Talk:Atheism

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[edit] questionable source

I removed this sentence from the section on "Criticism of Atheism" "This view has fallen into disfavor among most philosophers of religion." It refers to the belief that there are few or no true atheists. i read through the source and while agree the source denies the claim i didn't see where it says that "most" philosophers of religion agree with the source. in addition i didn't see where the source sited its sources. i would like you all to decide if the below source is acceptable and if the above sentence should be left in the article in its current forum.

Lowder, Jeffery Jay. Atheism and Society. Retrieved on 2006-10-21.
J.L.Main 00:54, 12 December 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Mediation still active?

There is a mediation request here that is still listed as "open". Is mediation still required here or can I close this case? --Ideogram 07:36, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

No, i think mediation is still required here. There are still massive issues with parts, namely definitions, that are being discussed to extreme lengths. The definiton (in the intro) is constantly undergoing changes. There seems to be little prospect of resolving any of these discussions on the definiton and coming to some conclusion. For the sake of getting an intro that is acceptible i think mediation is required as a starting point. Please dont close the case yet. Jarryd Moore 14:14, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Rewrite

On Nov 5 2006, JimWae posted an minor essay on talk Talk:Atheism/Archive_28#Problems_with_Intro_as_of_Nov_4. There is no support thus far for any of his ideas. JimWae, rather than write a mini-essay which rambles and does not make clear any of your proposed changes, please list a few changes below for discussion, and gain consensus before completely rewriting the article. Your essay had no suggested edits that I saw at all; it seemed to be a bit of a ramble and a rant. That few responded is not surprising. the three responses all used the word "problem" or "problematic". This is far from support. One puppy's opinion. KillerChihuahua?!? 10:13, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

  • You have misread the discussion, which you all too hastily archived. How about addressing the content of the changes - there was NO consensus for Nov4th version --JimWae 14:29, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
  • You seem to be of the opinion that there is some single correct definition that wikipedia must endorse--JimWae 14:36, 15 November 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Rewrite by JimWae

Atheism is the opposite of theism, and thus the opposite of belief that at least one deity exists. Atheism has been defined both narrowly and broadly, and most dictionaries use the word disbelief, which has meanings ranging from "lack of belief" to "doubt", "withholding of belief", "rejection of belief", "refusal to believe", and "denial". The narrowest definition of atheism includes as atheists only those who actively deny the existence of deities, and who would be willing to assert "There are no gods at all." A wider definition, explicitly included [1] by several encyclopedia and dictionaries, [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] includes as atheists all those without a belief in any deity, though not all would necessarily deny every possibility of the existence of some deity. Though few would describe themselves as such, many agnostics would be included under this wider definition of atheism. Also included would be any belief system (such as some forms of Buddhism) that does not maintain a belief in some god. Some usages exclude from this wider definition, those, such as small children and people in isolated tribes, who have simply never considered the existence of deities. --JimWae 15:47, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Is "not stamp collecting" the opposite of "stamp collecting"? If anything is the opposite of theism, it is antitheism. It may be more workable without your first sentence, but your conclusions about agnostics are worded poorly and unsubstantiated POV. The opening paragraph in the current article is better than your rewrite. *Spark* 16:16, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
Sentence one: Inaccurate, per Spark. Sentence two: rambling and incoherent. Sentence three: poorly phrased, and leaves out the distinction of strong vs. weak atheism, positive and negative atheism, which needs to be clearly delineated. Following that, a mess of dicdefs including a highly inaccurate one from the 1911 Enc. Brit, and one from the 1907 Catholic Enc. - not that I think they might be just a weeeee tad biased on the subject of non-belief in deities, mind you! Must I go on? Rhymezone, you actually used Rhymezone for yet another dicdef. KillerChihuahua?!? 22:08, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
For the reasons stated above, I don't consider this a good alternative for the current opening paragraph. Something similar to your last sentence should be included in the article though, if not already.Tuesday42 22:50, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
I agree about the first sentence - but we could simply remove it. Sentence two could be simlified to be less rambly, but I think it is a good thing to give the various definitions rather than jumping to conclusions about what they mean. I don't see why strong / weak definitions (or explicit / implicit, for that matter) needs to be in the introduction. In fact, I'd argue they should be left to the later section. On that note, as a result of recent edits, the current version has strong and weak defined incorrectly, since "former" now refers to disbelief, and gets labelled "strong", whilst weak is defined as "absence of belief". That's actually the definitions of explicit/implicit. I disbelieve, but I'm certainly not a strong atheist! Mdwh 22:51, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
It seems the strong/weak misdefinitions were due to a broken edit - I've fixed that now. But I still say that I'm not sure we need to, or should, define strong/weak in the intro. In particular, the entire rest of the paragraph from "The former, narrower usage..." onwards seems to just repeat what's already said using different labels, making the introduction unnecessarily lengthy. I'd be much more willing to favour this version over JimWae's if we simply got rid of that. Mdwh 22:57, 15 November 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Footnotes and citations

  1. ^ and included by implication in dictionaries that define atheism as disbelief in deities
  2. ^ The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy (2nd edition), 1999, Robert Audi editor: "the view that there are no gods. A widely used sense denotes merely not believing in God and is consistent with agnosticism..." entry by Louis P Pojman
  3. ^ Dictionary of Philosophy - Peter A Angeles, 1981: 1. the belief that gods do not, or God does not, exist; 2. The disbelief in any kind of supernatural existence that is supposed to affect the universe; 3. the lack of belief in a particular God
  4. ^ Dictionary of Philosophy - Dagobert D. Runes, 1962 edition: (a) the belief that there is no God; (b) Some philosophers have been called "atheistic" because they have not held to a belief in a personal God. Atheism in this sense means "not theistic". The former meaning of the term is a literal rendering. The latter meaning is a less rigorous use of the term though widely current in the history of thought - entry by Vergilius Ferm
  5. ^ http://www.ultralingua.com/onlinedictionary/index.html?action=define&ignoreaccents=on&wholewords=on&searchtype=stemming&text=atheism&service=english2english atheism: 1. A lack of belief in the existence of God or gods. 2. The doctrine or belief that there is no God
  6. ^ http://www.rhymezone.com/r/rhyme.cgi?Word=atheism atheism: a lack of belief in the existence of God or gods; the doctrine or belief that there is no God
  7. ^ http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Atheism 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica ATHEISM: literally a system of belief which denies the existence of God. The term as generally used, however, is highly ambiguous... dogmatic atheism is rare compared with the sceptical type, which is identical with agnosticism in so far as it denies the capacity of the mind of man to form any conception of God, but is different from it in so far as the agnostic merely holds his judgment in suspense, though, in practice, agnosticism is apt to result in an attitude towards religion which is hardly distinguishable from a passive and unaggressive atheism.
  8. ^ http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02040a.htm Catholic Encyclopedia Volume II, 1907 ...Thus, defined as a doctrine, or theory, or philosophy formally opposed to theism, atheism can only signify the teaching of those schools, whether cosmological or moral, which do not include God either as a principle or as a conclusion of their reasoning.

[edit] Looking for support

I am looking for support to the idea that religion should not be listed on the biographical entries for every American politician. In federal politicians. To me it's personal information that is irrelevant to our elected officials. There seem to be some users here who have taken it upon themselves to identify the religion of most federal office holders. One place this is evident is on the infoboxes, for example

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Infobox_Congressmanelect

and

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Infobox_Congressman

Don't know what your opinion on this might be, but looking for some support to try to take religion out of politics.--Utahredrock 21:28, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

I don't see how doing that will have the effect you want. I think any sort of information will help voters make a more informed decision, as religious affiliation is sometimes a good label to know what policies the candidate supports, among those even Separation of Church and State itself. This is specially relevant seeing as how the U.S. seems to consistently put "family values" issues on the ballot. Some people might be willing to vote on a candidate if they find out he comes from a more moderate sect, as opposed to some evangelical fundamentalist. I'm guessing some people on this discussion page might share those sentiments. Starghost (talk | contribs) 22:21, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
Despite separation of church and state, religious beliefs are relevant to biographical articles, including political biographies. -- Ec5618 22:23, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
Which congress web site is it listed ? If it is a variable listed for all members of congress (though it may be optional to fill in) then the template should reflect that. Weird how just that field would be asked for and yet sexual orientation is not an option yet !. I guess one prejudice at a time for such a nation. It would obviously be a brave congressperson who wrote in secular humanist or something like that - but it would probably be the first truthful entry in that field. Ttiotsw 22:59, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Neoatheism

Should neoatheism (or New Atheism) be mentioned? This article[1] use the term New Atheism, I was just wondering wether this is an unexplored branch within atheism that should be mentioned? --Jambalaya 13:26, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Seems like a neologism to me. Are there any books on the subject? Nick Graves 15:20, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
It's just a rhetorical term used by the author of the article to describe Dawkins, Dennett, Harris etc who have recently published stuff and been generally "outspoken". It's not a "branch", it's just a word used to denote some new books. --Dannyno 16:17, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
Anyway it fails notability. If you search google for the term and exclude the 800 or so results that are pointing to a website called neoatheism.com you are left with 24 results, and it seems they aren't talking about the same thing or are in chinese. One article written on wired is not enough to make the term worth of mention. Starghost (talk | contribs) 03:49, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Precision to the positive definition

I suggest that a precision be added to the positive definition in the article.

A big problem with this definition is that it basically say "to believe in the non existence of something", which is a non sense. According to its own definition, the word "believe" can only be used in a positive sense. This means that you can "believe" or "not believe" in the existence of something, but it's simply wrong to say "believe in the non exitence of something" which is contrary to the sense of the word "believe" and is a non sense, if not an absurdity of language.

Thus, saying that atheism is "the belief that no deities exist" is a misuse of the word "believe" and a non sense. The correct formulation being "absence of belief that deities exist", which precisely get back to the negative definition which is, strictly speaking, the only good and intelligible definition between the two. The positive definition is only a trick of words based on an apparently correct sentence that doesn't respect the sense of the word "believe". --CarlJF 20:46, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

No. This is the traditional definition of atheism. You can indeed believe in the nonexistence of something without it being "nonsense". That's assuming you use traditional meanings for atheism, god/gods, existence, etc. These are all well established in any English dictionary. Consider the statement, "Gods exist." The deist would believe the statement is true. The atheist would believe the statement is false (ie, no gods exist"). The agnostic would be the remainder who don't fall in either category (as I understand it). -- KarlHallowell 22:17, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Well, actually, the definition in my Webster for "believe" is: "To have faith in something". Which means that, basically, you can only have faith in a god. Having faith in no god is a non sense, since it simply means to you have no faith at all and thus, cannot believe in the first place. Accepting that someone could believe in nothing is as a nonsense as saying that a believer is, in fact, an unbeliever that simply don't believe in the non existence of a deity... Actually, the classical defintion of atheism is someone that doesn't believe in god, not someone that believe in the non existence of god. Again, if I look in the webster, atheism is define as "disbilief in the existence of god" and not "belief in the non existence of god". I know it may look like a semantic discussion, but it's important since the "believe" formulation lead to the paradox that atheism means "having a belief in something" although, by definition again, atheism means the exact opposite and "cannot believe". As for the statement "God exist", the theist will believe that it is true, but the atheist will think not believe that the statement is true. Atheist don't say they get their opinion based on some dogma or surnatural knowledge, which are acts of faith. Since they don't based their position on faith, but rather on the absence of convincing evidence, it simply is a nonsense to say that atheist "believe" in the non existence of god. Or, if you prefer, by defintion, you cannot believe in something in which you have no faith. You just "don't believe".--CarlJF 00:07, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

I don't think Webster, or any dictionary, can properly encompass deeper and philosophical views, as dictionaries mostly describe the common usage of a word, which is not always the most correct in an educated sense. After so much of this in the archives and countless people coming in to argue the very thing you just proposed, there should probably be a disclaimer on top of the page, perhaps along the stalled discussion one, making this clear for future editors venturing into the realm of dictionary definitions.
The way your dictionary clumps up atheists in one group fails to properly demonstrate the subtleties and variety in this form of world view. Starghost (talk | contribs) 01:54, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
CarlJF, I see no problem in believing or having faith in the nonexistence of a concept or entity. At the very least, the belief is in something, the logical statement, "Gods don't exist" rather than "nothing". Whether the belief-holder claims to found their beliefs on rational or dogmatic methods isn't relevant. So IMHO, strong atheism is a well-defined concept. I don't see any further point to arguing the nature of belief as it refers to this.
Starghost, I think the common dictionary versions should be mentioned first since it is absurd to ignore it. The more inclusive philosophical definition is notable if merely because for historical reasons and its current following. This strikes me merely as a not very deep semantics issue, but I recognize that I can be mistaken here. I see no problem with being comprehensive since that will fulfill NPOV goals. I just don't want the article sacrificed to dubious motives. -- KarlHallowell 05:38, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
If people are looking for dictionary definitions they should go to Wiktionary. Not all dictionary definitions are as poorly stated as the one from his dictionary either, and for the lack of uniformity, and for the fact that this is an encyclopedia, I think an encyclopedic view is the most appropriate. It is not merely a shallow semantics issue, if you saw the repeated discussion banner on the top of the page and the tons of people who come here giving the most absurd definitions of atheism in the archives of this discussion you would understand. The most obvious problem with these definitions is that it clumps weak, strong, and all sorts of atheists into a single type. I doubt Sunnis and Shiites would enjoy being clumped toghether, as Catholics, Protestants and Mormons wouldn't either. As far as I know NPOV goals are being fullfilled and everything is being comprehensive. I don't want the article sacrificed because of people trying to distort poor dictionary definitions. Starghost (talk | contribs) 17:26, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Positive and negative definition sections

I think the intro is great now, but I've been looking at the sections: "Positive definition: the belief that no deities exist" and "Negative definition: the absence of belief in deities", but I'm wondering - what about the (common) definition of "a conscious rejection of belief"? This is covered in the negative section (which makes sense - it's still a "negative" definition), however, in that case the heading shouldn't just be "the absence of belief in deities".

Also, several places in these two sections suggest that the positive definition is what dictionaries / public majority use, and the negative is rarely used, but, as we have stated in the intro, the "conscious rejection" definition is commonly used (i.e., explicit weak).

So I would suggest either:

  • Change the negative heading to "Negative definitions", and then change the claims about how common definitions are to make it clear that it's only a simple absence of belief which is not common.
  • Have three sections, so we can clearly cover each in its own right.

Thoughts? Mdwh 17:11, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Do you think the word, "negative" may carry some perceptual baggage? 69.6.162.160 01:30, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Rewording of sentence

The last sentence of "Types and typologies of atheism" is "This definition is used by some atheists, however; philosopher and atheist Theodore Drange uses the narrow definition."

Maybe this would be better and shorter if reworded to: "This definition is used by some atheists for example philosopher Theodore Drange."

As non-native Englisch speaker I would like to have someone else's opinion before changing it.

Pukkie 07:48, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

The current wording is clumsy, yes. I would suggest a change to "However, this definition is used by some atheists, such as philosopher Theodore Drange". -Switch t 11:58, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
a bit slow but: done. Used wording of Switch. Pukkie 06:52, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Some people erroneously believe...

I deleted the word "erroneously". If some people actually believe this, then I don't think it is up to Wikipedia to say they are wrong. Of course, the whole sentence is unreferenced - if someone wants to resolve the point by deleting the sentence in its entirely on the basis that it is original research or fails to describe a significant viewpoint, then I'm fine with that. Metamagician3000 07:09, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

Actually I think this is a simple factual question, and I don't have a problem with the article stating that atheism does not, in fact, imply anti-theism or anti-religion. Unfortunately, if it's stated without context or a reference, the choice to include this fact could be considered POV. MFNickster 18:12, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Definition of atheism should use major Encyclopedias of Philosophy definitions

The definition of atheism should use major Encyclopedias of Philosophy definitions. Here is what I suggest having as opening to the article and it will give it some historical perspective as well:

According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy atheism "means the negation of theism, the denial of the existence of God." [2] Similarly, according to the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, probably the preeminent reference tool for philosophy, "Atheism is the position that affirms the nonexistence of God. It proposes positive belief rather than mere suspension of disbelief." [3] In addition, recently there have been a number of attempts by atheists to redefine the meaning of atheism in order to shift the burden of proof in relation to the question of the existence of God. [4] Atheism is derived from the Greek word "atheos" - "a" meaning no or without and "theos" meaning God.[5] 128.205.191.50 19:27, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Both definitions describe atheism as the denying the existence of 'God' with a capital 'G' - usually a reference to the Christian God, making the definitions too narrow. The current 'deity or deities' is better. The Routledge entry describes it as 'positive belief rather than mere suspension of disbelief'. This has been much debated on this talk page and while I initially disagreed, I have been convinced that a certain sort of suspension of disbelief is a legitimate secondary definition of atheism. This definition is given the appropriate second-place in the opening paragraph and is sufficiently backed up with references. So, ultimately, Wikipedia is actually doing better than either encyclopaedia - not surprisingly, such encyclopaedias are rarely word-for-word fantastic sources (have you ever seen the editorial chaos that goes into making them?!); each entry is usually written by one authority (or semi-authority) and no editor is under the illusion that other equally eminent authorities might disagree with its content. Dast 19:59, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
First, Wikipedia should not simply replicate information from other encyclopaediae. Nor is it a dictionary. Second, the assertion that "Atheism ... proposes positive belief rather than mere suspension of disbelief" is contended by many, and is neither the original definition nor the definition according to most atheists and atheist organisations, which tend to go with the "lack of belief" definition. Third, the statement that "recently there have been a number of attempts by atheists to redefine the meaning of atheism in order to shift the burden of proof in relation to the question of the existence of God" is absurd, biased and unnecessarily verbose. -Switch t 04:42, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
Both encyclopaedia definitions quoted by 128.205.191.50 appear to be simply wrong or outdated. This suggestion appears to be a back door approach to elevating the status of God ("theos" means god rather than God), and can probably be safely ignored. -- Scjessey 15:21, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
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