Talk:Weak atheism

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[edit] This term is in use

This term is definitely in use, and is featured on every main atheist or atheistic website: please do some research.


Is this term actually in use or did the author of this stub invent it?

It turns up some Google hits. - Hephaestos 03:12, 15 Oct 2003 (UTC)

How is a "negative atheist" different from an agnostic? Near as I can tell it's the same thing, with perhapse a difference in emphesis. -- stewacide 03:38, 15 Oct 2003 (UTC)

They are not quite the same. A "negative atheist" does not believe in god. An "agnostic" is either not certain or believes the existence of god is unknowable. Daniel Quinlan 07:25, Nov 13, 2003 (UTC)
An agnostic can also be a theist while a "weak" atheist can not. There is such a thing as Christian Agnosticism after all. LucaviX 07:25, Sep 04, 2005 (UTC)

I have heard the term weak atheism used to describe this more often than negative atheism. Same for strong atheism and positive atheism. Google seems to back this up:

  • 772 hits for "weak atheism"
  • 826 hits for "strong atheism"
  • 7,010 hits for "positive atheism"
  • 273 hits for "negative atheism"

The discreprancy with "positive atheism" is, I believe, due to a web site named that for other reasons, not because it is about strong atheism. They even use the terms "strong" and "weak":

http://www.positiveatheism.org/faq/faq1111.htm#STRONGORWEAK

Therefore, I am moving these articles. Daniel Quinlan 07:25, Nov 13, 2003 (UTC)

[edit] Isnt weak atheism the same as agnostic atheism?

Am I wrong? If not, Then shouldnt the Agnostic Atheism article be merged with this one?

No, it's not the same. The claims made are different. Of course, many weak atheists are also agnostics, but it is not required. A weak atheist may, while not believing in God(s), might hold the view that the existence or non-existence of God is knowable, and thus not be an agnostic. --RLent 16:00, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Talk:atheism

check out the archives on talk atheism too. there is ALOT of debate on this one. Jack 05:22, 29 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Maybe mention the parallel to the strong vs weak anthropic principle?

[edit] atheism IS weak atheism

In over 10 years of working directly with many atheists, I've never heard this distinction made.

Try the atheism Usenet newsgroups, that's one place I know of offhand were it comes up fairly frequently. At least it did back when I hung out there, I haven't for years. Bryan 02:55, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)

The atheist vs. agnostic distinction comes up of course, but not this "strong" vs "weak" atheist -- not in any discussions I've had, nor in books and periodicals I've read.

All atheists, including myself, would fall under the "weak atheist" definition. This "strong" atheist conception is a strawman.

So what would you call someone who states categorically that they know, with certainty, that there is no god? Note, BTW, that the article as it's currently written already agrees with you to some degree - it says that according to some interpretations all strong atheists are also weak atheists, they just have an additional belief (the non-existence of god) layered on top of the weak-atheism "default." Bryan 02:55, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)

The terms "strong" and "weak" sound perjorative. You don't suppose that it comes from theists, do you? ("He's a weak atheist. We'll convert him." "She's a strong atheist. I wouldn't bother arguing with her.")

I prefer "implicit" and "explicit" myself, but unfortunately these are the most common terms for these positions so I think that's what Wikipedia should use. The articles do mention "positive" and "negative" atheism as alternatives, though. Bryan 02:55, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)

The burder of proof is on the theist to prove a positive assertion about a god. As such, atheism is a negative position, i.e. lack of god belief. It's not an assertion about whether a god exists.

Agnosticism is not a weaker position than atheism; in fact, one can be both an atheist and an agnostic at the same time!!! An agnostic is someone who asserts that we cannot know. That is, in many ways, a more "positive" or "strong" position than an atheist, who simply doesn't believe.

Bertrand Russell said that in layman's terms he was an atheist, but that to philosophers, he was an agnostic. This probably meant that he was sure he had no god belief, and that the general public should consider him an all-out atheist, but that to philosophers who used the common but incorrect definition of an atheism as a positive assertion that god doesn't exist, he would rather be put in the "agnostic" camp, because he was not making a positive assertion about gods, only about human knowledge perhaps.

I'm an atheist because I don't believe in a god. I'm an agnostic because I think we cannot know. I'm a secular humanist because I think human needs are more important than dieties'. I'm a freethinker because I am not constrained by dogma. So I'm a freethinking secular humanist agnostic atheist. No contradictions.

An atheist can also be religious or mystical -- he/she simply doesn't believe in a theistic, personal god or gods. It does not necessarily mean they subscribe to one particular school of thought (e.g. Richard Dawkins), or that they consider rationality good and mysticism bad, science good and religion bad, etc. It simply means they don't believe in gods. Period.

I'm not sure why you think the current article disagrees with any of that. It clearly states that agnosticism is a related but separate issue, and it doesn't many any connection at all between atheism and freethought, secularism or humanism. Bryan 02:55, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Agnostic Theist?

What about a person that believes that there is a god(s), but also believes we cannot know if there is or not?

They'd be agnostic theists. What about them? Bryan 02:55, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)

[edit] This article contradicts the current definition at atheism, as well as dictionary definitions and common usage

If the term 'weak atheism' is cognate with 'negative atheism', this article is mistaken. Regardless, common usage (outside of conservative churches), as well as dictionary definitions require an active stance of the individual or organisation to be labelled atheist, not a passive stance. This article suggests that babies and rocks are weak atheists, which I believe most people would find bemusing. If it is not clear that all atheism, weak or strong, positive or negative requires an active disbelief in God, then there are definately differing POV concerning the issue - in which case this article is at fault for lacking a NPOV. (20040302)

There was a discussion about this subject over on Talk:Strong atheism recently. Can't give a very specific link since there weren't many headers used, unfortunately. Anyway, Sam provided a couple of references which he claimed indicated that the "passive lack-of-belief" people weren't atheists, but which to me seemed to clearly include both kinds of atheism and make a distinction between them. so if you're claiming the same thing I'm going to want to see some basis a bit more solid than "I believe most people would find [this definition] bemusing", please. For example, what would you call someone who passively lacks belief in any gods? Bryan 23:37, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)

User:20040302 is correct. Passive non-believers are agnostics. Sam [Spade] 00:21, 22 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Sez you. :) Now there's a discussion of this subject going on at Talk:Atheism as well, I'd suggest everyone go over there to keep the argument centralized. Bryan 00:28, 22 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Well, I don't think that passive non-believers are agnostices either. But I agree with Bryan - and have moved the scope of this onto Talk:Atheism. In short, I would call e.g. A baby neither an atheist NOR an agnostic. I would say that a baby is merely unaware. The term I have suggested for those who do not feel that either term apply to them, is 'silent'. It is a neologism, and I am aware of that; I prefer to leave such naming out of it, as I consider the theist/atheist dichotomy to be merely a cultural artifact. (20040302)
I think there is confusion here about the distinction between active and passive. The distinction being made between strong and weak atheism is that the former actively believe that God doesn't exist, whilst the latter simply don't believe in God. If there is any active position in being an atheist, it would be that the person has considered the question of God's existance. I've considered the question, and decided that no, I don't believe. So I'm an atheist. But a rock or a baby has never even considered the question, which is why one could argue they aren't atheists.
The only "active" stance required by an atheist is that they state "I don't believe in God", not that they actively believe God doesn't exist. The article doesn't even use the terms active/passive. As for the dictionary, the definition from answers.com is "One who disbelieves or denies the existence of God or gods.". "Deny" would imply a strong atheist position, but "Disbelieve" is the weak atheist position; it means "To withhold or reject belief" which is not an active belief that God doesn't exist. Mdwh 01:38, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Weak atheism is not equivalent to irreligious

I removed the following from the page:

It is equivalent to the term nontheism or irreligious.

The reason is that many strong atheists do not call themselves religious (so they see themselves irreligious as well). As far as I can tell from these articles, the difference between strong atheism and weak atheism is the strength of ones non-belief in deities. I believe we have all heard of either the invisible pink unicorn or the Dr. Peter Atkin's tea pot in orbit around pluto analogy. What these analogies show is that a strong disbelief in a unsubstansiated claim is not the same as religious dogma. The disbelief of a strong atheist is skepticism. Skepticism is not irrational, nor is it religious. millerc 20:30, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)

BTW, I agree to a large extent with the anon post above. I think the seperation between weak and strong atheism is contrived. Depending on the way I look at it, I could either be a weak atheist or a strong atheist. I could say that I don't have any personal concept of a deity, so I'm a weak atheist; however, I also believe there to be no real evidence in support of any of the god concepts I've heard so far, so I'm actively skeptical and am a strong atheist.

The problem comes from the word deity/god for which there is no absolute definition, but rather the defining characteristics of a deity are arbitrarily assigned by different theists (or even by the same theist in different situations). I had a friend who pointed this out to a Christian who insisted that we all just knew what God was, by wrapping his arm around a TV and saying "hello God..." While being actively skeptical of her (the Christian's) concept of a deity, my friend pointed out that he need not have any positive concept of a deity.

Although I agree that the terms weak and strong have been applied to atheism and thus deserve articles, I think somewhere (the main atheism article probably) we need to explain that the terms may be somewhat ill defined. I want to be careful about "original research", so I'm posting my thoughts here in hope that someone knows an article or a thinker who's said all this before (I consider atheism to be nothing more than a statement of what I don't believe rather than a statement of what I do believe, so I care very little about what other atheists think). millerc 21:29, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)

There's been a debate raging on Talk:Atheism for the past month on this very subject, hopefully it'll wrap up soon. It seems to be leaning in a direction along these lines, developing an intro section and a weak/strong atheism section that describes the various interpretations and shades of ambiguity. Bryan 01:40, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)

[edit] What is the logic for this as a separate article?

Why are there separate articles for weak atheism and strong atheism? Shouldn't these terms simply be discussed in the context of the atheism article? It is like having separate articles on coins, heads-side of coins, and tails-side of coins. What information would you put here that you wouldn't also put in the atheism article? Another major problem is that the three articles can be using inconsistent definitions of 'weak' and 'strong', making the Wikipedia look non-authoritative. For example, as I write this, the main article and this article have different definitions of weak atheism. --BM 23:44, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)

The main atheism article deals with an overview of atheism as a whole, including historical events, organizations, movements, diverse usages, etc. These two separate articles focus on two very specific shades of atheism rather than the concept as a whole. This allows us to go into great detail here in these sub-articles without cluttering up the overview article (which is already 20 kilobytes). Bryan 01:56, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)
What is the maximum length an article is supposed to be? There are certainly much longer articles than Atheism. Actually, I was planning on expanding it considerably with a lot of information on the intellectual history of Atheism, from classical times down through the 19th century free-thinkers, and possibly into the 20th century. I don't really want to put all this in a separate "History of Atheism" article. --BM 02:22, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)
There isn't any "hard" limit set in the guidelines, as far as I know, but once a page gets longer than 32 kilobytes some browsers break when they try to edit the whole thing (though section editing should still work fine) and it just generally gets to be a rather cumbersome bit of text. You were complaining about excessive wordiness over in the Abraham Kovoor article, for example; it's that sort of thing. If you've got enough new material to add to make for a reasonable History of Atheism article, why wouldn't you want to create one? It's quite common for large, general articles to start splitting sections off into more specialized sub-articles like that, leaving brief summaries behind in the main article along with a note like "see History of Atheism for more detail". Bryan 02:29, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)


[edit] Strong/weak to explicit/implicit

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)

Indeed, though it should be noted that Google suggests that "negative atheism" is even more commonly used (same for "positive atheism" vs. "strong atheism" - and both terms also have the advantage of not having the negative connotation of "weak", or the positive one of "strong"!). It also seems that "soft atheism" and "hard atheism" are pretty common phrases as well, and should probably be included as alternate names for these types of atheism too. The Google results I got were:
implicit atheism explicit atheism = 56,300
implicit atheism = 128,000
explicit atheism = 211,000
soft atheism hard atheism = 204,000
soft atheism = 272,000
hard atheism = 2,130,000
weak atheism strong atheism = 319,000
weak atheism = 440,000
strong atheism = 1,350,000
negative atheism positive atheism = 380,000
negative atheism = 485,000
positive atheism = 1,350,000
Interesting, ne? -Silence 11:12, 10 September 2005 (UTC)
Those numbers include hits for all terms, not the exact phrases. A more relevant and accurate set of numbers come from searching for the exact phrase. Instead of 485,000 hits for negative atheism, searching for the exact phrase using the the quote operator, "negative atheism" yields only 645 hits [1].
implicit atheism = 586
explicit atheism = 701
weak atheism = 11,100
strong atheism = 14,400
negative atheism = 645
positive atheism = 147,000 (results higher because of the Positive Atheism Movement)
FeloniousMonk 00:04, 11 September 2005 (UTC)
Ah, sorry; you're right. Though "soft atheism" and "hard atheism" still merit inclusion, I'd say - they get 946 hits and 512 hits. -Silence 00:13, 11 September 2005 (UTC)
One thing that nobody has noticed in all this implicit/explicit vs positive/negative or strong/weak discussion is that, assuming the terms implicit and explicit are derived from the work of George H Smith, they are not necessarily synonymous with positive/negative etc at all. Smith uses implicit to mean an absence of belief without conscious rejection (what others might call nontheism), and explicit to mean absence through conscious rejection: and he further subdivides explicit atheism depending on the grounds for the rejection. If the grounds are rational, then it is what he calls "critical atheism", itself further subdivided into a 'weaker' form (I don't believe in god) and a 'stronger' form (god doesn't exist). This to me is symptomatic of a generally very very poor engagement of all the entries about types of atheism with the actual literature. --Dannyno 20:14, 12 September 2005 (UTC)
Indeed, the atheism article defines implicit atheism as you say, being a subset of weak atheism, but this article claims they mean the same thing. I don't know which is correct. Mdwh 23:57, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
This article claims they mean the same thing because it's wrong. I took the time to fix Strong atheism quite a few months ago so it would be more accurate and no just parrot a common error, but I never got around to fixing this article. Use Strong atheism as a guide if you want a source for improvements and corrections. -Silence 03:16, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Lack of belief?

See talk on Atheism.--Ben 22:26, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] weak atheism is a paradox

lack of belief in something is the belief in the inexistence of that something.

look how silly it reads: "I don't believe there's god but I do believe there may be god."

If you believe there "may" be god how can you say you don't believe in god? it's one or the other.

so, I tend to think the whole idea of "soft atheism" is just created by people that were calling themeselves atheists but they really meant skeptics, agnostics or something else anyway :)

It's possible that we may be living in a computer simulation like the Matrix. Agreed? If so, does this mean you believe we are living inside a computer simulation?
The concept was probably created in response to people who continually demanded that atheists prove their "belief". In my experience, it's usually that people call themselves skeptics or agnostics, when they should really be using atheist (especially with respect to agnosticism, which is a different concept altogether). Mdwh 21:07, 16 May 2006 (UTC)
I think so too that agnosticism is discussing the matter from a different angle but I can't see much difference between what "soft atheism" is trying to do and what skepticism is all about when it comes to theology, i.e. isn't soft atheism in that logic merely 'thelogic skepticism'?
Most people, particularly those with scientific training, would argue that a negative is unprovable. Thus, people may say "I deem it unlikely that a god might exist, due to the lack of evidence, but cannot rule out the possibility." The Matrix analogy above shows this perfectly. I find the term "weak atheist" fits my beliefs perfectly, so I use it. --Sir Ophiuchus 13:47, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
This belief ("I deem it unlikely that God exists") is not what distinguishes weak and strong atheism, according to the article. If you hold that the difference between weak and strong atheism is [bel(~God exists)] and [~bel(God exists)], respectively (which is ridiculous, but that's what the article seems to suggest), then nothing is to be said about whether one sort of atheism "rules out the possibility"--both deny the existence of God, are equivalent, and say nothing of whether it's possible for there to be a God (as would something like [bel(God cannot exist)]). Nothing about "strong" atheism as defined denies the feasibility or possibility of God--this would be tantamount to knowledge of God and further to have proved a negative, and to claim to have done so would be disengenuous.
Take the Matrix proposition above. The belief [bel(~matrix)] is "I believe the Matrix doesn't exist". It hasn't a thing to say about whether the Matrix is possible, only a state of belief--a guess at the truth value of the set "The Matrix" of propositions--over whether it is actual. Strong and weak atheism are vaguely dissimilar at best, and in all likelihood identical in that I can't fathom a situation where one would be compelled to strong atheism without also being compelled to weak atheism, and vice verse. Saying "I deem it unlikely that God exists" certainly doesn't translate to [~Bel(God exists)], though unfortunately it seems to parse as just that for some people (it's more like [bel(p)] where p is "It's unlikely that God exists"). This article needs a criticism section.Rapespider 16:44, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Merger

Since strong atheism and weak atheism are such closely-related terms (it is impossible to understand one without the other), with so much overlapping information, and since there is so little information on them (weak atheism is a stub, and strong atheism would probably be too if we removed all the unsourced statements), I suggest that the two be merged into a single article for Strong and weak atheism, on the same principle by which eutheism and dystheism were merged into Eutheism and dystheism. (And by which I plan to make a new article, Implicit and explicit atheism, if there is any support for this.) It will centralize the articles' information more, thus improving consistency and accessibility and overall benefiting our readers more. -Silence 15:36, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

I quite like this idea. --Dannyno 10:05, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
Ditto.Starghost (talk | contribs) 00:34, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
It would certainly make it easier for the "anti-atheists" to vandalize Atheist articles if they were all in one place! Otherwise, not a bad idea. HybridRed 19:09, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
I think that's an argument in favour though - it would be easier for us to watch out for vandalism (and more generally, easier to track and manage the articles if they are merged). Mdwh 19:19, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
Good point well made, Mdwh. HybridRed 19:32, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
Yes, why not, compare and contrast the two approaches in a single article. Go for it! Poujeaux 17:27, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
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