Talk:Atheism

The "strong atheists" link is supposed to be redirecting to strong atheism (even that entry shows this) - but it's redirecting to weak atheism. Any idea why?

Sans Deity 09:17, 20 June 2006 (MST)

I felt the atheism, strong atheism, and weak atheism articles were stubs. So I merged them into one article (keeping as much of the original writing as I could). hope nobody's upset! - MadOtaku 13:02, October 24 2006 (PST)

I think that makes sense, at least until there's a need (read: sufficient content) for them to be moved to separate entries. - Sans Deity 16:51, 24 October 2006 (CDT)

Should we be adding any more information to this page, as Atheism is a pretty major subject for the wiki, in my opinion? I mean, look at Conservapedia, they have a 'wonderful' article about Atheism that is at least ten times longer than necessary, but at least it explains how we're all mass murderers and immoral... wait that's not a good example. XD - RoaringAtheist 17 Januari 2009
 * While you can add what you'd like, most of the people coming here for information are looking for counter-apologetics, considering that the purpose of this wiki is that very subject. Most of the people using the wiki would probably self-identify as atheist or agnostic, so it isn't the most important article in the world. Enshoku 06:04, 20 January 2009 (CST)

I removed the sentence "This commonly used definition does not assume any positive claim of the nonexistence of a god." from the introduction, as it conflicts with the definition given for Strong Atheism. --BunniRabbi 19:57, 7 December 2010 (CST)

There is no conflict. Atheism is the top-level category, weak and strong are sub-categories. The top-level category does not require a positive claim of the nonexistence of a god. -- Sans Deity 09:38, 8 December 2010 (CST)

I'm a little perplexed by the section that reads "For the above reason, strong atheism is sometimes criticized for "requiring faith." But this is not necessarily true." First of all it seems that a better response is to ask why this is a criticism. Certainly no one who's taken an intro philosophy course is going to state that they can prove everything they base their actions on. I think that assuming "basing it on faith" is actually a criticism is attaching some sort of negative connotation to "faith" which is self defeating. "Faith" is a synonym for the word "assumption". People may be worried by the idea that they make assumptions, but as this is unavoidable why should it be treated like a valid criticism?

Perhaps we would be better served by adding a section describing how attaching the term "faith" to atheism is a kind of verbal trap which assumes the atheist has made the claim that everything they believe is based on evidence?--BunniRabbi 20:33, 7 December 2010 (CST)

BunniRabbi -

While I don't necessarily disagree with most of the changes you made, there was one part I take issue with.
 * and that assumption is functionally identical to faith

I disagree. They start off the same, but the difference between an assumption and faith is that you can a posteriori confirm whether the assumption was valid or not. Faith, on the other hand, remains unconfirmed, because, once it is, it's no longer faith.

For instance, we start off assuming that our senses are basic, but we can retroactively confirm whether it was a correct assumption.

They're not the same. Similar in some respects, perhaps.

--jt 20:52, 1 June 2011 (CDT)