MollyMac

I've been an atheist for over 30 years but I'd never heard the terms strong/weak atheist before coming to II. I've since seen the terms on other boards visited predominantly by Americans but don't hear it here, even though I am surrounded by atheists at work, at home and socially.

I spent a period teaching English as a foreign language and one day I got my class to discuss religion. I told the class I was an atheist and one Columbian student said in a tone full of both surprise and pity, "What? You have no beliefs??" My knee-jerk reaction was to state that I did indeed have beliefs and I proceeded to list them: I believe there is no god and I believe that this is the only life we have etc. etc.

It felt important to me to present my atheism as something positive and simply saying "I don't believe in a god" wasn't enough for me on this occasion. But on other occasions I am quite happy to say this because to me there is no difference.

I would normally draw the line at saying "I KNOW there is no god," because there is nothing more aggravating to me than people saying, "I KNOW there is a god". I don't find it particularly useful to wind people up in this way.

beastmaster

Good reminder. I try to take care to explain that "I have inferred that there is no god(s)" rather than "I know there is no god(s)," even though the former sounds a little convoluted.

I'm not sure the burden of proof argument is definitive. It works great when there is truly an absence of credible evidence for god(s). But some days I see some slight evidence in favor of the existence of god (after all, I'm a pattern-seeking animal by nature, and a certain tendency toward god-belief is programmed into us by evolutionary biology). But then I recall the strong circumstantial evidence negating god and it's all over. Thus, I am always interested in whatever circumstantial evidence tends to negate the existence of god.

I have no doubt you are a true disbeliever.

Pretty much, yes.

I agree. This is a question of rhetoric rather than an authentic dispute in reasoning among atheists.

pz

I disagree. I think the phrase "I know there is no god" is perfectly acceptable, and the alternatives ("I'm pretty sure there is no god?") are the ones that concede ground to the theists. It's an admission that there is some tiny possibility that they are right, and rhetorically, that's all they need. As far as I'm concerned, the nonexistence of god is a fact in the Gouldian sense (that is, a proposition affirmed to such a high degree that it would be perverse to withhold one's provisional assent). We ought to assert that without hesitation. The message is that not only is the burden of proof on him, but that his position is so ridiculous and without merit that he is going to have to provide extraordinary evidence.

I think hedging on this question is only necessary if one has some problem with simply admitting "I was wrong". If by some vastly improbable miracle, god himself manifests himself on the planet and starts working inarguable supernatural abilities, I'm just going to say that I was wrong and move on...I don't think mentioning that I had previously conceded some infinitesimal chance that he existed to be at all important.

Doubting Didymus

Agreed. Thinking about this, my atheism comprises "I see no reason to believe in god" and as a direct result of this, "I believe that there is no god". How can this fit into the weak/strong categories? I believe things do not exist when I see no evidence for them. Thus, I believe or know that there is no santa. Why? because I see no evidence for him. A total lack of evidence is an affirmation of a negative existance claim, and so both god and santa's nonexistance are gouldian facts.

So I believe the negative: "there is no god", BECAUSE I see no reason to believe the positive: "there is a god". From what I see so far, these two positions are strong atheism and weak atheism respectively. What am I?

Robert G. Ingersoll

Point EXTREMELY well taken, as demonstated by the immediately following posts of pz and Doubting Didymus.

There apparently is no factual disagreement between any of the atheists posting here. The debate is over word usage, and therefore of no great importance. Nevertheless.....

I guess I am just too much of a fan and admirer of psychologist Albert Ellis, who is radically opposed to absolutist language or language that is SEEMINGLY absolutist.

I have no problem with using the word "know' in every day conversation, e.g., "I know the capital of New York state is Albany." However, I have a REAL problem with using the word "know' in philosophical debates about apparent abstractions like god.

I don't "know" anything about the existence of a god, even to assign an infinitesimal probability to such. Ultimately, I know nothing "for sure", I only believe or assume, based on some criteria (e.g., reason, authority, voices in my head, etc.). The same for each of you.

I do not believe in the literal existence of a god (or the supernatural). To use perjorative, I assume all such belief is a societal creation, fit only at this stage of human evolution for small children, fools, imbeciles, and charlatans.

pz, if by refusing to say the words "I know there is no god" and asserting only that I believe or assume there is no god makes me SEEM somehow unsure, agnostic, waffling, or fence-straddling to some theist, then I'm quite confident that the statements I would follow that with would set the record straight. Not to worry, I will always do all atheists proud. I eat agnostics for breakfast, with sugar and cream, and shit out theists.

But I think I will ignore the strong vs weak question from now on. One is an atheist - or one is not. Each individual atheist may express this brute fact using different language. BFD.

Amos

Would that not depend on your definition of God?

If I was to tell you that according to the bible man is the exact image of God becasue he is created in the image of God would you still do atheists proud to say that you don't believe in man?

pz

I think my distinction is that there is no such thing as absolutism in rational thought, and since language is always going to be an approximation anyway, we might as well use the simplest, clearest phrasing possible. I will plainly announce that there are no invisible space monkeys nesting in the toes of my shoes, and will avoid the cautious circumlocutions that make explicit the possibility that such things are there. Let it just be understood that all anyone has to do is show me evidence, and I'll change my tune.
That is an interesting conversion strategy, but I don't think the end result is entirely desirable.

Psycho Economist

The Bible says your god created mankind "in his image". That's not news. The leaps are to say:

1. the Bible is correct about this assertion.
2. man (in whatever sense of the word) is bidirectionally equivalent to God.

What do you mean "believe in man"? Believe that humans exist? I can empicrically verify that fact by stepping outside my door right now.

If I want to assign the noun "God" to represent the mulberry out in front of my dorm: sure that exists. But it wouldn't be a deity in the conventional sense unless I felt it would do stuff for me if I worshiped it. It wouldn't be a god, and it certainly wouldn't be the God of Christianity or Judaism or Islam.

Jack the Bodiless

Of course, one reason for declaring "There Is No God" is to counter the propaganda of religious fundamentalists.

We are poles apart on the issue of "truth", and how it is approached. At one extreme, scientists have dedicated their lives to finding the actual truth, and are so concerned about the possibility of being wrong that they have cultivated a doctrine of never admitting that they HAVE finally found it: hence the scientific usage of the word "theory".

On the other extreme, the religious fundamentalist arbitrarily latches on to a piece of fiction, declares it to be true, and then capitalizes it: it's the Truth, the Word of God, Holy Scripture. Everything else must be twisted to fit around it.

Hence the constant bleats from creationists that evolution is "only a theory", that atheists unlike theists don't "know" anything (Christian presuppositionalism is the most extreme form of this: all other possible worldviews cannot be adequate and Christianity is true due to the Impossibility of the Contrary) and so forth.

To which my answer is "There Is No God! You Are Wrong! It Is All Baloney!" and so forth.

Wake them up! Snap them out of it!

And to the UnHell with pedantically correct terminology!

I'll use more correct terms and qualifiers when I'm dealing with rational people who are capable of understanding them. Otherwise I'll fight baseless assertions with assertions of my own.

Amos

If man is created in the image of God, to "believe in God" would be equivalent to "believe in man." The missing link here is "realization" that man is God. The distance between God and "man as God" is our human condition and this is why realization is required for humans to become "man as God."
You certainly may do this if you realize that that mulberry bush is your equal and as such is it "the body of Christ" in Catholicism and "this is Buddha" in Buddhism. From this follows that the transubstantiation of that mulberry bush into God must take place in your own mind.