I don't think it would be conversationally expedient, rather the opposite. Just like if some asks you your opinion on tax and you state "I'm a libertarian", which would be very expedient.

However, to drop the distinction in specific cases has merit on the grounds that the category of our beliefs hold no particular value as argument. For example if someone asks "why should there be no tax?" then "I'm a libertarian" holds little value.

So on that basis I would agree.

Thanks, appreciated, and I get that this thread can make it seem a bigger issue than it is.

It appears that the weak and strong atheist can be weak and strong about the same gods. It's possible then to change identification without any change to ontological commitments, and in a general sense to epistemic commitments. The only epistemic challenge seems determining where the boundary is where one can feel justified in claiming a strong position, and then not necessarily on any specific account of god only aggregated "god". The distinction looks taxonomic rather than philosophical.

Doesn't speak to what I'm saying. At all.

I always suspected 'face' was a big factor in your thinking.

Good, you won't be missed.

Absolutely. Glad to see that my position is comprehensible and justifiable to people whose intelligence I already respect.

This is somewhat undermined by the fact that I've already made a significant and public retraction of my position when I moved from weak to strong atheist. Of course, I was happy to do so because I'm more concerned about what is true/justified than proving that I never make mistakes. I don't recall you or td having ever retracted anything, or admitting to any mistake.

Cheerio!

If you really meant this, why didn't you engage Brianthemick2 in debate, as he is clearly the atheist in this thread that disagrees the most with your position?

Not as much as it's bolstered by the mere fact of your response.

The "I know you are but what I am?" defence. Bit early to be bringing out your intellectual big guns, no? Or are you holding a "your mum" in your back pocket?

That's not even what I said, good grief.

It's pretty simple: you don't get to flounce off with a big dramatic "I'm out" post, then come back and not look silly. Only yourself to blame.

I'm out of discussing strong atheism with those who don't/won't understand it. I'll stick around to mock you, no problem.

Come now, that's what you have been doing from the beginning. No need to be modest.

And look silly while doing it, is all I'm saying.

If you wanted out, you'd be out. But you didn't want out. You wanted to say that so-and-so is a big dumb-dumb. That's rather less impressive than you seem to think.

I truly do not understand how this subject is generating so much heat. It seems largely focused on the definition of a few terms, not on any real logical insights.

I think it is all pretty simple.

God is a term that broadly refers to a conscious Creator of our reality and possibly the ultimate judge of the worth of our actions and efforts.

Theism is the belief that there is a God or gods. The theist/deist discussion is a somewhat confounding sideline but in the strictest sense a deist is a theist for the purposes of this debate.

Strong atheism is the belief that there are no gods at all.

Weak atheism is the rejection of a both of the preceding beliefs.

If you are not a theist and you are not willing to make the statement:

"There are no gods", then you are a weak atheist.

sorry for semi-OT for this thread. I'm agnostic towards deism, but I just meant that even a disinterested watchmaker would be more like a human than anything else we are aware of in the universe - an explanation for existence in a sense patterned after ourselves, which makes me uncomfortable with it.

The standard extra complexity argument against introducing any form of god also adds to my discomfort. 'An infinite (and somehow atemporal) god exists and made the universe' seems way more messy than 'an infinite universe exists'. turtles are much more comfortable for me.

I don't necessarily agree, but I thought TD in his OP was attempting to argue specifically the benefit of his semantics in debate with theists.

We've run of theists to be rude to, so now starts the infighting.

But jokes aside yes, I agree with your summary.

Zumby's contention is, as far as I can gather, is that as long as one agrees with "RLK's strong atheist" on a finite set of gods and this set can be argued to contain all the defined gods that are falsifiable and that they have been or would be falsified, then one for all practical purposes one is a strong atheist and thus should call oneself one (phew). He could call himself a weak atheist when this doesn't hold true.

This is why he reacted to my OP as wrongful, which when it comes to this usage it was. In regards to weak/strong atheism this creates an impasse, as we obviously use the terms differently.

However, I (briefly summarized) also happen to think this list of caveats has enough of an impact to make it a fairly impractical and unnecessary position, and that he would have to take the weak atheist position far more often than he seems to be willing to admit.

Zumby's position does not make sense to me and he seems unwilling to discuss it in sufficient detail to clarify why it should. The entire "definition of God" approach to this discussion seems muddled at best and disingenuous at worst. It seems to be a mechanism to confuse the issue around theism to steer the answer in a direction that is not justified.

I will use an analogy. Suppose we consider the question "Do you believe in the existence of the electron?" A definition of some sort is certainly required. I would propose "The electron is the primary negative charge carrier in the atom responsible for molecular bonding and chemical reactivity." That is adequate to discussing the question broadly and answer the original question. One could try to complicate the issue:

Do you mean:

1. the Thompson electron as discrete negative charges embedded in a diffuse positive cloud
2. the Rutherford electron of electric charges arrayed around a concentrated nucleus
3. the Bohr electron as particles orbiting the nucleus in circular orbits
4. the QM electron as wave packets with both particle and wave nature
5. the QFT electron as the excitation of the normal mode of an underlying quantum field
6. or a composite electron composed of currently unidentified elementary particles.

To argue that the question of the existence of the electron is somehow confounded by all of these different descriptions is to display only that you do not understand the original question very well.

This is wrong and so for your benefit.

This seems clear and detailed enough for you to get his position irrespective of whether you agree with it, in case you missed it I'll re-requote.

I don't really have a horse in this race and I'm surprised you do. It appears you are sympathetic to claims of weak atheism because you think it stands less certainly in opposition to theism. This ignores that weak atheists can identify as strong atheists with regard to your account of god and it appears only when "god" extends beyond the meaning you ascribe does the weak/strong dichotomy appear.

I don't understand the snippiness either. It's definitely "just" semantics (though that has consequences).

I don't agree with your meanings and distinctions, but it doesn't really matter. As long as I know what you mean by the terms, I can use your words sensibly (you'd label me a weak atheist). Discussions on meaning aren't terribly important, all that matters is that you understand how the other guy is using words. He doesn't have to use them the same as you.

I acknowledge that I had overlooked this post. I still feel his position is muddled because the "strong" here and "weak" there position really destroys any content in the terms at all. If you cannot state that you believe there is no God of any kind, then you are a weak atheist. If you use the games we are starting to see in these posts, then you are a weak atheist who does not like the term "weak". So fine, you are strong.


I really don't. I am just sort of surprised that discussion with so little actual content can generate so much debate. It really is fairly simple.


This is not true. I am not sympathetic to the claims of weak atheism. I simply acknowledge that they stand on a different basis than the claims of theism or of strong atheism. All I have ever said is that ironically, strong atheism is actually more similar to theism than to weak atheism.

Interesting. I would bet that you cannot state my "account of God", so I would question whether you can justify making this statement in any way.

Good analogy.

One weakness is that the different gods are vastly different than different electrons and that people are strongly concerned with the existence of their god, whilst not really caring about other gods (present company excepted). Nobody ever got killed for advocating a rival physics theory.

In discussions where it comes up (other than here) I'm nearly always talking about one specific god. If someone advocates belief in something very broad (like a generic first cause, or something) then I'm more likely to identify myself to them as a weak atheist.

Hi Bunny. Its been awhile. Good to see you back. I do believe your presence will raise the quality of the discussion although I am not sure anything can help this thread.

That said, here is my further contribution to this mess. I think my definitions are based on the way that the weak/strong terminology was introduced to me. Somewhere in the history of this forum there was a debate which included the accusation directed at atheists saying that their disbelief was as much a leap of faith as a theist's belief. The counter from some atheists in that discussion was that this was incorrect. Atheism merely asserted that one did not have a belief in God, it did not require that one assert that there was no God. The discussion then continued to the fact that there are some atheists who do make the actual assertion that there is no God. That is the context in which strong/weak was presented. It seems to me that there is some point to the terms within that context and that without it, there is no point.

The first problem I have with this is that you are defining the grounds by which an atheist can claim to be a strong atheist and I don't know what grounds you are calling that on. All self identifying strong atheists have agreed there are some accounts of god they are weak on. You're labelling them as weak without defining why they have to state a god you don't believe in doesn't exist.

It's simple because you've decided the criteria for strong atheism while the strong atheists seem to disagree.

You've defined weak atheism as being unable to state god doesn't exist despite many (most) stating yours doesn't.

If your account of god remains consistent with your previous claims that god is logically required then I think I can state enough.

Thank you.

I think there are some profound differences in the electron models, but the rest of your point is certainly true. People can get very emotional over religion.

I have said on many occasions that the concept of "a specific God" has no real meaning for me. It truly seems like a fundamentally incorrect way to approach the question, with all due respect.

I have never claimed that God was logically required. Of course, if you can quote me to the contrary I will stand corrected.