Silvereyes - my understanding is that a "strong" atheist asserts there is no God, implying omnipotent knowledge of such, but this link has a slightly more nuanced explanation of it. It also mentions weak atheism is also called "soft" atheism.

[en.m.wikipedia.org]

@silvereyes Consider this definition for Antitheism - In secular contexts, it typically refers to direct opposition to organized religion or to the belief in any deity, while in a theistic context it sometimes refers to opposition to a specific god or gods.
A more non-confrontational version is "nontheism" - not having or involving a belief in a god or gods. Can be used as "I am a non-theist."
I think Secular Non-theist is both accurate for me, and non-confrontational.

@silvereyes absolutely, the most important thing is making sure everyone in the discussion is on the same page. We can call it atheist, agnostic, or waffels. It doesnt matter as long as we all understand the meaning we are using.

Does atheism assert a belief though? It may b getting into the strong/weak atheist position, but In my experience the difference between an atheist and a non theist is disbelief. Wile an atheist would say there is no reason to believe that's true, a non theist would say that's not true. And these definitions definitely seem to fit the prefixes more appropriately.

@silvereyes Religious texts are certainly unreasonable. That you can't outright invalidate them seems to be the point. However you can't quantify or verify god/supernatural. If you can't quantify or verify, you can't reasonably expect to ask a question and get a scientific answer.

I ignore the subject(s) of god/religion outside a single premise. Per the Thomas Theorem, 'what is perceived as real is real in its consequences'. In other words god/religion are relevant only because some people take them into account when making important decisions. So it becomes necessary to understand how some people operate without evidence to guide their actions.

@PaulRecomStop Yes theism and atheism explicitly rely on belief in the exact same way. One accepts the truth claim god exists without evidence. The other accepts the truth claim god doesn't exist without evidence.

As stated above I consider both potentially mentally ill because they make and accept a truth claim without evidence. That said I consider the latter the lesser evil as they are less likely to be overtly hostile to someone like me pointing out the obvious fallacy in their argument.

@mymysticcrow I've never met an atheist with the position that God doesn't exist without evidence. I think the appropriate way to word it would be their is no reason to be convinced a god exists without evidence. And with that more reasonable wording I don't see a burden of proof.

@mymysticcrow the difference is, your asserting atheists believe there is no god( the without evidence comment is inconsequential) I'm asserting atheists aren't convinced o f a God. Once again, aheist: prefix "a" root word theist, meaning not theist. Compare to asymmetrical. A hard atheist position, or a non theist position may be asserting no god exists, but I think with your understanding of knowledge vs belief, this could be the only reasonable way to interpret atheism and theism

@mymysticcrow the soft atheist position would be to take no stance on the matter or to say I don't know. The only time I've really seen people confuse this is when the perceive agnosticism with this position, but your not doing that. I'm not sure where your falling off trtack honestly. The important thing to know is that atheists do not have a burden of proof, no claim is being made. Null hypothesis, n vs not n. A God exists, n or not n(appropriate thought process). A God exists, a God does not exist, n vs c(fallacious)

@mymysticcrow and i hate to keep commenting lol but what im saying is almost completely pulled from daekins or dennet.... its really confusing me how youve put this together but still arent perceiving the difference between theist, atheist, nontheist/antitheist/hard atheism. It's sometimes hard for people to understand, but it's an important part of understanding the difference between atheism and agnosticism, and you understand that. I feel like you've stated clearly and correctly the scales you were talking about it missed something while learning them. Let's talk about a different dawkins scale. He makes a scale of atheism from 1 to 7, and calls himself a 6.9 because he won't say there is no god(because that would adopt a burden of proof). And he refers to a 7 as(if I remember right) a non theist. And his time after time stated position, as an atheist, is "there is no reason to believe in a God" and possibly "I live my life with belief in God the same way I live with belief of unicorns or leprechauns or(the example tha explains this whole position) the flying spaghetti monster. The only reason I want to clarify this, is because its a huge point of unjustified judgement, usually from theists, but after you attempting to prove the insanity of a position you misunderstand, may be also from non believers.

@mymysticcrow and i hate to keep commenting lol but what im saying is almost completely pulled from daekins or dennet.... its really confusing me how youve put this together but still arent perceiving the difference between theist, atheist, nontheist/antitheist/hard atheism. It's sometimes hard for people to understand, but it's an important part of understanding the difference between atheism and agnosticism, and you understand that. I feel like you've stated clearly and correctly the scales you were talking about it missed something while learning them. Let's talk about a different dawkins scale. He makes a scale of atheism from 1 to 7, and calls himself a 6.9 because he won't say there is no god(because that would adopt a burden of proof). And he refers to a 7 as(if I remember right) a non theist. And his time after time stated position, as an atheist, is "there is no reason to believe in a God" and possibly "I live my life with belief in God the same way I live with belief of unicorns or leprechauns or(the example tha explains this whole position) the flying spaghetti monster. The only reason I want to clarify this, is because its a huge point of unjustified judgement, usually from theists, but after you attempting to prove the insanity of a position you misunderstand, may be also from non believers.

@PaulRecomStop Very good. You can partially paraphrase Dawkins. Unfortunately you are focusing on the details and missing the big picture.

For Dawkins, the big picture is summarized as the following 2 scales. 1) What is knowable - gnostic to agnostic. 2) What do you believe - theist to atheist.

I am an extreme agnostic. Evidence is the only form of knowledge that exists. As such I don't consider the 2nd scale valid*. We have no evidence to support the existence or nonexistence of god(s), supernatural, et cetera. Therefore, the 2nd scale is invalid.

• For science to consider a question, it must be quantifiable or verifiable. God is neither.

Point is, if you are theist or atheist, I consider you insane for the exact same reason. You believe something without evidence.

@PaulRecomStop I understand your misgivings. You probably define Theist, Agnostic and Atheist differently from me.

I've had people try to insist I'm a number of different terms that don't quite fit. Here's the short list.

Nontheism - read the debates you'll find that this term is so broad that it is almost meaningless. Technically speaking it includes all terms listed below.

Ignosticism - god/supernatural can't be quantified or verified. So I certainly agree that god/supernatural has no clear meaning. But I would go further to specify that the terms are in fact meaningless outside of social science.

Skepticism - I am a science oriented skeptic so this term somewhat fits. But I have misgivings about the empirical requirement of scientific skepticism due to how much we can't verify via sensory data or any tool we've developed thus far to analyse sensory data that we cannot see for ourselves.

Apatheism - god/supernatural can't be quantified or verified. So I am certainly disinterested in debating this subject.

Atheism - As previously states, I reject belief (or lack of belief) without evidence.

Agnostic is the only term that fits without significant qualification(s) or reservation(s).

@mymysticcrow I wanna start this by say in last night when I posted these I was having a rough night at work so please forgive me if I was condescending at all. It was my situation tha caused it, not stones comments and after reading what I said I think I may have been overbearing!

@mymysticcrow earlier you said about atheism, "one accepts a truth claim that God sent exist" and now youve said "atheism-i reject belief or lack belief". The difference is the null hypothesis. A or not a. This is why I don't think they are 2 separate truth claims, rather 2 sides of the same truth claim. When i say I don't believe in a God, I'm saying "not a" to the theists position of "a". Asserting their is no god would be a separate claim, ie b or not b.

@silvereyes Another way to say it.

If you guys and gals would only look through your heads and try hard to come up with a concept that you can believe that Christians, Jews and Muslims believe is labeled "a concept of God", you would realize that you can't! "God" is meaningless, and that destroys theism, atheism, and agnosticism. But for some reason, you just can't stand to admit to yourselves that all three stands, theism, atheism and agnosticism are beliefs on faith. That faith is that "God" is a meaningful word, when the truth is that "God" is just as meaningless as "Zab".

@EdwinMcCravy Don't know what you use for definitions, but I totally disagree. there is no 'faith' in atheism. Atheism is that someone says "there is a god!" the atheist says, "prove it", the theist says "I can't", so the atheist states, "then I don't believe it". No faith needed or wanted. It's a lack of belief. 'god' is meaningful as a concept because it carries so much weight in so many societies, but it still doesn't prove the concept is a tangible, actual 'thing'.

@phxbillcee Look, Phxbillcee, use your head, please. If I had said "I can't play the violin", would you say "I disagree"? Of course not! That would be a very dumb thing to say! So when I say "I cannot "imagine God, nor believe you can either", you don't say "I disagree". What you say is "I can imagine God and here is a description of what I am imagining when I imagine God: __ -- and then fill in the blank. That way you will have educated me and then I will be able to imagine God. So educate me as to how to imagine God. Otherwise I can only believe you are like me and can't, but can only fib and say you can when you can't.

@silvereyes [en.m.wikipedia.org]

@cmadler I agree, I have said similar statements, that said, I don't get hung up on what you call yourself.

I would love to talk to an agnostic theist. I can't understand the notion of not knowing and yet believing.

@cmadler You said "Agnostic is about knowledge, atheist is about belief". No. They are BOTH about BELIEF. They both require the belief that "God" or "Allah" is a meaningful word. See my post above: "Unless you can show that "God" is a meaningful word, you can't use it meaningfully in a sentence either to say "God exists", "God doesn't exist" or "God may or may not exist".

@EdwinMcCravy I don't understand your argument. The term "God", capitalized and with no descriptors, is commonly understood to mean the Abrahamic god.

@cmadler I don't know how to even suspect in the least, let alone believe, that there is any possible mental image of anything to call "the Abrahamic god". I contend that if I can only speak or write the sequence of 3 words "the Abrahamic god", but cannot conjure up in my head any possible image of anything that sequence of words could stand for, then I cannot know of anything I could be talking or writing about when I speak or write that sequence. If you claim to be able to have a mental imagine anything that "the Abrahamic god" could refer to, then please describe the mental image to me so that I may be able to have it too. Without a mental image for some row of alphabet letters to refer to, all I can know of is the row of alphabet letters.

@EdwinMcCravy There are plenty of non-physical concepts for which no mental image (or no accurate mental image) exists. What is your mental image for "infinity"? What about "imaginary"? What about "vacuum" (as in an absence of physical material)? What about "noun"? For that matter, what about "mental image"?

@cmadler You ask "what is my mental image for 'infinity'?  Let's analyze the term.  The prefix "in-" on infinity means "not". the "fin" is like the "fin" of "finish".  "Infinity" means "something that is never finished, or 'all there'.  So "infinity" is meaningless because it means "all of what is never all there".  Yes, "infinity" is meaningless.  Contrary to popular belief, mathematicians never speak "of infinity".  We only say "as x approaches infinity", which only means "as the quantity x grow larger and larger".  We don't define 1÷ 0 "one divided by zero".   

You want to talk about our awareness of bodily activities as if they are not something physical.  But they all are.  We all agree that we imagine things.  Scientists have discovered that  neurons in our brains behave a certain way, and when they do, we can detect the results of their activity, and label our experience "imagining".  

Don't you imagine things?  Of course you do.  Everybody does.   What about "imaginary"?  That's a word we use for things we can imagine in our heads.  I can close my eyes and imagine unicorns and mermaids galore.  You can too.  So you know very well what I'm talking about.  Can you describe feeling pain?  No, but you know when you feel pain.  Everybody knows about having pain.  When we say "we have pain", our nerves are behaving a certain way that makes us feel uncomfortable.  It's an activity going on within our body that we are detecting.  

But I have no idea what you are claiming to imagine when you claim to imagine something for the row of words "God, the infinite incorporeal spirit that created the universe".  So I don't how to believe that you are imagining anything for that row of words to mean.  It looks to me like you're just speaking them or writing them and believing (on faith, what else?) that they refer to something.  

What about "vacuum"?   We just use the word "vacuum" to speak of something that does not contain any air or gas.. What about nouns?  Those are words in a language that stand for things.  Nouns are part of a language that humans have invented. A mental image is what we say we have when our neurons behave a certain way,  A neuroscientist can tell you about how they behave (move around and vibrate).  

@traceyanarchist that was all over the place. I am not sure what kind of emphasis you tried to give in the use of uppercase letters, but the idea is very wacky. Knowledge is, traditionally, a subset of belief. The opposite of knowledge is ignorance, and the opposite of belief is... well, disbelief or negation. Let me give you a fairly simple example of what I mean:

John did not count the number of words in his dictionary. However, he believes the number of words is even. Robert claims to have received revelation from his god, Lexicon, and believes the number is odd.

I can accept the fact that both John and Robert believe what they claim to believe. I understand why Robert thinks he is justified in holding his belief, though I'd disagree with him on that. But I do not understand how John can jump from not having any justification to believing something. It is not that complicated.

p.s.: just to make sure I am not saying BS, I made a quick stop at Wikipedia: "Belief is the state of mind in which a person thinks something to be the case with or without there being empirical evidence to prove that something is the case with factual certainty.". Even the Venn diagram shows knowledge as a subset of belief.

@cmadler "Non-physical concept?" I don't know what that means. Please educate me. Maybe give me some examples of whatever you think "non-physical concept" means.

@traceyanarchist so Wikipedia is wrong because you say so. Wonderful. I'm glad I have up on this site

@hlfsousa I'd categorize my mother as an agnostic theist. She believes there is a god, but is also convinced that all the religions are wrong and that humans are unlikely to ever know the true nature of god. shrug Worked out for me, never had to go to church growing up and she knows and accepts that i'm a full atheist.

@silvereyes Actually i think you did a great job!

@silvereyes - I didn't think of it that way; yes, it's an out for the faithful, but not well thought out. You can't believe with evidence and please god at the same time.

@silvereyes - Absolutely - your point underlines mine that the whole thing is a house of cards. I was also trying to relate it to those here who would change their position if evidence ever surfaced; those that lean toward agnosticism for that reason.

As we've just discussed, there simply isn't any evidence... Can't be. To me, this weakens the agnostic stance if you're agnostic only for the reason evidence may surface. It's almost like Pascal's wager actually...

@silvereyesYepper

The point is that as an agnostic I see fault in claiming that another's beliefs or ways of viewing the universe are wrong due to the fact it doesn't fit your limited views of the eternal and infinite, because ultimately you yourself may be wrong about something so beyond our limitations of being in our physical plane and beyond our myopic views of all things that are possible to exist --- agnostic thinking.

Think mathematics in terms of permutations and combinations and now think about the permutations and combinations about the eternal and infinite.

In my agnostic thinking, who the F*k knows so to debate and reason about it with our limited and varied capacities defeats the purpose. To add on, the distinction between beliefs and knowledge is ultimately the key as so many have pointed out. An agnostic acknowledges that such things are unknown and may be unknowable as it seems to be agreed upon, but without any restrictions or declarations of beliefs about the unknown. Therefore, it's open ground to believe what you may about the unknown, but realize it's unknown so you may be wrong and then again you may be right. Therefore, an agnostic may have beliefs about a God(s) or anything of the other possibilities, may not believe in such things at all, or doesn't even see the point in thinking about it at all and henceforth that we should remain concrete for it's practical going in the right direction for our survival here on earth not wasting time on the rabbit hole and on things that are possibly wrong; the determining factor is that they realize they may be wrong or they may be right and you may be wrong or you may be right -- who the f@k knows?

I think atheists relate to agnostics, because they hear no God may exist; whereas, an atheist would say - in my way of examining the definitions and dissecting the orientations - no God exist. Two ends of a spectrum saying yes and no; whereas the agnostic says maybe.

My rant only matters to me because of another post where people were trying to say that all agnostics are atheists at the bottom line of things, and this can cause problems and confusion in other people's lives when we think differently no matter how much we try to reason and define and label. In the post, someone's identity of themselves was being questioned based on bias per say (hard to say as well). Otherwise, if we're in different swim lanes, then I remain in my swim lane and hide this swim lane.

@silvereyes I joined this site thinking that I can finally find like-minded individuals to mingle and befriend and be able to discuss openly without lashings and such; however, to my dismay met with the same mindset as theists and atheists.

@silvereyes nothing wrong with any mindset ... just not able to openly express myself

@silvereyes In my agnostic way of thinking, because these things are unknown or may even be unknowable then it works two-fold: to claim something doesn't exist because there's no evidence is just as faulty as claiming something does exist when there's no evidence. This is another reason that I identify as an agnostic. There are very distinct differences, but to truly see (even though we may not know how to fully explain it) these differences is to be an agnostic. An agnostic would see that there was no evidence for microbes, but did that mean it didn't exist. An agnostic recognizes both of these observations. An atheist would, as I would examine it, proclaim that something doesn't exist unless evidence negates otherwise. Moreover, I think atheists relate to agnostics because they don't recognize the other side of the coin; so they think the agnostic thinks the same way as them when they hear unbelief and evidence. So, the atheist takes ownership of this label as well.

@quietStorm more correctly, instead of "maybe" an agnostic would say, "cannot be known."

@johnbogie "cannot be known" implies maybe and maybe implies "I don't really know" ... Error as I see it: taking definitions so literal instead of truly understanding the intuitive rooted meaning, which is another fault (only through my lens) I find with many interpretations (i.e. during bible studies or studies in general). If something is unknown, and if someone conjectures about the unknown, then I would think well maybe it's true or maybe it's false b/c it's unknown. Awareness and the ego also comes to mind, in reference to the phrase "can't see the forest for the trees" and vice versa, the ego is only able to comprehend and relate to self and so for only that which is within it's own viewport or awareness. Anything outside of self is as if it doesn't exists or even perplexing to understand or to relate. However, one who understands that the unknown doesn't necessarily equate to nonexistence, also understands, there's the likelihood (maybe) of anything being true or anything being false. In other words, take for instance any game of chance like hiding a pebble in one hand and asking a bystander to choose the hand containing the pebble, it's unknown to the bystander which hand holds the pebble. The right hand may have the pebble or it may not. The left hand may have the pebble or it may not. Either hands may not have the pebble.

Infinity also creeps in the gene pool of living creatures (or any element for that matter) due to mutation, external stimuli, and whatever else left out of the equation. Therefore, what may be true today, may as very well be false tomorrow (figuratively). More or less, to rely only on our own knowledge, understanding, strict and rigid definitions (excluding the hidden and the unknown) and symbols, and myopic thinking and viewpoints is like walking around with blinders on in the context of the eternal and elusive universe of things. It's like bondage. If it weren't for the curious and the wanderers, those who seek the unknown, then we would probably still walk around with blinders so to speak in regards to discoveries so far.