Talk:Negative and positive atheism

message: * The article is confusing and convoluted.
* The verbose explanation of the gratuitous Venn diagram is longer than the diagram itself.
* Noteworthy for a full article? See below.
* Above all; unnecessary: There is already a section for “positive/negative” atheism in Atheism#Positive_vs._negative — which has more references in a clear, well-thought out, and appropriately brief, set of paragraphs.
— Chrisdone (talk) 13:26, 2 June 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Many errors have crept in. The first step is to try to improve the article. This article goes into details that the 2 paragraphs in Atheism#Positive_vs._negative do not cover. The caption for the diagram is also long in the atheism article. A picture may be worth a 1000 words - in this case some extensive words are needed to explain the "picture"--JimWae (talk) 20:10, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

text: I see nothing in WP:DEL#REASON that applies & have removed the template. --JimWae (talk) 20:44, 2 June 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Proposal for deletion

message: I mean, I know he's a prominent atheist and all, but do we really need "this is what Dawkins thinks of this" on every single Wiki atheism page? Unless he has something specific and pertinent to say, merely pointing out this almost random person's point of view on the subject seems unnecessary. Consider removing it.    —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.139.75.240 (talk) 19:47, 10 November 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: What does Dawkins have to do with this?

message: From the "misconceptions" section: 
:"Weak atheists think the existence and non-existence of God are equally likely Again, while this may be true of some weak atheists, it is not a requirement. An individual can believe that one is vastly more likely than the other and still be a weak atheist."
But a paragraph later the article points out this exact state of belief, believing the lack of God to be vastly likelier than the existence of one, as a subset of strong atheism that isn't a faith-based position. Now, seeing as the whole point of this weak/strong dichotomy is that you can't be both, I changed this to say "An individual can believe one to be likelier than the other, but still not to what they see as a sufficient degree to warrant belief in either". --AceMyth 04:10, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: That's quite possibly one of the worst sentences I have ever read. --Dannyno 22:36, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Oh, excuse me while I curl up in a corner and cry. That's what you get when you attempt to strip the fuzzy doublespeak from an article that seems to uphold the view that the definitions of "truth", "belief", "theory" and "likelihood" are completely subject to the whims of whoever wants to use them in any way they see fit. Thus you can apparently see something as "vastly more likely" than some other thing yet still fail to "accept" or "believe" it in any way because it is not absolutely certain. While Descartes' Demon points at you and laughs.  --AceMyth 20:24, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

text: I don't think that is accurate. Sad mouse (talk) 19:28, 6 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Weak atheism and likelihood

message: The lede says:
:while weak atheism or "agnostic atheism"[citation needed] refers to any other type of non-theism.
Since agnosticism seems to have to be explicit, "agnostic atheism" cannot include implicit atheism. The term is certainly preferable to calling some atheists "weak" & others "strong", but the sentence cannot stand as is.--JimWae (talk) 17:08, 25 September 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Agnostic atheism 

message: Looking at some sources, it appears strong atheism has been defined many ways. I have tried below to organize them according to degrees of decreasing strength, where X is the statement "there is at least one deity"
*claim there is proof X is false
*claim to KNOW X is false
*claim we CAN know X is false (maybe in the future)
*claim X is false 
*claim X is probably false
*believe X is false
*believe X is probably false
*accept X is false
*accept X is probably false
Note that claims are public, while beliefs can be private. Acceptance can also be private, and one can accept something without having any commitment to it at all. Acceptance that "X is probably false" is the weakest form of strong atheism I have come up with - and is virtually indistinguishable from any weak explicit atheism I can think of except perhaps for total inabilty to discern any regularity in one's own thoughts. I think that if one rejects belief in X (for whatever reason), one must also "accept" an ontology devoid of deities. --JimWae (talk) 19:22, 25 September 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: We don't organize religious beliefs by hypothetical logically constructed positions believers might hold. Why should we do this for non-believers? Frankly I think atheism should be discussed in the context of how they defined themselves or were labeled by others, not by some web of logical statements. We just don't do this for anything else. 99.121.29.73 (talk)  —Preceding undated comment added 02:11, 25 June 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Degrees of strength 

message: This article has seen literally years of consecutive editors trying to wrap their heads around basic set theory and terminology. People have even gone to the length of drawing Venn diagrams, for crying out loud. And the article still fails to get it right, as each new generation of editors seems to be determined to introduce some new source of confusion. So this has now been moved to a completely new title. The article seems to assume that the "positive / negative" distinction is equivalent to the "strong / weak" one. Probably because nobody bothers to read the sources they google. 
The move means you will have to redraw the Venn diagram and you will also have to explain terminology properly. Please do it, or else move it back to the way things were, but don't leave it in this half-finished state. Thank you. --dab (𒁳) 09:27, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: What are the distinctions between positive-negative, strong-weak, and hard-soft atheism then?  I know Dawkins uses the label strong atheist for atheists who know no gods exist, but I haven't run across this term elsewhere.  A quick Google search suggests they are indeed describing the same ideology. MisterDub (talk) 19:31, 24 June 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Frankly this section is delete-worthy. The distinction made here is empty sophistry. So someone who believes there is no deity exists but doesn't say that ""There is at least one god" is false" is a negative atheist? And if they say the latter they are a positive atheist? That's bunk. If someone doesn't believe any deity exists it implies that for them "there is at least one god" is false, no matter if they utter that statement or not. It's like saying that only those are positive christians who have ever uttered a specific statement even though they have the same belief structure as all other "negative" christians. I'm strongly in favor of deletion. 99.121.29.73 (talk)  —Preceding undated comment added 02:08, 25 June 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I disagree; there is a significant difference between the two terms.  Negative atheists reject claims without evidence and therefore accept neither the claim of positive atheists ("No gods exist") nor theists ("At least one god exists").  This distinction has been made by scholarly sources and therefore I think we have to keep the article, regardless of how we feel about it personally.  MisterDub (talk) 20:31, 25 June 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Also, as the article states, some people say the concept of a deity is unintelligbile, that unintelligible sentences are neither true nor false, and that they are without meaning. JimWae (talk) 21:44, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

text: Asserting a claim is false also usually implies some claim to knowledge of how to determine its truth or falsity. Many atheists are also agnostics regarding any such knowledge. JimWae (talk) 21:48, 25 June 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: this is terrible

message: I just had a quick squizz of this article and noticed that it seems to focus quite a lot on "God", which is the Christian deity. I don't see why this particular deity should be singled out for such attention. My understanding is that strong Atheists do not believe in any deities at all, and do not restrict their disbelief to the Christian monotheistic realm. I'm a strong Atheist myself, and I can assure you that I am certain that Ganesh, Thor and Tama-nui-te-ra don't exist just as much as God doesn't exist.
I'd be grateful if someone could do a bit of a rewrite to fix this worldview issue.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Newzild (talk • contribs) 10:16, 12 September 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Worldview problem - focuses on monotheism rather than deities in general 

message: An editor has re-introduced unsourced content here, referring to "negative and positive atheism" used by Smith.  It was removed with a request for a source citation, and has been re-inserted without the requested source.  Is there any reason why it should not be removed? Xenophrenic (talk) 13:59, 10 July 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: You replaced it with uncited and incorrect info. Yiu should provide a citation for that.Apollo The Logician (talk) 14:07, 10 July 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: I did not.  Smith and the and the "negative and positive atheism" was already there before I edited.  I took out the content saying  because that isn't supported in the sources; Smith uses "negative and positive", according to the source presently in the article right now. Xenophrenic (talk) 03:17, 11 July 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: That's not all you did.Apollo The Logician (talk) 08:35, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

text: You added a source which doesn't mention Smith even once, and absolutely doesn't say Smith uses the term "implicit and explicit atheism".  The source you added does not even address my concern, much less resolve it. Is there any reason why I shouldn't remove the unsourced wording? Xenophrenic (talk) 03:17, 11 July 2017 (UTC)
replies: text:  Well first of all you should not remove it because you have consensus to and if you do I will report you for edit warring. Second of all it says implicit/explicit atheism is similar. In your edit you changed this and said they were synomous, this fixes part of your problem.Apollo The Logician (talk) 08:35, 11 July 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: Your first sentence doesn't make any sense in the English language. As for the rest of your comment, you wish negative/positive to be described as similar, not synonymous - is that your only concern? Xenophrenic (talk) 08:59, 11 July 2017 (UTC)
thread_title: Disruptive reverts

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thread_title:  External links modified (February 2018) 

message: I suggested this article be rewritten, at least near the top, for clarity. I am somewhat educated about atheism, but I'm not even sure I understood what it was saying.... Misty MH (talk) 04:32, 21 December 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Rewrite for clarity 

message: Amongst the three names, "positive atheism", "hard atheism", "strong atheism" (the same as the other three names), which one is used the most frequently? It really matters, as I'm currently trying to translate the article into Chinese, however, seems that in the Chinese context, people tend to use “强” (strong), rather than “硬” (hard) or “积极” (positive), while in the English context "positive" is preferred. These words have been appearing throughout the article, and I have to choose one most frequent expression instead of mixing all of them up in the translated text. -- Unite together (talk) 11:21, 22 December 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: It looks like positive is used more frequently than hard or strong. ––FormalDude talk 03:33, 12 January 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Which name is used the most frequently?