Quote:
Originally Posted by Mightyboosh
Atheists often want to define 'Atheism' as 'lacking a belief in gods'. That the Atheist isn't necessarily making the opposite claim, that there are no gods, or necessarily holding a belief that there are no gods.
Or are they? That's my query. If there are two possible values, true or false, and you say 'I don't believe that's true', are you not then by default saying that you believe the other option, that it's false? If you don't hold a belief at all on the subject, should you say that, rather than saying 'I don't believe one of those options'?
I'm curious, are you part of (or a lurker in) any G+ / YT communities, as this topic blew up recently in a particular G+ community?
Anyway, within philosophy, atheist is generally taken to mean the position that no god(s) exist, i.e. strong atheist. More commonly and recently, atheist has taken on the broader definition that is weak atheist, or simply non-theist. One difference is that an agnostic would be considered an atheist under the broad definition, but not under the philosophical definition.
Here's another way of looking at the true vs false issue you're having: a proposition P is either true or false (by law of excluded middle), but without having access to the objective truth of P, you can only providing your beliefs about P. When you evaluate a proposition, you are able to do so one prong at a time. eg "Do you believe P is true?" and "Do you believe P is false?" are two separate evaluations. Affirming either prong obviously negates the other, but not-affirming either prong does not necessitate negation of the other.
A common way of looking at this kind of question is a court of law, a jury is only asked to evaluate one of the prongs: "Do you believe there is sufficient evidence to find the defendant guilty?" (or "Do you believe P is true?"). If the evidence is lacking, the defendant is not found guilty* (or "I do not believe P is true"). This can still mean the defendant might be guilty OR innocent but the evidence was insufficient to make the determination for the defendant being guilty.
To translate this back to a theological position, the question can be thought of as "Is there sufficient evidence to find god(s) guilty of existing?". Not affirming this does not mean you think god(s) do not exist (though the philosophical atheist will go as far as to take that position).
* The defendant might be legally described as "found not guilty", but logically the correct description would be "not found guilty".