Talk:Atheism/Archive 13

message: Do to the utter lack of civility and intellectual honesty on the parts of a couple of editors here, I will withdraw from communicating on this talk page until administrators have enforced some accordance with policy and a focus on rigor. Sam Spade Arb Com election 12:21, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: If you wish me to respect your attempt at mediation, please enforce Wikipedia:Civility in these discussions. Sam Spade Arb Com election 14:20, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)

text: Sam, having just read Wikipedia:Civility, I can see little reason for your objection. Could you elaborate? Sextus 14:49, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: If you just read Wikipedia:Civility and saw no reason for my objection, maybe you ought to read this talk page again. Sam Spade Arb Com election 15:08, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)

text: Sam, if you are referring to my comments on the Arb com endorsements page, you will see that I had second thoughts about them and have already removed them, before your comments here.  I don't think they were strikingly uncivil, but I removed them because I didn't want them interfering with the mediation role I'm adopting here. However, Sam, in case you read my comments, what I wrote does actually reflect my views concerning your suitability for the Arb Com post, and your uncompromising attitude (at least to date) in editing this article was one of the main reasons.   However, none of that changes the need for compromise in this article, and we are making progress here.  Incidentally, Sextus, Sam certainly has been the target of great deal of incivility, now mostly in the Archives.   On the whole, he has been more civil than his critics, although in defense of his critics, Sam's behaviour has been more than a tad on the provocative side (in my opinion).   However, nothing is gained by dwelling on any of that. --BM 15:22, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Incivility 

message: Before I start here I would like to firstly apologise for walking right into an edit war like I did. I am new to editing on Wiki, and didn't realise just how contested this page was. I am an atheist myself, and the first statement I saw when I visited the atheism page was "Atheism is the condition of believing there are no gods or of lacking theistic belief". This is a definitive statement of fact and is absolutely incorrect. Atheism is usually characterised by a lack of belief, not a belief in itself. Whatever happens elsewhere in the article, I think it only fair and accurate to remove any insistence that atheism is a definite system of belief from the article. There may be room for this in an 'opponents to atheism' element (although in the interest of fairness, there should also be room for an atheistic response to these claims).
Secondly, I edited the 'weak atheism' and 'strong atheism' elements. These were my edits - 
Weak Atheism
[my edited but now removed definition]
'Weak Atheism' Sometimes negative atheism, is the position that there lacks reason to assert the existence or nonexistence of gods, but that through lack of evidence and apparent lack of gaps in religious logic, it is most likely that dieties do not exist. A weak Athiest will typically hold the position that although one cannot assert the non existence of dieties through positive evidence, the onus is on those who assert the existence of a diety to provide proof for their beliefs. This is commonly referred to as the 'burden of proof'. Therefore, the weak atheist will tend to take the position that until the existence of a diety is conclusively proven through evidence, it is safest to bet that such dieties do not exist.
I think this is a better position to the definition that currently exists in the article. The current definition contains the following statement: 
"...A weak atheist abstains from positive judgment and retains tolerance of the possibility of the existence and nonexistence of gods." 
While this may be technically true, it is also misleading in my opinion. This is because a weak atheist will also be likely to assert that because there is unsupportable or insubstantial evidence for the existence of dieties, it is most likely that they do not exist. The statement as it is does not make this clear. The description as it currently exists seems to be describing agnosticism rather than any particular form of atheism. The importance I think is the inclusion in my edit of phrases such as '...but through lack  of evidence and [the religious logic line could be removed], it is most likely that dieties do not exist'. I think this is a more relevant and accurate potrayal of the position taken by the atheists that fall into the 'weak' camp.
Strong Atheism
[My edited but now removed definition (changed slightly here compared to my original edit]
'Strong atheism or positive atheism, is the positive assertion that gods do not exist, which differentiates it from a mere lack of deistic belief. Strong atheists often cite logical impossibilities and the lack of assertive evidence presented by arguments intending to demonstrate theistic concepts of the devine.
To me, the term 'positive assertion' is more accurate that the word 'belief' here. 
I think the most important distinction between the 'weak' and 'strong' forms of atheism (both are terms I am not actually that comforable with, but that I can work with in the interests of clarifying the differening spectrums of athiesm) is simply that one asserts that god does not exist, while the other position does not believe in the existence of god, but stops at making a definitive statement to this effect. The 'weak atheism' definition as it currently stands does not make it clear that these people still do not believe in god.
I made one other change to the article. This was simply to add the qualifier, 'this form of', into the sentence "Critics of strong atheism contend that atheism requires faith due to a supposed impossibility of proving negatives;", so that the statement became "Critics strong atheism contend that this form of atheism requires faith..." Again, I think this helps the article from a NPOV.
I hope this helps clarify some of the changes I attempted to make. And thanks to BM for clarifying some aspects of wiki for me. And I'm definately not a sockpuppet ;)
--aarrrrggh
Hi, welcome to Wikipedia and the the happy band of Atheism editors, now reduced to Atheism::Talk editors!    One thing that helps by the way is to sign your contributions so people know who is talking.  You can do this by typing three tildes  ~~~.   If you make it four tildes, the system adds a timestamp, which is also helpful.  
Concerning your comments, one of the reasons that there is an edit war is that there seem to be competing definitions of "atheism".    Your statement that "atheism is not a belief system" would not command universal agreement.   A common definition of atheism is that atheists deny the existence of God, which is the belief that God (or gods) does not exist.  This definition makes atheism a belief.  This definition of atheism does not even admit that weak atheists are atheists at all.    This dispute is the main one underlying the edit wars.     The edit war basically causes the article to cycle between atheism being defined as "lack/absence of belief in God" and "belief that gods don't exist".   Right now, we are working on wording that recognizes that there are competing definitions.    By the way, as a strong atheist myself, I have no problem with my views being characterized as a "belief system".   I assert that God/gods don't exist.  I also believe my assertion.  (In fact, I generally believe my assertions, except when I'm joking, lying, or sleep-walking) --BM 01:15, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Possible changes to weak/strong atheism elements