Talk:Atheism/Archive 24

message: 1. 'A' means an absence of, doesn't it? So then just as the only reasonable thing to say about what characterizes asymmetry is that asymmetry is characterized by an absence of symmetry, the only reasonable thing to say about atheism is that atheism is characterized by an absence of theism.
2. But FeloniousMonk and Andre (see just above here) insist that the issue is settled, and THEIR side has prevailed, so that is the end of discussion, but isn't it true that there are NEVER any settled issues in Wikipedia? Isn't it true that the policy is that any decisions about articles or policies should NEVER be regarded as permanently binding? Following is a quote from the policy:
From Wikipedia:No binding decisions: Wikipedia strives for consensus to build an encyclopedia. Decisions which are made about articles or policies should not be regarded as binding. Later objections to a decision might represent a change in consensus that may need to be taken in account, regardless of whether that earlier decision was made by a poll or other method. In order to reach the best possible decisions, we hold it important to listen carefully to each other's arguments, and to try to find mutually acceptable solutions in conflicts. Polls are the exception and not the rule, and where they do exist they are not binding. 
It is the nature of the wiki to be ever-changing. New people visit every day, and through new information and new ideas, we may gain insights we didn't have previously. It is important that there is a way to challenge past decisions, whether they have been reached by poll or consensus. Decisions should therefore practically never be "binding" in the sense that the decision cannot be taken back.
3. The important point Andre and FeloniousMonk and others seem to be missing in this case is that even those so-called strong atheists, those who have sound reason to hold a strong conviction that there are no gods in evidence because there are no gods in evidence, they also have an absence of theism just like all other atheists, and that is all that is essential to atheism, just as an absence of symmetry is all that is essential to asymmetry.--Adrigo 17:18, 18 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: The absence of belief is common to positive and negative atheism, but it is not a settled issue (for purposes of this article) as to whether such absence is all that is essential to (or necessary for) atheism.  Those who assert that atheism is mere lack of belief insist (like Adrigo) that all that is necessary to atheism is such lack.  In contrast, those who assert that atheism is a belief in the nonexistence of deities (including some atheist philosophers, like Ted Drange, for example) insist that atheism consists not just of a lack of belief, but an active denial.  According to the latter POV, while lack of belief (in gods) is essential to atheism, it is not all that is essential.  Adrigo's recent edit (which I've mostly reverted) takes a position against this POV, giving the impression that the issue is settled in favor of equating atheism with negative atheism, with positive atheism being a mere subset.  This runs counter to actual usage of the word by many theologians and atheologians, as well as against the most popular usage among the general public.  Wikipedia's role is descriptive, rather than prescriptive.  It describes what is--not what should be.  My personal usage of the word "atheist," like Adrigo's, assumes that lack of belief in God or gods is all that is necessary, but this does not change the fact that many others use the word differently, and that Wikipedia should represent both usages neutrally. Rohirok 19:15, 18 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I mainly agree with this, and I have something I want to do to the entry to try to make this kind of thing clearer, since it's hopelessly confused at the moment.  Atheism has been defined by some atheists in a very broad way since the 18th century, but there are differences between professional/academic philosophers who are mainly interested in reasons for and against belief, and thus generally see positive/negative in terms of types of rejection, and others who see positive/negative in terms of the difference between rejection and simple absence. The concerns are different.  As Rohirok correctly says, the entry just needs to document all this.  I'm going to have a go shortly :-) --Dannyno 19:31, 18 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree, the part about 'ontological position' must be edited out. Rohorok says, "Wikipedia describes what is." That is correct, and what is is that the only thing all atheists share in common is an absence of theism. Even so-called strong atheists have the same absence of theism that so-called weak atheists do. This is not a point of view as Rohirok says, it is an undeniable fact (a 'what is') that Wikipedia must make clear if it is to be taken seriously.--Adrigo 20:26, 18 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Adrigo, you claimed that lack of belief in God/gods is all that is essential to atheism.  This is a particular point of view that is not shared by all atheists (I gave one counter-example, there are others), let alone others who use the word.  True, lack of belief is common to both types of positions, but this is not the same as saying that lack of belief is all that is essential to atheism.  There are two main differences in usage of the word: (1) atheism is mere lack of belief in God/gods, and (2) atheism is denial of God/gods (the belief that God/gods don't exist).  According to usage (2), an atheist must believe God/gods don't exist.  Anyone who doesn't believe this isn't an atheist.  In other words, belief that God/gods don't exist is all that is essential, and lack of belief in God/gods is not all that is essential to be an atheist.  What you added to the article is consistent with position (1), but inconsistent with position (2), and so fails the NPOV test.  The article must not take position (1) over position (2), but simply describe both. Rohirok 04:41, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

text: my preference is the same as Adrigos, in other words I understand atheism very inclusively. That has the historical development of atheism in its favour.  However, there is a legitimate more restricted or narrower use of the word atheism - especially in academic philosophy, for reasons that should be obvious  - that defines atheism in terms of rejection of atheism and explicitly does *not* regard "absence" of theism as a species of atheism, unless that absence is the result of one of many forms of rejection (not just strong forms)  This goes back to Paul Edwards at least, but there is also some ambiguity in other writers such as Bradlaugh earlier than that.  How, adrigo, do you propose to explain this to readers of the article?  Because it does need explaining, otherwise people will get confused if they read Smith and then read Edwards' encyclopedia articles.  It's not unusual for technical and informal definitions of words to differ - viz, even more radically, "inferiority complex". --Dannyno 08:54, 21 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I must still point to an essential distinction: anyone who thinks there might be a god is simply someone who isn't a strong atheist (whether you equate it with "atheist" or not). A theist is someone who holds the religious belief that there is a god or gods. See Talk:Agnosticism for talk about this distinction. Jules LT 17:42, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

text: For the subject at hand, I think we should first report the two different usages first and then explain where each came from. This is not clear in the article. What would you think of a section at the beginning of the article summing up briefly all the meanings that have been attached to the word and extremely briefly where and when this meaning was used. That would be very informative and direct people to what they want to know inside the article.Jules LT 17:58, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

text: I'm not unattracted to that suggestion.  I'm having a go at working on chapter and verse of all these distinctions, and/but it's not a bad idea to have some bullet points right at the beginning. --Dannyno 22:01, 21 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Settled issue?

message: I've gone through article and have undone User:67.132.243.17's changes of strong/weak to explicit/implicit. Weak and strong are the more commonly used terms by a long shot. User:67.132.243.17 should seek consensus here before making such significant alterations to te article, and take the time to read the article's archived discussions; had he, he'd have seen that this issue was previously discussed and settled long ago. FeloniousMonk 07:19, 7 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Strong/weak to explicit/implicit

message: Since the atheism article has surpassed the desired size maybe the history section should have its own article. This seems to be appropriate considering History of Christianity, History of Islam, History of Judaism, etc. --TM  (talk) 09:12, 8 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Seconded. Be bold. mikka (t) 01:26, 9 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: A good idea. --Dannyno 21:16, 10 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Seperate article for [[History of Atheism]] 

message: I've been making a lot of edits lately. My intention is to begin to connect this article (and subsequently linked ones) to the actual literature of atheism, which is unaccountably absent from the entry. I'm particularly interested in definitions and I will be trying to draw out the important distinctions in a more understandable and, importantly, supportable way than the entry currently does. We have a riot of strong/weak/explicit/positive blah blah but no actual indication of who uses what terms and why.  There are differences, for example, between Martin and Smith. And "implicit/explicit", assuming their use here is drawn from Smith, are not quite as synonymous with weak/strong as seems to be thought, for example. There have been too many pointless battles over labels here.  What we need is for the entry to make the distinctions clear, and then give citations for the labelling. This is what I will be doing, and I hope it will make for a better and more coherent article.   --Dannyno 21:14, 12 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: You rock.  Go crazy.  --Quasipalm 20:29, 16 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: What I Am Up To

message: Time to create a new page for this section? It's getting rather long :-) --Dannyno 20:08, 16 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Antitheism

message: I was thinking about other possibilities for cutting down the size of this entry. Apart from breaking out antitheism, I wondered whether there was scope for starting to create entries for atheism in particular countries. This would allow us to go into more detail on history than the general history entry will presumably be able to, and also to give an account of current atheist issues, organisations, key figures etc, for each country. And also to restrict the international survey section to "Atheism worldwide" and give some general remarks and international statistics - country specific stats could then go with particular countries.  I'm thinking maybe an entry to start with for "ATheism in the USA", and "Atheism in Europe", the latter broken down by country until any gets to a size to merit an entry of its own... Maybe even india, China, and Russia/USSR could carry entries of their own?   Thoughts? --Dannyno 21:49, 17 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Country entries - another potential for new pages?

message: I'm sure this has been the subject of innumerable battles in the past, but I'm going to annoy everyone by raising it again.
It seems to me that the very first sentence of the entry must be wrong:
Atheism is the ontological position that contrasts with theism, including both the view of those without belief in the existence of deities, and the view of those who actively deny such entities exist, both of whom are without belief in the existence of deities.
Atheism is not in fact necessarily an ontological position (Some atheists have argued about what exists and what does not, but others have argued about what it is reasonable to believe and what it is not, which is rather different), and it looks to me as though someone has smuggled an unsupportably narrow definition into the entry. What about epistemology?
Perhaps I've misunderstood, in which case I'd say that's another reason to revisit it. Either, to cover the subject of the entry, it should say "the name given to a range of positions which are antithetical to theism", or something along the lines of "absence or rejection".
Thoughts? Brickbats? --Dannyno 19:42, 18 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree. Atheism is not an 'ontological position' as the article says now, it is simply an absence of theism (an absence of belief there might be an invisible deity) just as asymmetry is an absence of symmetry.--Adrigo 20:32, 18 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  some of those changes went too far into unsourced advocacy of a POV. There's a section for sourced information about the belief/non belief controversy. The "are agnostics atheists" question should be addressed with citations in the text (who says they are, who says they aren't, where do they say it, and what are their arguments?) and does not need pronouncing upon ex cathedra in the opening paragraph. --Dannyno 21:14, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

text: I think your analogy with asymmetry and symmetry is misleading. Lack of an ontological belief *can* be a position, but it also might not be, depending on *why* there is a lack of that ontological belief.  Atheism can legitimately be used very very broadly, so that children are defined as atheist. In comparison I know of no reasonable definition of agnosticism that would allow uninformed children to be described as agnostic.  Furthermore, you jump to the conclusion that any non-ontologically based negative stance re: theism must be "agnostic" (in the sense of holding the view that "it's impossible to know"). But this is not the case. What of the classic atheist stance (Bradlaugh being the exemplar often cited) of declining the accept a theistic proposition until it is adequately defined (burden of proof)? --Dannyno 15:43, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

text: I don't pretend to understand that. But the important thing is: is it a view you can attribute to anyone citable? --Dannyno 21:28, 19 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: An ontological position?

message: I reverted Adrigo's removal of a chunk of material - but my rv note didn't seem to come through on the history for some reason.  Anyway, adrigo was alleging "not a dictionary", but given what was deleted was perfectly good encyclopedic-style (and such as you'll find in many encyclopedias) discussion of the meanings given to atheism I can only think it was a mistake. --Dannyno 17:28, 19 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  It's happened a couple more times. Given that the characterisation of atheism is so widely debated, and indeed is the subject of a great deal of attention in other encyclopedias and books on atheism, I feel the WINAD guideline does not apply to the section on defining atheism.  For a start, that section is a properly referenced discussion of the different ways atheism has been understood, which is fundamentally encyclopedic in scope (and lots of paper encyclopedias do the same thing, because it's necessary to do it).  And see the bit on the WINAD page where it says "it's often very, very important in the context of an encyclopedia article to say just how a word is used. E.g., the article on freedom has a long discussion about this.".  This absolutely applies here. --Dannyno 10:59, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Come on, if there's thought to be a problem with the "defining atheism" section, it ought to be discussed here.--Dannyno 17:17, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: a reversion

message: Seems we now have a battle over the first sentence of the article, over whether it should only say "absence", or whether it should acknowledge less inclusive characterisations.  I think it should, given the controversy over the issue.  But I also think there are more important improvements to the article.  --Dannyno 17:17, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Introductory sentence

message: Adrigo, you put in the lead: "an absence of theism, an absence of belief that there might be gods"... please do go check Theism in any dictionnary or type in "define: theism" in google. Just because you changed the wording in the theism article doesn't make it the definition. Theism is the belief that "There is/are God(s)". This is very diferent from the wording "There might be gods".
(sorry, I got a "conflicting edit" message for this comment but this had to be said; I fixed theism) Jules LT 19:46, 23 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I've reverted with a request that no one continue reverting until consensus is reached here.—chris.lawson (talk) 20:33, 23 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I've reverted because Adrigo had it right. The intro is supposed to be a general overview, and all that can be said about atheism generally is that is an absence of theism. Asserting that atheism is a  belief that there are no gods while deprecating that it is simply the general absence of belief in a god or gods is pure POV. FeloniousMonk 16:20, 24 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: The dictionary  begs to differ.--chris.lawson 16:29, 24 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Sorry, but WP:RTA. We already discussed this ad nauseum for months nearly nine months ago and dictionary.com was trumped by more scholarly sources then, just as it is now. Prior discussions on this topic are found in archives 10, 11, and 12. FeloniousMonk 16:46, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

text: Atheism is characterized by an absence of theism, the belief in one or more gods. In its broadest sense, it refers to any general absence of belief in a god or gods, but is also often used to refer to an active belief that there are no gods. Though the term "atheist" necessarily represents people with a wide range of beliefs, many atheists share common concerns regarding evidence and the scientific method of investigation.
I want you to be as specific as possible. I still don't see how this violates what you fought so long for in the Talk archive. I suspect you and I probably agree more than we disagree, but I think there's some fundamental misunderstanding between us as to the meaning of what I've written. Could you please elabourate? Thanks.--chris.lawson 17:37, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

text: That passage is better. It does not demote the essential definition (the absence of belief) to a mere footnote of the narrow definition (assertion that no God exists), which was my objection all along to the versions I reverted. FeloniousMonk 19:08, 24 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Then why, when I reworded the intro like that, did you immediately revert it with the edit summary of rv. No, JimWae's version was better. Why do you insist on promoting atheism as a belief while deprecating its broader definition? The above text is copied and pasted directly from my diff.--chris.lawson 19:25, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

text: Atheism, in its broadest sense, is characterized by an absence of belief there might be gods, thus contrasting with theism.  Some insist that atheism is characterized by a belief there are no gods, but that ignores the fact that the one thing all atheists have in common is an absence of theism, an absence of belief that there might be gods. It should not be assumed that atheists will be in agreement on anything other than their mutual absence of theism, although atheists will often be found sharing common concerns regarding evidence and the scientific method of investigation.
# "absence of belief there might be gods" is NOT part of the literature on the subject & so is original research
# Many atheists DO believe "there MIGHT be gods", but just do not believe there ARE any
# "Some insist" is argumentative & does not ever mention who any of these "some" are
#"ignores the fact that" is editorial comment and so is POV
#"absence of theism, an absence of belief that there might be gods" is repetitive
#"there are no gods" may be seen as a denial of some previous assertion by someone, but it most certainly is also an assertion, just as saying a room is empty is an assertion. It is clearly within the accepted use of assertion to say "Thomas Jefferson did not write this paragraph is an assertion" - and by saying that, there is no implication that anyone has ever asserted he did (which is what "denying an assertion" usually suggests)
#"it should not be assumed" is editorial comment &, as such, POV
In summary, Adrigo's version certainly does NOT follow wikipedia guidelines as its author contended. I think someone who has been editing for just 6 days may not have a very clear idea on what wikipedia policies are --JimWae 23:23, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

text: Adrigo certainly seems to know how to count to 24 and understands the letter of the three-revert rule. I notice the fourth reversion came just three hours after the 24-hour limit expired.--chris.lawson 00:01, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: definition of theism

message: It reads:
:Atheism, in its broadest sense, is characterized by an absence of belief there might be gods, thus contrasting with theism.  Some insist that atheism is characterized by a belief there are no gods, but that ignores the fact that the one thing all atheists have in common is an absence of theism, an absence of belief that there might be gods. It should not be assumed that atheists will be in agreement on anything other than their mutual absence of theism, although atheists will often be found sharing common concerns regarding evidence and the scientific method of investigation.
# "absence of belief there might be gods" is NOT part of the literature on the subject & so is original research
# Many atheists DO believe "there MIGHT be gods", but just do not believe there ARE any
# "Some insist" is argumentative & does not ever mention who any of these "some" are
#"ignores the fact that" is editorial comment and so is POV
#"absence of theism, an absence of belief that there might be gods" is repetitive
#"there are no gods" may be seen as a denial of some previous assertion by someone, but it most certainly is also an assertion, just as saying a room is empty is an assertion. It is clearly within the accepted use of assertion to say "Thomas Jefferson did not write this paragraph is an assertion" - and by saying that, there is no implication that anyone has ever asserted he did (which is what "denying an assertion" usually suggests)
#"it should not be assumed" is editorial comment &, as such, POV
In summary, Adrigo's version certainly does NOT follow wikipedia guidelines as its author contended. I think someone who has been editing for just 6 days may not have a very clear idea on what wikipedia policies are --JimWae 23:23, 24 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Adrigo certainly seems to know how to count to 24 and understands the letter of the three-revert rule. I notice the fourth reversion came just three hours after the 24-hour limit expired.--chris.lawson 00:01, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  What is wrong with latest version by Adrigo (Sep 24) 

message: I notice the weak/strong distinction has been broken out and moved up the file. Nothing wrong with that, but I've just developed the definitions section so as to start to try to explain these terms with actual citations - which might cause problems for the notion that weak/strong and positive/negative are synonymous with implict/explicit.  Anyway, one thing I've done which I'd like to use to try to illustrate the meaning of all these terms, is a kind of typology of atheism in the broadest sense - what I thought of doing was using it as a way of showing which atheist writers are including what actual position in their typologies.  But I wonder if other people think it might be inappropriate or unhelpful or some other bad thing.  So I offer it here instead (all the positions can be clearly sourced and then linked to labels):
#A. Any activity, institution, theory, or object that does not involve an explicit affirmation or acknowledgement of the existence of god(s).
#B.	Those who are without theistic belief, but who have either not encountered any concept of God, or who have encountered theism, but have neither accepted it nor positively rejected it.  
##B1. Anyone who has suspended judgement on the question of the existence of God, for whatever reason, or who would say that they simply "don’t know" or cannot decide or are still investigating.  Encompasses all positions of undecided doubt. But not necessarily committed to the view that the question of whether there are gods can never be resolved, or that metaphysical knowledge is impossible. 
##B2. The apathetic or uninterested. People for whom the issue is not important. 
##B3. Anyone who has been brought up without knowledge of theism or concepts of god(s). This includes infants, and members of any human cultures that are without any concept of the divine. 
#C.	Those who reject theistic belief in the sense of an omnipotent, omniscient, loving, intelligent, creative and personal God, but who may maintain other, perhaps metaphysical, concepts of the divine.
##C1. religions, such as Buddhism and Confucianism, which do not require theistic belief in the traditional sense but which either do not completely exclude theism or uphold some form of non-anthropomorphic divinity. Buddhism for example. atheism(nontheist); 
##C2. Pantheism; 
##C3. Non-realists such as Paul Tillich, John Robinson, Don Cupitt –Christian Buddhism; adherents to Death of God Theology (as distinct from Altizer’s more literal Christian Atheism) and post-modern theology. Sea of Faith etc. atheism(post-theist); 
#D. Rejection of theism as a philosophical position, on the grounds that it is unintelligible, irrational, undesirable, or otherwise philosophically untenable. 
##D1. Rejection of belief in the existence of God on the grounds that theism is false. The view that it is irrational to believe that God exists because there is compelling reason to think that the existence of God is improbable or impossible. Often summarised as: "I think God does not exist."  Based on providing arguments against the existence of God. 
##D2. Rejection of belief, or the reasons for belief, in the existence of God on the grounds that the theist case is flawed or the evidence insufficient. The view that it is irrational to believe that any God exists because there is no good reason to think that any God exists. Would not say that there is compelling reason to think that the existence of God is improbable or impossible, and so often summarised as: "I don’t think God exists". Based on a critique of theistic arguments, and Flew’s presumption of atheism.
##D3. Rejection of belief in the existence of God on the grounds that theism is unintelligible or meaningless. Logical positivism, for example.  Contrasts with D1 and D2, which regard theism as meaningful, but may be seen as a subdivision of D2 by writers who are uninterested in the meaningful/meaningless factor.
##D4. Those who reject theism for philosophical reasons other than that there are good reasons for thinking that there is no God, or that existence of God is impossible, or that there are good reasons for rejecting belief in God. This would include those who think that theistic belief is morally or socially harmful or that theism is alienating, or take a reductionist approach a la Feuerbach, Marx and Freud (distinct from E). (However, it may also be that such atheists already regard the question as settled ,before embarking on their reductionist programme.  Reductionism follows rejection, it’s not a form of rejection.)
#E.	Rejection of theism on non-philosophical grounds, or for reasons other than that theism is unintelligible, untrue, irrational, or undesirable, perhaps for irrational reasons: 
##E1: Rejection of the existence, or belief in the existence, of god for personal or psychological reasons. These may be in terms of psychoanalytic concepts, perhaps because of a poor relationship with a father. Or they may be down to personal tragedy (“I can’t believe in god since my wife left me”), depression etc.
##E2. Rejection of the existence, or belief in the existence, of god for social or political reasons. Ie. xenophobia ("theism is a foreign import"); tradition ("my father was an atheist and his father before him was an atheist"); fear ("bad things will happen to me" - consequences); obedience ("Enver Hoxha says there is no god" – as distinct from covert theism)
##E3. antitheists (compare D4) who hold that theism has harmful social or political consequences, but who would not say that theism is harmful because it is not true, or that it is harmful because people believe it illegitimately. Need not take a view on the rationality or truth of theism.  May take the view that theism is subversive. Actual theological position is open. 
What you could then do is say "Smith calls position D "Critical atheism", Paul Edwards does not include A or B at all, and so forth.
Go on, shoot me down. --Dannyno 21:26, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  Yes, you're right, but it's not supposed to do any of that.  It's just a way of illustrating how the typologies of Smith, Martin, Edwards etc work and vary.  It's quite clear (and could be stated) that the categories are not mutually exclusive or even comprehensive. As lots of atheist writers point out (Nielsen does so explicitly), you can be one sort of atheist with respect to the gods of ancient rome, and another kind with respect to more metaphysical concepts of god. Bertrand Russell, for example, thought that the ordinary anthropomorphic God of christianity could be disproved, but that more modern concepts could not be. --Dannyno 14:49, 26 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Typologies

message: I agree that Baggini's version should be included somewhere. A "naturalistic atheism" section for example. Until my removal of the section, he was entirely in the "Is atheism a belief?" section, which doesn't do him justice. In fact that "naturalistic atheism" section, along with "Antitheism" and "Christian atheism", in my opinion belong in a "Types of atheism" section, following "Typologies of atheism" by order of importance. "God as a philosophical category" belongs there, too, as you realize when you read it. It then needs a more explicit name like "Theits who profess God does not exist", or something like that. (That last bit I'll do right, I think it's less controversial; that section felt really out of place).
I think this should be separate from a "defining atheism" section more focused on the evolution of the definition. "Defining atheism" would be placed after "Types of atheism", and would put the different types formerly exposed in a chronological and sociological perspective.
Antitheism deserves an article of its own, because there is a lot of information that shouldn't be lost here but the length of the section is exagerated: although many atheists qualify, most don't label themselves so and so I think a short paragraph explaining quickly what antitheism is and how important this is (with a link to the main article) would be more informative than that big chunk of text nobody would want to read.
Jules LT 21:54, 26 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  Yeah, I can go with these ideas. I raised article-izing antitheism above.  Your move of the god in philosophy section makes perfect sense, and we need to do more to bring out the positions of Tillich, Cupitt and Robinson et al, and why they are considered a species of atheist by some, but not by others. --Dannyno 11:54, 27 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  and the section on logical positivism belongs in the same place.  It's part of the Edwards-Nagel-Nielsen etc tripartite typology of rejectionism, and comes under one of Smith's three varieties of explicit critical atheism.  And the whole "meaningless" thing was commonly found in 19th century writers like Bradlaugh and before him Holyoake and no doubt others. --Dannyno 18:42, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

text:  And I've had a go at putting some of that "belief" section under definitions.  I wonder if the opening "Many, if not most, atheists have preferred" paragraph ought to go too? Although I think it is helpful.  I'm tempted to put the McTaggart reference back in, if so, as an example of an atheist of no small stature who was not a naturalist as normally understood (being a 'believer' in immortality).  Even George Bernard Shaw might qualify. --Dannyno 18:56, 27 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Reshaping "Defining Atheism"

message: *Weak atheism: the lack of belief in any god or gods, without a positive denial of the existence of any god or gods.
*Agnosticism: the philosophical view that the truth values of certain claims—particularly theological claims regarding the existence of God, gods, or deities—are unknown, inherently unknowable, or incoherent, and therefore, (some agnostics may go as far to say) irrelevant to life (and not only "unknowable, as the article says for the moment).
The last part is not for all agnostics, and "unknown" includes all agnostics even if some are more specific, so we have:
*Agnosticism: the philosophical view that the truth values of certain claims—particularly theological claims regarding the existence of God, gods, or deities—are unknown.
Now, I'd be inclined to say that all (explicit) weak atheists are agnostics and they'd become such as soon as they would contemplate their stance, right? And an agnostic is a weak atheist except if he holds a belief anyway, despite considering that the truth value of his belief is unknown (agnostic theism/agnostic atheism).
The bit on weak atheism and agnosticism badly needs reworking, but I'm still not sure what it should say. Please comment. Jules LT 22:53, 28 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I think you meant (implicit) weak atheists, right? FeloniousMonk 02:06, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  I think this is pretty clear, really.  Some positions which people call agnostic are considered by proponents of broadly defined atheism to be a form of weak atheism. To proponents of narrowly defined atheism, they constitute a form of "theism is not supported by the evidence" a la Bertrand Russell.  Where agnosticism means "suspension of judgement", it constitutes a form of weak atheism to the broadists and to the narrowists they will either call it some form of agnosticism or use the label nontheism.  By the way, I take "(explicit) weak atheist" to mean the variety of what Smith calls critical atheism that rejects theism but not because god does not exist.  I'm not sure what "implicit weak atheism" would be, unless you're distinguishing between those who have not consciously rejected theism and have never heard of it, and those who have heard of it but not consciously rejected it: but which would be the weak one?!?!?!  --Dannyno 09:53, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Distinction between [[weak atheism]] and [[agnosticism]]