Atheist or Agnostic?

I think it would be more accurate to say that there is a significant overlap between weak atheism and agnosticism, to the point that (IIRC) Huxley's original definition of agnosticism was largely the same as what we would now call weak atheism.

The way I'm reading it, "positive", in that sense, means "active". A positive atheist (who may also, confusingly, be called a strong atheist) is one who actively believes in the non-existence of God. They may still be agnostic - that is, they may still be open to the possibility of being proven wrong - but unlike the negative atheist who merely does not believe in any gods, the positive atheist actively disbelieves.

Dawkins' definitions of strong and weak atheism are then an alternative form of categorisation, based on the notion that a person either believes or does not, and either is certain or is not, and that whether they hold their beliefs actively or passively is less useful information (or possibly even meaningless; I'm not sure how strong Dawkins' objection to the positive/negative groupings actually is).

edited 7th Jun '11 4:53:18 PM by BobbyG

I am not a native speaker of English either, but I'm fairly certain that in the case of "positive atheism", the third definition here is the relevant one.

Wait, how do you actively believe or disbelieve anything? Isn't belief a passive property of a person's mind?

Active belief isn't a concept that I immediately remember having ever come across.

Actually, that definition made me understand what Bobby meant.

edited 7th Jun '11 4:55:47 PM by BestOf

I suppose, then, that negative atheists presumably overlap with apatheists and people who are entirely unfamiliar with the concept of theism.

^ Positive belief: I believe this.

Negative belief: I do not positively disbelieve this.

ninja edit'd

edited 7th Jun '11 4:56:27 PM by BobbyG

I prefer the terms soft/hard to weak/strong or positive/negative personally.

Is a soft atheist a negative atheist or a Dawkinsian weak atheist?

...There's quite a number of conflicting definitions on all of this that it's rather annoying.

This article can be read in two very distinct ways - either it's about atheists who are "out" and ones that don't make their beliefs public, or it's about people who are sure that there's no god and people who are unsure but guessing that there isn't one. The words "positively" and "commit" are both appropriate for both readings.

But in the case that this article intends to discuss "public" and "private" atheism, shouldn't the next bit ("Just as one might be unsure about whether extraterrestrial intelligent species exist or not, one may be unsure about whether a god exists.") be a separate paragraph or part of another paragraph?

As it is, it looks like it's explaining the position of a weak atheist, as it comes right after the definition. Well, upon closer inspection, it doesn't, but at least it fooled me the first couple of times I read it.

Of course, I never read the article before I was already exposed to Dawkins' definitions, so I'm biased like that.

Wikipedia again:

The same applies here. The way you read "maintain" and "claim" makes all the difference.

Well, looks like I've been using Dawkins' definitions the whole time. So I guess you can ignore most of my posts in the last 3 pages or so. At least I got my definitions fixed.

I'm still gonna use Dawkins' definitions in most conversations, but apparently I'm gonna have to make sure to mention it, as Dawkins's definitions are apparently not the most commonly used ones, after all.

So, under these definitions, I'm a Dawkinsian weak atheist but also a strong atheist in the sense that I easily make my atheism known and are willing to discuss and debate the probability of the existence of supernatural deities.

edited 7th Jun '11 5:12:08 PM by BestOf

OK, so to summarise:

• An atheist is one who does not believe in any gods. Atheism can be explicit or implicit.
  • An explicit atheist is one who consciously rejects belief in any gods. An explicit atheist may be positive or negative.
    • A positive atheist, also called a hard atheist or a strong atheist (but see below) believes that no gods exist.
      • A strong atheist, in the sense that Richard Dawkins uses the term, is a positive atheist who is certain that no gods exist.
  • A negative atheist, also called a soft atheist or a weak atheist, may be explicit or implicit.
    • An explicit negative atheist consciously rejects belief in any gods.
      • A weak atheist, or atheist agnostic, does not believe in any gods because they see no reason to believe in them, but does not rule out the possibility of gods existing.
    • An implicit atheist is a negative atheist who does not consciously reject belief in any gods, but simply does not believe. They may simply not be familiar with the concept of theism, or they may not think about it.
• An apatheist doesn't care. Are they atheist or agnostic? Who cares! They don't.
• An agnostic doesn't know.
  • A weak agnostic, or soft agnostic, is one who does not know whether or not any gods exist, but is open to the possibility of an answer being proven. A weak agnostic may be atheistic or theistic.
  • A strong agnostic, or hard agnostic, believes that we can't know whether or not any gods exist.
• An antitheist believes that theism is harmful. The term is also sometimes applied to misotheists (below).
  • A misotheist or maltheist believes that God is bad, or that gods in general are bad. A misotheist may be theistic (see dystheism below), or may simply dislike gods as one might dislike fictional characters.
  • A post-theist believes that theism is a valid source of morality, but will become superfluous and can be abandoned in future.
• A theist believes in at least one god.
  • A strong theist is certain that at least one god exists.
  • A weak theist believes that at least one god exists, but is not absolutely certain. This is a form of agnosticism.
  • A polytheist (may be strong or weak) believes in multiple gods.
    • A henotheist believes in multiple gods but worships only one God.
      • A monolatrist believes in multiple gods but believes that only one God is worthy of worship.
  • A monotheist (may be strong or weak) believes that there is only one God.
    • A deist is a specific type of monotheist who believes in a non-interventionist creator God.
    • A pantheist believes that the universe is God.
    • A panentheist believes that God is in all things.
    • A dystheist believes that God is bad.
    • A eutheist believes that God is good.
  • A duotheist believes in two gods.
    • A bitheist believes in two gods in harmony with one another.
    • A ditheist believes in two gods in opposition to one another.
• An animist believes that everything has a soul or spirit.
• An ignostic, or igtheist, believes that all the other positions regarding theism assume too much.
  • A theological noncognitivist believes that such positions are essentially meaningless, and that "god" is merely a word which denotes no actual concept.

Additionally, a person may be religious or irreligious depending on whether they belong to a religious movement or not. Some religions are theistic, others are atheistic, and others may be compatible with either.

Any objections/corrections/disagreements?

Edit: updated the theists section.

edited 7th Jun '11 6:27:47 PM by BobbyG

FWIW The reason behind all this stuff, (and it probably predates The God Delusion...I know that over a decade ago in alt.atheism we hammered out the same things) is to explain to people that atheism is NOT an "arrogant" position. Or at least not usually so. We're not saying that we're 100% sure that there are no god(s), we're saying that there's no reason for us to believe that there are god(s). That's why all this came about in the first place.

The defining is a defensive action, more or less.

The problem is that there ARE some atheists out there who talk like they're 100% sure, and people who know that proving it is basically impossible want to differentiate ourselves from them.

Back then, as soft and hard were confusing, the accepted label was Atheist Agnostic. Full stop.

Now, if you're talking about the "leaders" of the "New Atheist" movement, they're all a bunch of atheist agnostics, pretty much all the way down. They differ on the percentages that they'd give, or what evidence they would accept. (Some say that obvious proof of divinity might be something else. Like space aliens trying to take advantage of our beliefs)

It's pretty easy. Anybody who knows anything about the philosophy of atheism, (not that one has to or even one that one should. It is what it is) is probably going to be an atheist agnostic, to some degree.

Apparently, I still didn't get what was originally meant when you said "positive" and "strong" means. So it's not about whether or not you're open about it, but is is indeed about the "strength" of the belief?

"Atheist agnostic" makes sense. That's a good definition. Why isn't it used more?

edited 7th Jun '11 5:34:15 PM by BestOf

Thanks, Bobby! That's a very good, clear summary. I'll probably refer to it in the future for when my friends and I get into semantics arguments.

Yeah, the idea is that "strong" atheism is basically saying that there's no way gods can possibly exist I know it, and weak atheism is simply not believing in gods.

^^ Because sometimes some apatheistic agnostics get bitchy about being lumped together with atheists who think that theism is something that actually has a big influence on our world.

Edit:Bobby, you're missing just a general "Weak Atheist", that is an atheist who thinks that although you can't disprove the existence of deities, however doesn't see any reason to believe int hem.

edited 7th Jun '11 5:38:19 PM by Karmakin

I object to anything not written in E-Prime.

Looks good to me.

edited 7th Jun '11 5:37:34 PM by Justice4243

Doesn't that mean that I was right all the time except when I chanced my definitions?

I'm too tired for this (it's 03:37 here). I'll read what becomes of this thread tomorrow.

Maybe animism can go there somewhere? Doesn't look bad in any case.

Yeah Best Of, At least to me you've been pretty much right all along. The thing is, definitions are a tricky sort, and something that's very difficult to come to any sort of agreement on. (Because EVERYTHING depends on them)

Truth be told, I strongly believe that in a lot of ways, atheism as a philosophy is gibberish, because theism is gibberish in and of itself. You can't nail the basic definitions down. It's like trying to nail jello to the wall.

Theism is not gibberish. I rather resent that.

Added weak atheism/atheist agnosticism (those are different terms for the same thing, right?) and animism.

Question time!

Is there any specific word or series of words for the clusterfuck of beliefs Buddhist cosmology has on gods? There is a lack of a supreme creator god (due to lack of proof and knowledge), but there are entire races of beings called gods. Gods being defined as beings that are longer lived, more powerful than humans, and exist in a blissful state in some other realm of existence. These gods called devas often don't fuck with humanity. In fact many deva don't give a damn about humanity at all. They're too busy playing in their space mansions and having god sex to care. The deva in the lower god realms do though. They have a greater capacity for empathy than their brethren in the higher realms. There are also asura who are prideful gods that seem to be constantly pissed about something or other. Their interactions with humanity tend to be violent and bad.

Some of the deva also exist both as a physical being and as a mental state or various mental states and so on. And the Bodhisatta gods are both gods and the embodiment of some...thing. Like Guanyin and mercy and compassion.

So gods are...

• Not all powerful
• Many
• Most are non-interventionist
• Not all are worshiped by Buddhists, in fact most aren't even named
• Anyone can become a god
• There are two classes. Blissful devas and prideful asura
• Gods can die

edited 7th Jun '11 5:53:00 PM by Aondeug

Nah, pretty sure theism and religion lend themselves quite well to philosophy.

Just remembered, Misotheism is similar to some of the things in the list. Also: Antitheist.

Wasn't sure where to fit misotheism and antitheism in. The latter is a type of atheism, but the former is technically compatible with theism.

@ Aon: That would come under polytheism, I think.

So there isn't a fancy subcategory for "Non-interventionist gods who really don't care about you at all"?

@Aondeug: I think that would be covered under polytheism, although gods being able to die might put a wrench into the works. It would still count as polytheism so long as you defined them as "gods", though. To me, it sounds more like Sufficiently Advanced Aliens, but it's just a different term.

Edit: Ninja'd by Bobby.

edited 7th Jun '11 5:56:40 PM by OnTheOtherHandle