.

But, consensus here has been to introduce an even broader sense of the term in the introduction than the relatively strict "the absence of belief in the existence of any gods". In essence, we're saying that atheism can mean that, of course, but it can also mean "the absence of belief in the existence of some particular god" (and for the 3rd time, which you will probably again ignore, I refer to you the Dawkins quote for an example using that meaning).

You state that that stricter form of atheism is the absolute sense, and suggest that that is what we should use in the intro. Well, I don't know if that strict form is the "absolute" sense or not, but I do know the consensus here is to define atheism at the start in its broadest sense, and the current version is more broad than the "absolute" version you're suggesting we use instead. --Born2cycle (talk) 03:00, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

I should add that if you're just going to repeat yourself again, again without addressing anything I'm saying, I hereby give up. Maybe someone else can explain it better than I. --Born2cycle (talk) 03:02, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Born2cycle wrote: "Yes, it is true that 'the absence of belief in the existence of any gods" is atheism broadly defined. I think it's safe to say that everyone here agrees with that. But, consensus here has been to introduce an even broader sense of the term in the introduction than the relatively strict 'the absence of belief in the existence of any gods."

What the heck are you talking about?!

"The absence of belief in the existence of (any) gods" is the broadest possible definition of atheism!

Born2cyle wrote: "The current version is more broad than the 'absolute' version you're suggesting we use instead."

Rubbish! The current version is not broader but merely worse than the above one.

Your claim that "any absence of belief in deities" was semantically broader than "the absence of any belief in a deity" or "the absence of belief in any deity" is neither grammatically nor logically justifiable.

(By the way, is it possible that you somehow confuse "any" with "some", or vice versa?)

—Editorius (talk) 03:24, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

No, I'm not confusing "any" with "some". Your objection seems to be based on your continuing to presume that "there aren't different kinds of absences". I've explained how there are, you have not even acknowledged my explanation, much less addressed it.

When my wife is not home, that is one kind of absence. When my daughter is not home, that is another kind of absence. They are both absences, but the absence of my wife is distinct from the absence of my daughter. Similarly, the absence of belief in the existence of Thor is distinct from the absence of belief in the existence of the Christian god.

Further, when none of us are home, that is yet another kind of absence. It is the absence of my daughter + the absence of my wife + the absence of myself. This can also be said to be the absence of all family members. Similarly, atheism can be the absence of belief in the existence of any one deity, or of any number of deities, including the absence of belief in the existence of all deities. --Born2cycle (talk) 06:09, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Upon further consideration

Upon further consideration I must admit that there are two forms of implicit atheism:

1. any absence of belief in (one, some or all/any) deities (which encompasses the absence of belief in any deities)
2. the absence of belief in any deities

I submit that these two definitions are different, though both are implicit forms of atheism, and (1) is broader than (2). Now, since (2) is essentially covered by (1) (2 is a special case of applying (1) to every deity), I have been thinking there is no need to specify (2), but I suspect Editorius is not alone in expecting to see (2) stated explicitly in the intro, and not requiring the reader to realize that it is implied by (1). But right now I don't have time to think about how to fix this without making it too wordy or cumbersome. --Born2cycle (talk) 03:17, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Born2cycle wrote: "I submit that these two definitions are different, though both are implicit forms of atheism, and (1) is broader than (2)."

I beg your pardon, but that's rubbish!

There is the belief in deities and there is its absence. There aren't two or more absences of this belief.

But you are at least right insofar as there is a difference between (1) and (2): (1) is bad English and (2) is not. —Editorius (talk) 03:30, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

You claim that my statement is rubbish, but your support for that claim is a non sequitur. I agree "there is the belief in deities and there is its absence. There aren't two or more absences of this belief." Neither of these statements refutes my assertion. You again seem to be assuming that absence is absence, and cannot distinguish between different kinds of absence. Until you get your head around the concept that an absence in X is distinct from an absence in Y, which is distinct from an absence of X, Y and Z, we cannot proceed. --Born2cycle (talk) 06:21, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, but it seems to me that the discussion above, continuing from the section before, is an awful lot of fuss over something that just isn't worth it. There's nothing wrong with the grammar or the sense of the sentence, and I think that everything else that Editorius asked about can be answered by reading and understanding the part of the article on practical atheism. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:29, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Two sentences still better

Some problems with:

Atheism is the absence or rejection of belief in deities, or the explicit view that there are no deities.

1. "belief in deities" is not clear enough. I believe that football stars exist, but I do not believe IN them.
2. rejection of belief is also explicit, and the above strongly *suggests* otherwise
3. There are too many ORs, and it's not clear if synonymous or distinct alternatives are being presented
4. While the ref to Univ of Cambridge is better than a blog by a profeessor with more unpublished essays than published ones, there is no person to attribute the quote to
5. While an improvement over many of the recent revisions that made the article resemble an atheist tract rather than a neutral, scholarly article, one sentence paragraphs are less than ideal.
6. "absence of belief" is rarely mentioned first in scholarly works. Views of the world held by children because they have so far had limited exposure to the the ideas of the community (which is what "implicit atheists" are) is hardly the best example to put forward first to define any -ISM. The definition that covers ALL those who would consider themselves an atheist is the "rejection of belief" usage - the usage that so far has the least coverage in the article
7. "rejection of belief in deities" could be seen as rejection of polytheism. (Our goal, I think, is to write not just so we CAN be understood, but so that [as much as possible] we CANNOT be misunderstood - and I think 2 sentences still does that better.)

Atheism, as an explicit position can be either the assertion that no deities exist, or the rejection of belief in the existence of any deities. Usage of the term also includes the simple absence of belief in the existence of deities, thereby including those who have given little or no consideration to whether any deities exist or not.

NB: "rejection of theism" will NOT do here, as it has several meanings - deists & pantheists can also reject "theism" The above not only gives a definition, it introduces topics that will come in the article --JimWae (talk) 05:06, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

Jim Wae wrote:

"'belief in deities' is not clear enough."

It is sufficiently clear that "absence/rejection of belief in" is meant to entail "absence/rejection of belief in the existence of".

"rejection of belief is also explicit, and the above strongly *suggests* otherwise."

I'm not sure it does, even though I wouldn't at all costs insist on keeping "explicit".

"There are too many ORs, ..."

Two, to be precise. I'm sure the average reader can cope with that.

"... and it's not clear if synonymous or distinct alternatives are being presented"

This is but a pseudo-problem. The average reader will promptly discern that the sentence presents alternatives.

"While the ref to Univ of Cambridge is better than a blog by a profeessor with more unpublished essays than published ones, there is no person to attribute the quote to."

Again a pseudo-problem. Anyway, there is a team of authors: http://www.investigatingatheism.info/aboutus.html

"While an improvement over many of the recent revisions that made the article resemble an atheist tract rather than a neutral, scholarly article, one sentence paragraphs are less than ideal."

You'd better say farewell to the unrealistic dream of an "ideal", "perfect" formulation; for otherwise the nerve-racking and sometimes utterly absurd and anti-constructive quarrel here will never end!—We all must learn to think pragmatically in Wikipedia!

"'absence of belief' is rarely mentioned first in scholarly works."

Since all three common interpretations are equally mentioned, this is but a pseudo-problem and not an intolerable bias. (But I wouldn't at all costs insist on not mentioning positive atheism first.)

"'rejection of belief in deities' could be seen as rejection of polytheism. (Our goal, I think, is to write not just so we CAN be understood, but so that [as much as possible] we CANNOT be misunderstood - and I think 2 sentences still does that better.)"

"Could be", "could be" ...—It is sufficiently clear that somebody who doesn't believe in deities doesn't believe in any deity.

Whatever words or phrases you choose, it is simply impossible to make sure that absolutely all persons worldwide understand your sentences properly. For if a reader happens to be slow-witted, he'll be likely to misconstrue even your "ideal" sentences.

And as for your latest suggestion: the word "concise" doesn't really describe it, does it?

—Editorius (talk) 06:57, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

""absence of belief" is rarely mentioned first in scholarly works". This isn't a scholarly work, it's an encyclopedia. Order of presentation isn't an ontological detail (which is what we need reliable sources for), it's just presentational. We're under no obligation to ape external sources for presentational details, especially when it conflicts with the goal of delivering information in a concise, easily understood way.

"Views of the world held by children because they have so far had [...]". Wait. There's a difference between weak atheism and implicit atheism. "absence of belief" is weak atheism, and it is not a position held solely by children.

"The definition that covers ALL those who would consider themselves an atheist is the "rejection of belief" usage - the usage that so far has the least coverage in the article". The definition that covers ALL those who are atheists is the "absence of belief" usage. Ilkali (talk) 14:08, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

to repeat myself: Our goal, I think, is to write not just so we CAN be understood, but so that [as much as possible] we CANNOT be misunderstood. Discounting every concern as a pseudo problem is not the way to limit misunderstandings --JimWae (talk) 07:04, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

Would the following formulation be more to your liking:

"In the narrow sense atheism is the belief that the number of existing deities is zero, and in a broader sense it is the absence or rejection of the belief that the number of existing deities is greater than zero."

"Ideal" enough, or still somehow confusing, misleading, bewildering ...?

If I'm not wrong, this aseptic formulation answers all your objections successfully, doesn't it?

Yawn! —Editorius (talk) 07:10, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

Not at all. Lumping absence & rejection together like that makes it very unclear that they are distinct forms of what can be called atheism. It also does much less to introduce the article to come. Shorten my second secntence if you like --JimWae (talk) 07:57, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

"concise" =def "brief in form but comprehensive in scope" (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/concise)

"In the narrow sense atheism is the belief that the number of existing deities is zero, in a broader sense it is the rejection of the belief that the number of existing deities is greater than zero, and in the broadest sense it is simply the absence of the belief that the number of existing deities is greater than zero."

Better? :-( (This is going to kill me ...) — Editorius (talk) 08:26, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

Better than what? Better than what I have above? In a word, no. Neither is it as concise, nor as compendious. We do want to avoid being so overly "concise" that we are laconic. The lede requires conciseness, clarity, and an introduction to the topic. There simply is no requirement that complex terms with various usages be presented in one sentence --JimWae (talk) 08:34, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

Being concise does not mean using the least amount of words that someone might still possibly correctly figure out what is meant. Concise not mean use least words that someone could figure... --JimWae (talk) 08:56, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

It somehow seems to me that you've just been objecting for the sake of objection!

In my last formulation, I've taken all your stated objections into account, and what you brazenly reply is: "No, here's another objection, and another one, and another one ...".

Come on! — Editorius (talk) 09:01, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

Not at all. And I have trouble believing you are serious about putting "the belief that the number of existing deities is ... zero" three times in the same sentence - or how else should I construe your own remarks about how much this wa going to hurt you... Look - there just is no need to MUSH it all in one sentence - in fact, there are many reasons not to --JimWae (talk) 09:14, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

Do you remember that it was you who demanded a sentence "that as much as possible CANNOT be misunderstood"? I offered you exactly such kind of sentence. But you just spewed out "Ugh!".

Okay, here's a less aseptic version:

"In the narrow sense atheism is the view that there are no deities, in a broader sense it is the rejection of the belief in [the existence of] deities, and in the broadest sense it is simply the absence of this belief."

—Editorius (talk) 09:30, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

I, personally, support the formulation at the top of this section. I think JimWae is the only one here objecting to it. While I appreciate his concerns, I think the sentence is clear and specific enough for the lead; the minutia can be described in the rest of the article. I would urge the editors here not to let the pursuit of unanimity become a goal. Powers ^T 14:01, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

Against my better judgment, I'm stepping back in here. (God, you'd think this were a religion, the way people argue about it! (smile)) I agree with what Powers said. I'll also suggest what I had suggested earlier, which is to restore the link to theism, and to go back to the references that were there before the edit, and to put the references within the sentence, rather than at the end. I say this fully realizing that this would not really address all of JimWae's concerns, but at least it's a step in that direction. I also say this fully realizing that this would disappoint some who are very happy with the newest edit, but I'd say be flexible. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:51, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

I entirely agree with JimWae. For point 3, when I read it, it gave me the impression that "absence" and "rejection" are presented as synonyms, and I don't think it's clear that these are distinct definitions. I appreciate trying to simplify the phrasing, but I think it's better to explicitly repeat each definition in its own right, rather than trying to combine them, even if that means having to say "absence of belief in deities, or rejection of belief in deities".

Point 2 is very important too - a simple improvement would be to drop the word "explicit", as I'm not sure it's needed in this version (we're just listing definitions, so there's no need to qualify any of them as "explicit" and so on in the lead).

As I say in an earlier comment [1], I think part of the problem here is that it's never been addressed what were the specific problems in the original wording. What flaws did it have, that outweigh the problem we now have in the new version? As I said in that comment, it should be possible to consider each alleged flaw in the original version separately - it might be that some editors agree with some changes, but not others. By simple swapping between two very different versions, it makes the discussion a lot more confusing.

I fear that this is just rewriting for the sake of writing - the danger of rewriting long establish leads to correct minor issues is that it may introduce far bigger issues that then take months of discussion and large amounts of editor time to solve; and it's just repeating the ground that we've gone over years ago. JimWae isn't the only one objecting to this (I am), but even if he was, that doesn't solve the issues he's pointed out. At the least, points 2 and 3 need to be fixed - the lead we have at the moment is open to misunderstanding, and is misleading on the issue of which definitions are "explicit".

Whether we revert back to the original definition, or go with JimWae's suggestion, I'm not too bothered, but I think either are better than the current version. Mdwh (talk) 12:56, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Mdwh wrote: '"[I]t gave me the impression that "absence" and "rejection" are presented as synonyms."

I don't comprehend how one could have this impression.

"A simple improvement would be to drop the word 'explicit'."

I don't insist on keeping it.

"The lead we have at the moment is open to misunderstanding."

Okay, show me a concise formulation which you think is not open to misunderstanding!

(Don't forget that the introductory statement is followed by a text that contains and is meant to contain all further elaboration!)

—Editorius (talk) 21:30, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

A usage of "or" is sometimes to indicate two terms for the same thing - is it that atheism means two different things X or Y; or is it that X and Y are two ways of saying the same thing? And even if you can't comprehend it, that was my impression. As for a concise formulation, either the original wording [2] or JimWae's suggestion. "Concise" doesn't simply mean reducing the word count, it means preserving the information conveyed - I'm open to suggestions of a more concise version, but I don't think word count should be reduced at the expense of clarity. (Also note that a possible improvement on the current version of "Atheism is the absence of belief in deities, the rejection of belief in deities, or the view that there are no deities" is only 3 extra words...) And if the current version relies of the following paragraph to explain it, it's surely not as concise as the original version. Mdwh (talk) 22:31, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

I agree fully with what Mdwh just said about the X/Y ambiguity, and about the correct understanding of "concise." I also appreciate very much the implied cooperativity in going along with possible improvements. With respect to the suggestion of "Atheism is the absence of belief in deities, the rejection of belief in deities, or the view that there are no deities," that's something I could go along with. But I'd like, first, to compare and contrast that with "Atheism is the absence or the rejection of belief in deities, or the view that there are no deities," especially if (horrors!) we reinsert the old references into the appropriate places within the sentence. I'm definitely not suggesting that in terms of mindless word-count, but, rather, in terms of making the sentence read better, with less repetition. I don't believe it loses clarity that way. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:03, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Okay, then how about the following formulation:

"Atheism is the absence of the belief in the existence of deities, the rejection of this belief, or the positive denial of the existence of deities."

—Editorius (talk) 22:56, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Compromise

Current lead:

Atheism is the absence or rejection of belief in deities, or the explicit view that there are no deities.[1][2][3][4]

Editorius' latest proposal:

In the narrow sense atheism is the view that there are no deities, in a broader sense it is the rejection of the belief in [the existence of] deities, and in the broadest sense it is simply the absence of this belief.

My compromise, incorporating at least some of what Tryptofish suggest, and some of JimWae's objections, I believe:

Atheism is the absence of belief in deities, the rejection of theism, or the explicit view that there are no deities.[1][2][3][4]

--Born2cycle (talk) 21:10, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

As much as I appreciate the spirit of compromise, sorry no. If we go the halfway step of restoring "rejection of theism," we need to explain the reasons for that rejection (immorality, etc., etc., etc.), because, otherwise, it is unclear to the general reader why rejection of theism is something different than "the explicit view that there are no deities." Sounds like theism is rejected because it is false, because there are no deities. We discussed this before. Compromise is good, but clarity to the reader is more important. Either go all the way to two sentences, or stick with the shorter version with one sentence. And I think JimWae did say in an edit summary that he feels not saying "rejection of theism" might be OK. I also still think that restoring the earlier references would be a good idea. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:17, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

I purpose the simple sentence, "Atheism is the view that gods do not exist." And perhaps, "In a general sense, atheists believe that deities are a figment of people's imagination." But saying "rejection of theism" seems like theism is something that aught to be accepted in the first place, which is of course not true. --Agent Agent (talk) 23:19, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

I disagree with everything you said. Ilkali (talk) 23:28, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

I don't see any such connotation in "rejection". For example, what about the rejection of Nazism? Is Nazism something that ought to be accepted in the first place?—Editorius (talk) 23:32, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

@Tryptofish: The three common conceptions of atheism differ in scope, and so it would be helpful if we mentioned this circumstance explicitly: atheism in the narrow and broad sense / atheism in the narrow, a broader, the broadest sense.—Editorius (talk) 23:41, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

I agree with Ilkali and Editorius -- Agent Agent, please review all of the talk above. Editorius, if I understand you correctly, I agree with that. I'm saying my first choice is pretty much the one-sentence version that you proposed and edited onto the page, but just with restoration of the deleted references etc. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:47, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

What's wrong with "my" references?—Editorius (talk) 23:49, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

Calm down, it's nothing personal, and there's nothing "wrong" per se with them. I'm just saying, in response to the concerns expressed by JimWae, that there is also nothing "wrong" with the earlier references, and that the earlier references provide some of the detail that he feels has been lost (not that I personally agree with him, but being sensitive to what other editors want is a good thing). I wrote above (just before my suggestion to wait before making the edit, which you also disregarded): "And I'm pointing out that the ordering that puts ref 2 at "absence," ref 5 at "rejection," and so on, instead of putting them all at the end of the sentence, should stay on the table as a possible compromise, in case some editors complain about oversimplification, because that format, although very slightly less readable, offers the compromise of drawing attention to the fact that "absence," "rejection," and "there are no deities" are three distinct ideas, each with its own supporting literature." I also just suggested, above, that those who are very happy with the one-sentence version should be flexible. Try it. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:00, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

How about the following addition so as to render the sentence a little clearer:

"Atheism is the absence or rejection of belief in deities, or, narrowly, the explicit belief that there are no deities."

(Sorry, I somehow prefer "belief" to "view". Especially if "belief" is followed by a that-clause, it should be clear that it doesn't connote "faith" in the pejorative sense.)

—Editorius (talk) 00:07, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

I guess there are just sincere disagreements about belief/view. It seems to me that, when we just discussed it above, there was a preponderance of preference for view. By itself, "narrowly" can be misconstrued as implying that some atheists are "narrow" in their views, which sounds pejorative. I think it would be best to work with the options already in front of us, and not keep trying to reinvent the wheel. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:12, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

@Tryptofish: Can we never expect the others to be "sensitive" to what you or I suggest, or to be "flexible"?! This game begins to appear rather one-sided to me.

I still consider the [n]s inside the sentence damn ugly. One sentence, thousand footnotes and blue links—no, thank you! — Editorius (talk) 00:14, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

An alternative formulation for the friends of the "two-sentences solution":

"Atheism is the absence or rejection of belief in deities. In the narrow sense, it is the explicit view that there are no deities."

—Editorius (talk) 00:24, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

---

Again, that strongly suggests that the view that "there are no deities" is *THE* explicit position - a disservice to the rest of the article.

Atheism, as an explicit position, has been narrowly defined as the assertion that no deities exist, and more inclusively as the rejection of belief in the existence of any deities. The broadest, and sometimes contested, usage of the term is as the simple absence of belief in the existence of deities, thereby including as implicit atheists those who have given little or no consideration to whether any deities exist or not.:

The above includes both the extensional and intensional differences between the 3 definitions - something that needs to be done to make a good, complete article (yet the article does not yet clearly do that in any one place). It is also a good introduction to the rest of the article. It is relatively clear, quite comprehensive, yet still succint. I repeat for those who have misquoted me: I am firmly opposed to shortening to "rejection of theism". I might be persuaded that "absence of theism" will "do".--JimWae (talk) 01:18, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

How something that is not overly complex like, "Atheism is the view that gods do not exist."? --Agent Agent (talk) 02:01, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

With all the discussion here, can you really maintain that the definition is a simple matter? This is neither Simple Wikipedia nor wiktionary - where you can find many other overly-simple definitions. Actually the wiktionary entry is more comp[lete than several proposals I've seen here --JimWae (talk) 02:19, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

What's the matter with, "Atheism is the view that gods do not exist"? --Agent Agent (talk) 02:33, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Your suggested version is about three times as long as we need and carries the POV that weak atheism is somehow illegitimate. Ilkali (talk) 03:02, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

@Agent Agent: The fact of the matter is that "atheism" is an ambiguous term, a term which is used in different senses by different people. That is, not all of them equate atheism with positive atheism, the view that gods do not exist.—Editorius (talk) 03:14, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Here are two further concise suggestions:

(a) "Atheism is the absence or rejection of belief in deities, or the negation of the existence of deities."

(b) "Atheism is the absence or rejection of belief in deities, or the conviction that there are no deities."

(I like the former more than the latter. In both cases "explicit" can be omitted, since negations and convictions are per se explicit.)

Compare:

(c) "Atheism is the absence or rejection of belief in deities, or the explicit view that there are no deities."

—Editorius (talk) 03:31, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

I like it too. --Agent Agent (talk) 04:21, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

By the way, I once thought we could simply write:

"Atheism is (either) the absence, rejection, or negation of belief in (the existence of) deities."

But unfortunately this wouldn't do, since what is negated by positive atheism is not the belief in (the existence of) deities (nobody negates the existence of this belief) but the existence of deities themselves.—Editorius (talk) 07:34, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

I've read what everyone has been writing, and I'd like to try to identify a few areas of common ground, from which we might be able to work. Let me start with Mdwh's comment that this is just rewriting for the sake of it. For an embarrassingly large part of this talk, you are right. Unfortunately, a least one editor just likes to diss anything suggested by anyone but themselves, and to spew out an endless stream of quickly dashed-off and half-baked ideas, and then become argumentative when anyone else points out the shortcomings, leading to endless tangents. That's the main source of the swapping between versions that you have correctly identified. They accuse others of being inflexible and of disagreeing for the sake of disagreeing, when, in fact, it's the pot calling the kettle black, and howl when someone suggests that they, too, be flexible. I wish I knew what to do about it, but I don't, other than to stick to one's guns.

But at the same time, somewhere buried deep within this mess, have been thoughtful concerns about making what the lead had been a few weeks ago more lucid, more easily understood by the non-expert, and less jargony. And those specific problems in earlier wordings have been specifically identified and discussed. As we all know, consensus evolves and changes over time, and the consensus here does seem to be moving in the direction of changing the lead along those lines. But at the same time, you and JimWae have always been correct in saying that there are certain concepts that should not get abandoned. I wrote a little above, about one possible version, "I say this fully realizing that this would not really address all of JimWae's concerns, but at least it's a step in that direction. I also say this fully realizing that this would disappoint some who are very happy with the newest edit, but I'd say be flexible." Regardless of whether we do what I suggested at the time of that quote, or something else, that is the overall attitude that everyone ought to bring to the discussion. Let's face this fact: there is not going to be consensus for going back to the old version or something almost like it, and there is not going to be consensus for an ultra-short version if it blows off the concerns of JimWae, Mdwh, and probably others.

With that in mind, some specifics. I agree with Ilkali that a significantly longer version is the wrong way to go, not simply because it's longer, but for the same reasons that Ilkali gave. I appreciate that Mdwh indicated that it might be useful to, at a minimum, address JimWae's points 2 and 3. I think the suggestion of dropping the word "explicit" from the sentence is a very reasonable and flexible idea, and I'm not aware (yet!) of any side to the argument that would have a problem with that. That might help with point 2. About point 3, I don't buy the idea that paraphrasing is OR, but I do agree that it is desirable to make clear that "absence" and "rejection" are two distinct things, not synonyms. One possible idea I can think of is to say "Atheism is the absence or the rejection of belief..." (emphasis mine). (I've tried to think about "can be," "either," and stuff like that, but I think more endless tangents lie down that road.) Another that I'll repeat again is to bring back the four (four, not a thousand) footnotes that were in the old version, and to place them (horrors!) within the sentence, so that the appropriate references would directly follow "absence," "rejection," and so on. These things, along with deleting "explicit" from the second part of the sentence, should be a step in the right direction. Not perfect, but reasonable and fair. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:42, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

"self-described"?

Why does this article say "self-described atheists"? Why not just say "atheists"? Do we say "self-described theists"?

Does anyone have any objections to revising this?--Agent Agent (talk) 23:29, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

It depends on whether the self-identification is relevant. In this case, it doesn't seem to add anything. Ilkali (talk) 23:44, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

I agree. Where, specifically, would you suggest making the change? --Tryptofish (talk) 23:49, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

I believe he's talking about removing all instances of self-described (two, both in the second paragraph), which I support. Ilkali (talk) 23:51, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

I see. Yes, I agree with that, too. Good point. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:01, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Done. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:13, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Awesome. Thanks --Agent Agent (talk) 02:11, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

What is the topic of this article?

I think we need to decide what this article is about, then we can determine what the intro should say.

If the article is about the term atheism, then we have to deal with the fact that it is ambiguous. But then we would be a dictionary.

But what if we decide that "strong atheism" is the primary topic for "atheism"? That is, when most people use, read and hear the term "atheism" what they interpret and mean is what is meant by "strong atheism". In that case this article would be about "strong atheism", and reference all the other types of atheism.

Another way to go is to decide that there is no primary topic for "atheism", and make this a dab page, listing, and describing, the different kinds of atheism.

I suspect the reason this has been so difficult is because no one is clear about the scope of this article. So, is there a well-framed topic for this article? If so, what is it? If not, should Atheism not be a dab page?

--Born2cycle (talk) 06:12, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

This article is both about atheism and about "atheism".

The scope of this article is the scope of atheism.

Our job is to describe both historically and systematically the various conceptions of atheism there are, and it is not to prescribe what "true" atheism is.

Everybody has their own personal opinion, but as soon as we decide that atheism is this but not that, the neutral point of view gets lost.

That's why we need a purely descriptive, neutral, unbiased formulation of the introductory statement, which must unavoidably be disjunctive by presenting alternative interpretations (in a concise way):

"Atheism is a complex term to define, and many definitions fail to capture the range of positions an atheist can hold. (...) The exact meaning of 'atheist' varies between thinkers, and caution must always be shown to make sure that discussions of atheism are not working at cross purposes."

(http://www.investigatingatheism.info/definition.html)

And that's why we cannot help but use a complex neutral formulation such as:

"Atheism is the absence or rejection of belief in the existence of deities, or the negation of the existence of deities."

—Editorius (talk) 07:21, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

By the way, since all rejecters of the belief in deities are either merely negative or positive atheists (who, for logical reasons, are negative atheists too), the simplest and concisest definition of atheism which is really adequate may be reduced to the following:

"Atheism is the absence of belief in the existence of deities, or the belief in the nonexistence of deities."

Believe it or not, this pretty simple sentence covers the whole logical scope of atheism, ranging from the implicit negative atheism of infants to the conscious rejection of god-belief by agnostics, and finally to positive atheism or even militant antitheism.

—Editorius (talk) 07:52, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Sounds to me that you're saying this article is about all topics associated with the term "atheism". I'll just point out that the article named Paris (for example) is not about all topics associated with that term, but only the best known topic associated with that term. All other topics known as "Paris" are disambiguated as appropriate. --Born2cycle (talk) 08:07, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

But then you're ignoring two major definitions. Yes, you are right that each broader definition contains the more narrower ones as a subset, but that doesn't mean we can ignore those definitions. Mdwh (talk) 12:21, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

From the linguistic point of view, there's a subtle difference between cases of polysemy and cases of homonymy:

In a case of polysemy we have one word with more than one meaning, and in a case of homonymy we have two different words which happen to have the same pronunciation and spelling but not the same meaning. (e.g. "bank" in "river bank" and "Bank of England" are homonymous).

In dictionaries there is only one entry for polysemous words, while there are separate entries for homonymous words (e.g. "bank").

"Atheism" is doubtless a polysemous, not a homonymous word!

—Editorius (talk) 08:27, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

I disagree. Firstly, trying to decide the most common definition is just going to get into a POV argument (see the Talk archives for lots of this). I would dispute that "strong" is the most common. Secondly, many of the definitions still have things in common, so separate pages wouldn't work. Also, note that each broader definition includes the previous definition as the former - so directing the "absence of belief" to an implicit atheism page would be inaccurate. Another problem is that although we can equate these definitions to being:

• Strong atheism.
• Explicit atheism (strong and weak).
• Explicit and implicit atheism.

the terms "strong", "weak", "explicit" and "implicit" do not seem to be that notable - at least nowhere near as the term "atheism" itself, or the concepts they describe. So I would be wary of putting these terms in the lead, or basing the structure of the articles around them. We also have the problem of definitions of atheism that don't easily fall into the strong/weak/etc definitions (e.g., Dawkins who views it in terms of a probability of existence, IIRC). Mdwh (talk) 12:27, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

"I disagree.". You don't agree that we need to decide what this article is about? You don't agree that if the article is about the term atheism, then we have to deal with the fact that it is ambiguous? What are you not agreeing with? --Born2cycle (talk) 16:02, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

I disagree with making strong atheism the primary topic, or making this a dismbiguation page. The scope of this article is atheism - that is, all notable and referenced usages of the term. The different definitions have much in common, so it is worthwhile having a main to cover the common themes, leaving the differences to other articles (as we already currently do). We also need a main article to discuss the different kinds of atheism, as we currently do. Mdwh (talk) 22:12, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

We could, perhaps, have separate articles on strong atheism and weak atheism, or whatever other terms we wished to use -- but this article would not then become a disambiguation page, or redirect to one or the other; it would still have to be an article describing, minimally, the common aspects of the two kinds of atheism. Powers ^T 14:29, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

I think that it should be clear that forking this page into two separate ones would be a disastrous outcome. Speaking more broadly, I appreciate that b2c started this section with the good intention of trying to focus the absurdly rambling discussion of the lead, but, sadly, it is degenerating into a tangent discussion of definitions and of, well, I'm not sure what. As was said at the top of the thread, "but then we would be a dictionary." And WP is not a dictionary! And the last thing we need now is more tangents. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:35, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

I think this tangent has been useful to establish on this talk page that atheism has multiple distinct yet closely related definitions, and all of them are within the scope of this article. That being the case, perhaps the intro should clearly convey this notion, not just imply it. If so, then that could be a somewhat objective criteria by which to evaluate various proposals.... does the (given) proposal effectively convey that atheism has multiple distinct yet closely related definitions, and introduce the reader to what they are? --Born2cycle (talk) 20:09, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

That's a great point. I think that is the problem I had when I first read this article.--Agent Agent (talk) 20:42, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

I agree, and I think that's one of my concerns about the current version (or any similar attempt to simplify the wording to a simple list), in that it's not emphasised that these are different definitions of atheism. I feel that the earlier wording [3] was much more explicit that these were different ways that atheism was defined - even though yes, this means using some more words to say it. Mdwh (talk) 22:36, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

RE: "Atheism is the absence of belief in the existence of deities, or the belief in the nonexistence of deities."

Mdwh wrote: "But then you're ignoring two major definitions."

Two? — I know only three major definitions: absence + rejection + negation. What is the fourth one?—Editorius (talk) 21:40, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Oops, I mean ignoring one definition. Mdwh (talk) 22:34, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Back to the first sentence

Okay, if we want to have a formulation that is concise but not quite as concise as the current one, then the following one suggests itself, which I'm offering here for the second time:

(1) "In the narrow sense atheism is the view that there are no deities, in a broader sense it is the rejection of the belief in [the existence of] deities, and in the broadest sense it is simply the absence of this belief."

I really don't think that this one is "open to misunderstanding".—Editorius (talk) 21:50, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Or (I already posted this one above):

(2) "Atheism is the absence of the belief in the existence of deities, the rejection of this belief, or the positive denial of the existence of deities."

—Editorius (talk) 23:46, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Or:

(3) "Depending on its definition, atheism is the absence of the belief in the existence of deities, the rejection of this belief, or the positive denial of the existence of deities."

(4) "Depending on its definition, atheism is the absence of the belief in the existence of deities, the rejection of this belief, or the positive assertion of the nonexistence of deities."

—Editorius (talk) 02:45, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Or shorter:

(5) "Depending on its definition, atheism is the absence of the belief in deities, the rejection of this belief, or the denial of the existence of deities."

(6) "Depending on its definition, atheism is the absence of the belief in deities, the rejection of this belief, or the assertion of the nonexistence of deities."

—Editorius (talk) 03:57, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

I hope you don't mind that I numbered each of your suggestions to make them easier to reference. My preference is a variation of (5):

(7) "Atheism is the absence of the belief in deities, the rejection of this belief, or the denial of the existence of deities."

Huh. That's only a slight variation to what we currently have:

(0) Atheism is the absence or rejection of belief in deities, or the explicit view that there are no deities.[1][2][3][4]

But I prefer (7) to (0). --Born2cycle (talk) 04:51, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

I regard "depending on its definition" as optional, and I would certainly accept (7).

(One minor point: JimWae wrote: ""belief in deities" is not clear enough. I believe that football stars exist, but I do not believe IN them." From the strictly logical point of view, he seems to be right, because it is at least theoretically possible for one to believe in the existence of deities without believing in any deities. On the other hand, it seems to me that practically all normal readers will read"absence/rejection of the belief in deities" as "absence/rejection of both the belief in deities and the belief in the existence of deities". Nevertheless, strictly speaking, "belief in the existence of" is a bit more precise than "belief in".)—Editorius (talk) 06:36, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

I also agree that (7) is a good step towards a possible consensus (but with some caveats), and that the right thing to do at this point is to work within the framework of the general approach taken in this list, namely, trying to make the "3 definitions" more distinct than in the version on the page right now, while also not making the lead sentence too complicated or too full of jargon for the general reader. Based upon talk that has already occurred, I want to add two more variants of (7) to the list for consideration. I think that they may convey the same information in a form that may be more readable and lucid.

(8) "Atheism is the absence of belief in deities, the rejection of this belief, or the view that there are no deities."

(9) "Atheism is the absence or the rejection of belief in deities, or the view that there are no deities."

Although there are differences of opinion, we should also consider putting references (just 4) within the sentence, instead of all at the end. Regardless of what we do with references, though, I'm leaning towards (8) as my first choice, but with (9) and (7), or possible hybrids thereof, as potentially acceptable too. (P.S.: I could also see modifying the middle clause of version (8) to read "the rejection of this belief system.") --Tryptofish (talk) 16:45, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

I'm good with (8). --Born2cycle (talk) 18:00, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

I'm opting for (7). And in case you preferred "negation" to "denial", I wouldn't mind.

(Grammatical remark: "this belief" refers to "the belief in deities", and so "the" in "absence of the belief in deities" shouldn't be omitted.)

—Editorius (talk) 21:29, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

About that grammatical remark: neither I nor the other editors working on this page are here to teach a class in English as a second language. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:07, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

I don't know, he might be right. "This belief" refers to a specific belief; the "belief" in "absence of belief" is a general/non-specific belief. Maybe I'll double-check with Strunk & White tonight, but he has a point, I think. --Born2cycle (talk) 22:16, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

@Tryptofish: English is not my mother tongue, but at least I studied English linguistics at a German university. So my remarks might not be utter bullshit.—Editorius (talk) 22:23, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

(ec)Oh, good grief! For the very reason that the "absence" form is "a general/non-specific belief," we don't call it "the." (Please note that we are talking about "the" before "belief," not before "absence.") (And, also, we could do "the rejection of this belief system" in the middle part, although I don't feel strongly about it.) --Tryptofish (talk) 22:25, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

You're missing my point! I didn't say that one should always write "absence of the belief" context-independently, but that it is the better formulation in this context with the backward reference "this belief".

By the way, do you prefer negation to denial?

—Editorius (talk) 22:35, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

No, I didn't miss your point. Backward reference doesn't work that way, and, as b2c correctly said, the two parts are about two different things. Negation=horrible; denial=mediocre; view=best. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:42, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

If "the absence of belief in deities" were used, then I think it would be better to refer to it with "such belief" rather than with "this belief".

And what's "horrible" about "negation"?

—Editorius (talk) 22:45, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

I have no objection to "such belief." That works fine. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:49, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Okay, then here comes suggestion #10:

(10) "Atheism is the absence of belief in deities, the rejection of such belief, or the positive belief that there are no deities."

(This is the deal I'm offering: I give you "absence of belief" without "the" + "such belief" + that-clause, and you give me "positive belief".)

—Editorius (talk) 23:02, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

"There are two forms of atheism, called strong atheism and weak atheism (sometimes called positive and negative atheism or gnostic and agnostic atheism). The former is defined as the positive belief that no god(s) exist (...)."

(http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Introduction_to_Philosophy/Philosophy_of_Religion)

—Editorius (talk) 23:12, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Editorius, how many times do we have to point out that too many of us are concerned with the possibility of "belief", positive or otherwise, connoting "faith without basis" (as in "religious faith"). It's confusing to associate "belief" with atheism. Atheism is not "belief" in the sense that religious faith is "belief", and saying that atheism is belief, even though most of us here know you mean something different here, is still potentially confusing in the article. Please stop insisting on using it. NO ON 10! --Born2cycle (talk) 23:48, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Well, on closer examination the known objections against calling PA a belief turn out to be insubstantial.

1. As a matter of fact, positive atheism is a belief.

2. Particularly, if "belief" is followed by a that-clause, it is sufficiently clear that it is silent on the question as to whether the belief in question is objectively justified.

3. And who says that there aren't or cannot be any "faith atheists":

"Faith atheists, who accept atheism, not on the basis of any grounds or experiences, but simply on the basis of 'faith', regarding it to be a 'properly basic belief'."

(http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/theodore_drange/definition.html)

I suspect that many positive atheists cannot offer any explicitly formulated substantial atheological arguments for the nonexistence of God or gods.

Being a positive atheist myself, I reject the view according to which positive atheism is not or must no be called a belief! That view is ridiculous!

—Editorius (talk) 00:15, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

But a PA with respect to deities believes there are no deities in the same way everyone believes there is no Flying spaghetti monster, despite an inability to provide any explicitly formulated substantial arguments for that belief. Yes, that's a belief, but it's not comparable to the theistic belief, for which one of the atheistic criticisms is that it is a belief about existence without basis. This is also why some scientists avoid saying that they "believe" in evolution. It's just a quagmire best kept closed... --Born2cycle (talk) 00:36, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

The general, neutral meaning of "belief" is:

"Contemporary analytic philosophers of mind generally use the term 'belief' to refer to the attitude we have, roughly, whenever we take something to be the case or regard it as true."

(http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/belief)

And isn't it a clear case of POV if we insinuate that theistic belief is per se groundless, without a rational basis?! The pro-theistic philosophers of religion would emphatically object to that!

Moreover, belief and knowledge aren't mutually exclusive, since knowledge is a kind of belief.

"What I know, I believe." (L. Wittgenstein, "On Certainty", §177)

—Editorius (talk) 01:15, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Once again, please stop arguing semantics. I'm not questioning the "general, neutral meaning" of "belief". In the context of religious discussion, which this article is, or close enough, the term takes on a particular connotation. It can be argued that not engaging in that kind of belief is exactly what makes an atheist an atheist. To then say that atheism is a "belief" is just too confusing. --Born2cycle (talk) 01:32, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Back to the topic: So you wouldn't tolerate "belief" in principle, would you?—Editorius (talk) 01:26, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Of course I would tolerate "belief" in (proven) principle, but that's a very different kind of "belief" than "belief" in a deity. --Born2cycle (talk) 01:40, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Here's suggestion #11:

(11) "Atheism is the absence of belief in the existence of deities, the rejection of such belief, or the positive denial of the existence of deities."

—Editorius (talk) 01:32, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Why positive denial? Why not just denial? What would be negative denial?

(12) "Atheism is the absence of belief in the existence of deities, the rejection of such belief, or the denial of the existence of deities."

But I still think I like "the view" (8) better. --Born2cycle (talk) 01:40, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Above you wrote:

"My preference is a variation of (5): (7) 'Atheism is the absence of the belief in deities, the rejection of this belief, or the denial of the existence of deities.'"

!!!—Editorius (talk) 02:15, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Suggestion #13:

(13) "Atheism is the absence of belief in the existence of deities, the rejection of such belief, or the positive view that there exist no deities."

—Editorius (talk) 02:21, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

And how about the phrase "the assertion of the nonexistence of deities":

(14) "Atheism is the absence of belief in the existence of deities, the rejection of such belief, or the assertion of the nonexistence of deities."

—Editorius (talk) 02:32, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

@Born2cycle: RE: "positive denial".

"positive" in the sense "explicitly stated; clearly expressed;—opposed to implied"

(See: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/positive)

—Editorius (talk) 03:21, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

(We must somehow manage to end this before one of us gets a seizure ...)

Suggestion #15:

(15) "Atheism is the absence of belief in the existence of deities, the rejection of such belief, or the assertion that there exist no deities."

(Since one can reject the belief in the existence of gods without asserting that there exist no gods, this formulation is impeccable.)

—Editorius (talk) 05:32, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

To believe or not to believe

But frankly, my favourite still is:

"Atheism is the absence of belief in the existence of deities, the rejection of such belief, or the positive belief that there exist no deities."

Above Tryptofish wrote:

"About 'belief,' I can see the point about the word 'belief' conjuring up thoughts of belief as in religious faith, but it also seems to me that belief really means anything that a person believes, and it is applicable here. (Is there a better synonym? 'Assertion' was suggested, and maybe that would work, but I'm not convinced. I don't think 'view' or "philosophy' would really improve things.)" [Tryptofish, 22:25, 23 February 2009]

The term "belief" is and remains the most adequate and most elegant term in this context; and the objections raised by some atheists against its employment are flimsy and tendentious!

For the concept "belief" as such is, as I already wrote, silent on whether the belief in question is rational or irrational, well-founded or groundless, objectively justified by evidence of objectively unjustified due to a lack of any evidence!

Basically, "belief" merely expresses the fact that somebody regards a certain proposition as true—that's it!

—Editorius (talk) 05:56, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Well, I am happy that someone paid attention to what I wrote! I should point out that, after I wrote that, other editors rebutted what I said, and I, in turn, listened to what they wrote. Anyway, my major concern now has less to do with theoretical considerations, which are increasingly seeming to me to be a wash, than with just the stylistic concern of repeating the word "belief" three times in one sentence. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:23, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Born2cycle wrote: "In the context of religious discussion, which this article is, or close enough, the term takes on a particular connotation."

I beg your pardon, but this sounds slightly paranoid to me.

"Of course I would tolerate "belief" in (proven) principle, but that's a very different kind of "belief" than "belief" in a deity."

No, e.g., in "Theists believe that a god exists" and in "Positive atheists believe that no god exists" "believe" has the very same basic meaning!

And I have to underline it again: especially when "the belief" is followed not by "in" + some noun/noun phrase but by a that-clause, then it is really sufficiently clear that the possible, context-dependent connotation "(irrational) religious faith" is absent!

—Editorius (talk) 06:13, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

We've been fruitlessly racking our brains about finding the right term when the best one has already been there right from the beginning!

—Editorius (talk) 06:38, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Michael Martin, arguably the leading contemporary theorist of atheism in Anglo-American philosophy, writes:

"In my usage, positive atheism is positive only in the sense that it refers to a positive belief—the belief that there is no god or gods. It is positive in contrast to negative atheism, which has no such positive belief."

(Martin, Michael. Atheism: A Philosophical Justification. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990. p. 464)

If a distinguished scholar such as Professor Martin doesn't shy away from applying "belief" to positive atheism, why should we shy away from doing so?!

—Editorius (talk) 07:12, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

(How sad this all is. --Tryptofish (talk) 16:13, 10 March 2009 (UTC))

Martin is using "belief" consistently. You're proposing we use "belief" in the same sentence two different ways. In that sentence we refer to "belief in deities", which is a very different kind of belief from the atheistic belief that there are no deities.

Above you wrote: "in 'Theists believe that a god exists' and in 'Positive atheists believe that no god exists' 'believe' has the very same basic meaning!. Perhaps in a very basic sense, but these "believes" are very different when you look at their basis. Atheistic epistemology is, and atheistic "beliefs" are, based on empirical evidence (or lack thereof); theistic epistemology is, and theistic beliefs, are not based on empirical evidence. To use "belief" in the same sentence, once to mean empirically-based belief and once not, is confusing. --Born2cycle (talk) 17:59, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

"Atheistic epistemology is, and atheistic "beliefs" are, based on empirical evidence (or lack thereof); theistic epistemology is, and theistic beliefs, are not based on empirical evidence". 1) You think that we, as supposedly neutral Wikipedia editors, should be basing anything on those kinds of judgements? 2) Even if we were, and if your judgements were correct, your claim that using the same word for both would be "confusing" is nonsense. Ilkali (talk) 18:26, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

There can be no empirical evidence supporting the existence of a postulated preternatural or supernatural immortal being. That's not a judgment; that's simply true by definition (if there was empirical evidence supporting the postulation that a given deity exists, then the deity wouldn't be preternatural or supernatural, and thus wouldn't even be a deity).

Using the same word twice in the same sentence, with different meanings in each use, is confusing, or at least should be avoided in favor of clarity. That's just good writing style. --Born2cycle (talk) 19:35, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Aside from theoretical considerations, just from a practical, writing style, perspective, might the sentence sound needlessly repetitive, using the same word three times ("absence of belief," "rejection of such belief," "belief that there...")? --Tryptofish (talk) 19:46, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

"There can be no empirical evidence supporting the existence of a postulated preternatural or supernatural immortal being". That's your interpretation, firstly of the term deity and secondly of the consequences of being a deity. Many theists think they have empirical evidence of their gods' existence. This isn't the place to tell them they're wrong.

"Using the same word twice in the same sentence, with different meanings in each use..." It's the same meaning. The surrounding details (such as reasons for belief) are irrelevant. Ilkali (talk) 19:49, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Follow the link. It's not my interpretation. And if theists have empirical evidence for the existence of something, then that something is not supernatural, and is not a deity, much less what atheists don't believe in, and so is irrelevant to this article.

The idea that the meaning of "belief" in "'belief' in deity" is the same meaning as that of "belief" in "belief there are no deities" is fundamentally misunderstanding theism and atheism. Theistic belief is religious "faith" (and that's what the theists say!); atheistic belief is anything but that. "First of all it is erroneous to imply that atheists even have beliefs." [Atheist belief versus Christian belief] --Born2cycle (talk) 20:31, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Born2cycle wrote:"Using the same word twice in the same sentence, with different meanings in each use, is confusing."

It is not that case that I am using the same word in the same sentence with different meanings in each use. I fail to see what might be "confusing" here. "Belief" in "the belief in the existence of gods"/"the belief that there exists at least one god" and in "the belief in the nonexistence of gods"/"the belief that there exist no gods" has the very same meaning.

—Editorius (talk) 19:57, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

By the way, we could alternatively write:

"Atheism is the absence of the belief that there exists at least one deity, the rejection of this belief, or the positive belief that there exist no deities."

—Editorius (talk) 20:00, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Born2cycle quoted: ""First of all it is erroneous to imply that atheists even have beliefs."

Nobody here wants to imply that "atheism" means nothing but "positive atheism"!

As Wikipedians we must remain neutral, and to proclaim that the belief in theism was per se nothing but irrational, groundless faith and that the belief in atheism was per se rational and well-founded is anything else but neutral.

—Editorius (talk) 01:28, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

No one is proclaiming or even implying that "belief in theism was per se nothing but irrational, groundless faith". However, Wikipedia's own article defines deity as "a postulated preternatural or supernatural immortal being". That's what theists believe in. To believe in something that is definitively "preternatural or supernatural" is a fundamentally distinct kind of belief from the beliefs of atheists. To be sure, that is exactly the kind of belief that is by definition absent from atheists. Arguably, that is the definitive characteristic of atheists, or at least of most atheists (I suppose it's theoretically possible for a atheist to believe in ghosts or other non-atheist supernatural beings, but I've never heard or read of such an atheist). Have you? --Born2cycle (talk) 01:43, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

"philosophy has traditionally defined knowledge as justified true belief. The relationship between belief and knowledge is that a belief is knowledge if the belief is true, and if the believer has a justification (reasonable and necessarily plausible assertions/evidence/guidance) for believing it is true."

"A false belief is not considered to be knowledge, even if it is sincere. " [[4]]

Belief that deities do not exist in atheism is based on a lack of knowledge (in the philosophical sense) about the existence of deities. Belief in deities in theism is based on faith, not knowledge in a philosophical sense. --Born2cycle (talk) 01:50, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

You can also say that both atheistic and theistic belief about deities are based on knowledge, but that in that context atheistic and theistic knowledge are not the same (very different in fact), and, so, the nature of the respective beliefs are not the same. See knowledge and in particular [[5]]. --Born2cycle (talk) 01:56, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

@Born2cycle: Of course, the theistic belief in the existence of gods is different from the atheistic belief in the nonexistence of gods. But their difference is not due to two different senses of "belief"!

Their difference lies in their respective objects of belief, which are two different propositions: the proposition "Gods exist" versus the proposition "Gods do not exist".

The theists say yes to the former, no to the latter, and the (positive) atheists say yes to the latter, no to the former. That's the difference!

—Editorius (talk) 02:01, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

@Born2cycle:

"It is worth noting that the 'positive atheist' need not have certainty that God doesn't exist: it is a matter of belief, not knowledge."

(http://www.investigatingatheism.info/definition.html)

No theist or atheist should claim to know with certainty that God or gods exist/don't exist.

"I do not think that it is rational for any of the contending persons, in religion or philosophy, publicly to claim knowledge. For though they may know (I am prepared to concede), it is hard to see how they can know that they know. A quite hope that they really do have knowledge will be best."

(Armstrong, D. M. Truth and Truthmakers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. p. 35)

But I'm afraid all this is off-topic here, and so we shouldn't continue chatting about the relation between belief and knowledge!

—Editorius (talk) 02:18, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

I'm in complete agreement with you Ed; this is a non-issue. The two beliefs are indeed the same except for their object. Doc Tropics 02:32, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

The two beliefs are indeed the same except for their object. This statement reveals a profound lack of understanding about the fundamental difference between theism and atheism. "If atheism is a belief then bald is a hair color." --Born2cycle (talk) 19:05, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Please Edit Line in Second Paragraph

"Many atheists tend toward secular philosophies such as humanism[5] and naturalism,[6], but, as for theists, there is no one ideology or set of behaviors to which all atheists adhere.[7]"

thanks - anonymous

But that's what it says now. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:42, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

I think anon means what it says now needs editing. It's easy to find something that needs improving; suggesting an actual improvement is quite another matter. --Born2cycle (talk) 04:42, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Ya, I think there is something wrong with that sentence. How about "...but unlike theists..." ? --Agent Agent (talk) 06:56, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Agreed, it is poorly worded. I think the whole "but, as for theists," part is unnecessary. I suggest, "Many atheists tend toward secular philosophies such as humanism and naturalism, but there is no specific ideology or set of behaviors to which all atheists adhere." If you insist on including the contrast to theists, a second sentence could be included that states: "This is in contrast to theists, who tend to adhere to the ideologies and rituals associated with their particular religion." But again, I don't think that second sentence is necessary. Mjatucla (talk) 10:27, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

That would be inverting the sense of the current sentence. The current sentence says that theists and atheists are the same when it comes to there being no one ideology. Read it as "... and naturalism, but, as is also the case for theists, there is no one ideology..." Powers ^T 12:39, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

I guess I understand now. Powers is correct that changing it to "unlike" inverts the meaning of the sentence. It also would make the sentence untrue. But I think that just deleting "as for theists" would be fine. It really does not add anything of value. "...but there is no one ideology..." --Tryptofish (talk) 16:03, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Done. If I understand correctly, this edit is not controversial. --Tryptofish (talk) 16:52, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

It is controversial. As I explained above before I added those words (which I admit are awkward), I did so to address the problem that the sentence without those words implies an expectation that atheists should have one common ideology. That is, it comes across like atheists are an unprincipled bunch as compared to non-atheists (theists). There seemed to be agreement that that was an issue, and that adding "as for theists" at least addressed it. The fix is to fix the wording, not restore the original problem. Reverting for now. --Born2cycle (talk) 17:54, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

My apologies. I misunderstood, and I have no objection to your reverting it. However, I want to point out that including the phrase sort of sounds like an attempt to "justify" atheism, which I think should be unnecessary. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:59, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

I agree. Perhaps there is no point in noting that all atheists don't share the same ideology. Would we say that of any other group of people? --Born2cycle (talk) 18:02, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Ironically, that question brings us back to the whole messy subject we've been discussing about the lead sentence. Pointing out that there are different "kinds" of atheists is, first, true, and, second, very helpful in setting up the rest of the page, where the different "kinds" are differentiated, and all the more so as we consider decreasing the emphasis on that distinction in the lead sentence. Besides, the first half of the sentence we are discussing here, about humanism, naturalism, etc., does provide valuable information, and having provided it, it's a good idea to then make clear that there are other atheists to whom that description does not apply. So I think it's a good idea to retain the sentence overall, while I don't really feel the need to point out any comparison with theists. But, then again, I didn't really see the point of starting this talk thread to begin with, so go figure. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:32, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

P.S.: As I remember the original reasons for fixing the sentence, the pejorative "unprincipled bunch" problem, I think that was when the sentence said "self-described atheists." With that out, I'm not sure that the problem remains, or needs to be fixed by the theist comparison. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:41, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

How about something this:

Since a lack of belief in deities is the only characteristic that all atheists have in common, there is no one ideology or set of behaviors to which all atheists adhere[7], however many atheists tend toward secular philosophies such as humanism[5] and naturalism[6].

--Born2cycle (talk) 21:59, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

I understand what your meaning in that sentance is now that you've explained it here, Born2cycle. However, I still believe that the "as for theists" part is unnecessary and confusing. Typically we use the phrase "as for [X]" to change the subject to X, and contrast between X and the previous subject. I think the sentence, "Many atheists tend toward secular philosophies such as humanism and naturalism, but there is no specific ideology or set of behaviors to which all atheists adhere," is completely adequate to convey your meaning and avoids all of this confusion. If you must leave it in, then you would be better off putting in something like "...but, similar to theists,.." Mjatucla (talk) 22:10, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

I like the original wording, sans "as for theists", better than this new version. If you really like your new sentence here, I suggest breaking it into two sentences just before "however". (Sorry, looks like I posted the same time you did and I'm trying to merge responses to your new post and keep my old post. :) ) Mjatucla (talk) 22:11, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

(ec)I don't understand. B2c, could you please explain what the problem is, that this version is trying to fix? I would be entirely happy, though, with just not bothering with the first part of the sentence, thus: "There is no one ideology or set of behaviors to which all atheists adhere.[7] However, many atheists tend toward secular philosophies such as humanism[5] and naturalism.[6]" (Trivially, note that periods come before ref cites.) --Tryptofish (talk) 22:14, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

I like that suggestion as well. Mjatucla (talk) 22:19, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Consider if the article on Democratic Party (United States) said, "There is no one ideology to which all Democrats adhere." (which I'm sure it doesn't, without looking). Why does this need to be said about atheists? What point is it making? --Born2cycle (talk) 23:06, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Please see: Democratic Party (United States)#Recent issue stances: "These views are generally held by most Democrats. Some Democrats take other positions on these issues." More to the point, what I think is that, first, there is nothing pejorative towards atheists (or POV in any other way that I can think of) about pointing out that they do not all fit into a single category. I think I can understand how people in the real world, growing up in cultures where atheists are vilified, could be sensitive to insinuations that atheists are somehow more anarchic than others. I can also understand how that concern could have been brought up by the wording of the sentence as it had been recently, referring to "self-described atheists." However, in its present form, I just do not think that that pejorative POV is in there, needing to be fixed. The second reason is that, by making an explicit comparison to theists, the sentence actually raises the issue, not otherwise present, that there is some sort of favorable or unfavorable comparison to be made, thus, paradoxically, actually inserting the POV problem that we are trying to avoid. Thirdly, I think that the statement that atheists do not all fit into a single category is true. After all, so much of the ENDLESS talk about the lead sentence has been about making clear that there are, at least, three distinct categories. So it is helpful to reinforce that concept in the second paragraph of the lead. I think that this may end up being a case of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." Although there are certainly a number of equivalent and acceptable ways of wording it (above), I believe that if we agree to turn back your revert of the edit I made (deleting the mention of theists), the sentence then will work just fine. But if I'm still missing a point, please tell me. --Tryptofish (talk) 16:09, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

B2c, with all the other activity going on here, I don't know whether you've had an opportunity yet to respond here. Is what I said OK with you? I don't want to change anything in the article unless I'm sure we've agreed about it. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:27, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

I'm not thoroughly satisfied, but I don't care enough about this issue to revert again. The multiply used belief issue is much more important to me. --Born2cycle (talk) 21:34, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

OK, thanks. And, again, I'm sorry I made the earlier edit without realizing that you had concerns. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:38, 10 March 2009 (UTC)