I disagree, carrots are not purple.

Is that a joke?

From wiki:
I don't want to have to be that ***hole that says this is just basic logic. The point is that "weak atheists" are not a natural kind, and so we make up the definition.

Well, that seems narrow to me. But okay.

I don't have much more to say. I don't feel comfortable saying that there's no teapot orbiting the moon, but if we're talking about a benevolent personal God then I can see the legitimacy in that analogy.

I hope one of the astronauts or an alien or something put a teapot into orbit around the moon.

it's a phantom teapot

Are you sure? Maybe Neil Armstrong borrowed a teapot off of some guy named russel and put it into orbit around the moon.

Are you sure it was Neil Armstrong and not Louis Armstrong?

You know they laughed at Louis Armstrong when he said he'd go to the moon? And now he's up there laughing at us.

I haven't offered a definition of weak atheism and I have not said answering X makes you a weak atheist. Now stop it.

A strong atheist can not answer unknown/unknown to this:

1. There is a god.
2. There is no god.

He/she has to maintain that 1 is false and that 2 is true.

Here is an actual definition for you: "Positive atheism (ed. strong/hard atheism) is the explicit affirmation that gods do not exist. "

If you disagree with the above definition, then you are not a strong atheist in my eyes. I'm certain my view is not particularly unique, hopefully others can chime in on this.

Done and done, but I think he likes fighting with you better.

That's just weird, I would so think I was an ignorant bastard if I was fighting with me.

There's nothing wrong with saying something doesn't exist or has the same probability of not existing as every other option possible, until it is proven to exist.

You could take a stance and say it is something unexplained, a phenomena. Would this make you an agnostic? Agnostics are only of theoretical value anyways, like a politicly correct atheist.

You know where the burden of proof is at. You know that after 2000 years there's still no proof.

Can't believe I show respect to someone who believes in this joke.

I don't have a problem with that definition (except for the concerns I've already stated about defining "gods"). It is similiar to the one I use. My disagreement with you is about whether strong atheists or theists have to claim to know their beliefs. You just seem to ignore the possibility that someone can say that he doesn't know that (1) (or (2)), but he believes that (1). Yet clearly some people (i.e. bunny, Kierkegaard) do claim this. In exactly the same way, someone could claim that she doesn't know that (2) (or (1)), but that she believes that (2). This latter person would, according to your own definition here, be a strong atheist, but yet one that answers "unknown, unknown."

This might seem like a minor point, but the issue is that you are not clearly distinguishing between knowledge and belief, and this makes you think that the strong atheist is committed to a stronger claim, that of knowledge, than she actually is.

You don't seem to understand what jibninjas is saying. He is making a claim about why many people prefer weak to strong atheism. I think he is absolutely correct, but that this reflects positively on those atheists. It is, after all, generally considered an epistemic virtue to only believe as far as the evidence will take you.

Don't worry, I don't think you did.

I like fighting with you just fine--you just write longer posts.

Edit: More seriously, obviously I can't argue one way or the other about strong atheism or weak atheism until it is settled what we mean by these terms--and so I've had to address tame_deuces's concerns first.

Thats always what strong atheism meant to me. The positive claim that there is no, define your God here. Its a known like some theists claim to know God is real. But i dont know much about it either which way so...

He is saying people are lying when they say they are weak atheists and that they are really strong atheists but dont say so because then they would have to defend their positive claim. I dont think that would be a good if true.

Maybe that is what jibninja believes, but that is not what he said. If you feel insulted by his statement, based on your psychoanalysis of jibninja, well, no one can stop you, but why should we care?

I have two responses. First, my claim was that the problem with "God" is that it is ambiguous. That is, it can be interpreted in more than one way. That means that for any claim that uses the word "God," it can mean more than one things. Thus, if you want to use it in a claim, you must identify which meaning you wish your listener to take. My problem with self-identifying as a "weak" or "strong" atheist is that it doesn't give your reader or listener any clues as to which definition of God you mean, and so using the modifier is more confusing than not.

What you are talking about is something different. You are describing a fuzzy concept, not an ambiguous word. With regards to the fuzzy content, you only have one proposition, so it is not ambiguous, it is just not clear what the extension of that proposition is. However, if we were to take "God" to refer to a fuzzy concept, as you suggest, what would be included? Would it include all the different ideas suggested here? Cuz if so, then I'll repeat my claim that no one is a strong atheist and so again, this distinction is not useful.

Second, by a well-formed proposition, I mean a proposition that has a truth-value associated with it. The problem with talk about fuzzy concepts is that a proposition with a fuzzy concept in it doesn't clearly have a truth-value. So, I'm not saying that we can't necessarily use such ill-formed propositions to communicate, but that to say that someone believes or doesn't believe in that ill-formed proposition isn't meaningful. Why not? Because the notion of belief that I'm working with is the attitude of taking a proposition to be true (or false). But if there isn't anything that can be taken as true or false, then I literally think it is impossible to believe it. In a certain sense you can then say you don't believe that proposition--and so it is sort of like being a weak atheist--but it is logically equivalent to saying, "I don't believe that running," or "I don't believe that ssifhgls."
Really? Usually, unless I am discussing a specific God (i.e. Allah), it is difficult for me to figure out what my interlocutor means by "god." Furthermore, my point is one of labels. I have decided to not call myself a weak or strong atheist, because if I call myself something, then it is my conception of God that is relevant, and since I think there are numerous conceptions, and none of them are primary enough to be assumed, there is not a default conception I can use. So I would have describe myself as an Weak-atheist-towards-deism-strong-atheist-towards-theism. And then I ask myself, why?
I'm not sure I understand what point you are making here. It seems you are arguing that it is not necessary for us to believe that p, that we have experience that p. I agree with you (although I am sometimes tempted otherwise by Hume and Russell). I'm not sure what I said indicated that I didn't agree with this point, or what relevance it holds to our discussion.

Its pretty clear that is what he said. He has said it more then once and if im wrong, as i have been before, he can correct me.

Also your psychoanalysis of me being insulted is off because what he said doesn't really bother or apply to me.

Leaving aside the conclusion that the modifier is more confusing - which I don't see - can you give an example of when this confusion has arisen - that is, of when someone to whom you have identified yourself as a strong atheist has been confused as to your meaning? Because if your problem is only with what you mean, rather than with communicating to another what it is that you mean, then wouldn't you agree that your real problem is with language itself, rather than with these particular terms?
I'm having trouble picturing a fuzzy concept that can be referred to with an unambiguous word. It seems to me that if a concept is fuzzy, any word that refers to it must by necessity be ambiguous. What can be included in the concept 'god' most likely exceeds what's included in that list, so it may be the case that there is not, for all possible values of 'god', any one person who is solely a strong atheist. This does not render the distinction useless - if you feel it does, I'd again think your problem is with language rather than with these specific terms.

This is addressed by the Ancient Greece example. My point there is that it was not necessary for 'X' to be clearly defined, in order for belief in 'X' to exist. Whether those beliefs are justifiable is a different question - the point is that I certainly can believe in a god without having a complete answer to the question 'What is god?', and obviously this implies also that I can believe there is no god without having that answer.
Seriously? Like, no idea? Surely you can say, broadly, monotheistic, polytheistic, pantheistic, etc? And if not, what's wrong with just asking? I'm not sure why it's a problem, is all.
Why indeed? The above formulation makes you a weak atheist. If you want your every use of the term 'god' to have so broad a definition as to render strong atheists by your conception non-existent, feel free. But again your problem is with language, not with these terms alone.

Somebody mentioned the Invisible Pink Unicorn in some context but this whole concept is like a square-circle. Pink is a color, and color is some kind of interaction with the light spectrum and eyes; it is meaningless to ascribe color to something that is invisible. I can't imagine I am missing anything here. The invisible unicorn cannot be pink, that is an absurdity

"Invisible" just mean you can't see it. That doesn't mean it doesn't have a reflection spectrum.

Maybe it's actually translucent, but it reflects so little (pink) light that you can't detect it. Maybe it has a magic field that alters the (pink) light before it reaches your eyes. Maybe it is an illusionist unicorn, and it doesn't alter the (pink) light at all, but instead it alters your own mind. Maybe invisibility is an ability that it can turn on and off (and it's pink when the ability is turned off).

I'm talking about where invisible is an intrinsic metaphysical property of the unicorn, but perhaps this is not what is meant by the IPU at all

I submit this very thread as an example. When I claim to be an atheist, I've generally meant regarding the fairly traditional religious notions of God. Thus, since I'm a strong atheist regarding these notions, I wanted to argue that strong atheism seems a better view than weak atheism. However, the response of my interlocutors, such as you and tame_deuces, was to question how I understood God (and also, in tame_deuces's case, what I meant by "strong atheist."), arguing that in order to be a strong atheist I would have to deny the existence of all sorts of other Gods as well. There has been virtually no discussion in this thread by weak atheists as to why I should not believe that God does not exist regarding the traditional (Western) religious concept of God.

Not sure I understand what you are saying, but yes, my problem is definitely with language itself--but specifically with the part of language that uses the words and concepts of "God" and "atheist" and "belief." If I use language whose meaning is confused and unclear, then if my listener is not confused and unclear then they are misinterpreting me.

I don't really want to argue for the existence of fuzzy concepts. But I think my point was not clearly made, so let me try to clarify it. An ambiguous statement is a statement that can be interpreted in at least two different ways. That is, there are at least two different propositions that could be meant by that statement.

Example: let's say I'm watching the World Cup while reading the paper and say, "Germany isn't doing well." By this statement I could mean that the German team isn't doing well, or I could be making a claim about the German economy more generally. Notice that both of these claims are perfectly clear, but that is not clear which of them I meant by my statement. That is an example of ambiguity. There is no fuzziness in meaning here.

On the other hands, we might claim that a single proposition includes a fuzzy concept (where by "fuzzy" we might a concept whose extension is undefined). There is no ambiguity here--we know which proposition is meant by the statement, but it is not clear what exactly the meaning of that proposition is because we don't know what the extension of all parts of it are, and hence what would make it true or false.

My discussion turned on this contrast. If you think that "god" is ambiguous, then in some situations it is clear enough what is meant by "god," but that if you claim to be a strong atheist, even in that situation, you'll still have to clarify that you mean regarding only that particular meaning of "god."

If, on the other hand, you think God is a fuzzy concept, then I don't see how anyone can sensibly claim to be a strong atheist because they are not certain what the extension of "God" is.

I think the mistake you are making in your Greece example is treating a name as a definition. So you as an ancient Greek sees some sparks, but you don't know what they are. So you kind of point to them and say, "I'll call those 'sparks.'" Then you develop theories about what sparks are. But it is not the pointing that gives you the meaning (although it does give you the reference, so yes, part of the meaning), but rather the theories we develop to explain the sparks. Giving a definition of what "sparks" are would be part of developing such a theory. And it is that definition that would have to be clear, not the initial pointing.

Of course I can ask, but that is just a way of saying that I'm not a weak atheist simpliciter.

Here's an example. I have no problem telling people in the U.S. that I'm a liberal. If someone says, what are you, politically, I'll say, "I'm a liberal." But if I were in some places in Europe, I would be more hesitant to say this. It is not that it isn't true under some construals of liberalism that they might be familiar with, but that under others it would be false. I could say, "I'm an American-style liberal," but I am not sure how helpful that would be. As such, liberal is not as useful a label for me to use in places where it is ambiguous. My claim is that weak/strong atheism is the same way.
But only regarding the broadest definition of God. And since I think "god" is ambiguous, and that the broad definition of god is not the default definition, it seems inaccurate for me to just say that I am a weak atheist.