I think you’ll like this, attributed to Epicurus:
Just a quibble, but since theism and atheism are both statements of belief, a person who believes that no gods exist, but does not pretend to be able to prove it, qualifies as a strong atheist also. This is analogous to theism - someone who believes in a god totally on faith, without any evidence, still counts as a theist.
Ah, but you cover only half the ground here. True, it is impossible to prove that no god of any type exists - that part I agree is unknowable. But say you were plunked down in the middle of the Exodus story. I think it is very possible to have strong evidence for a god - or evidence as strong as that for other things we admit existing. The common theist argument that god doesn’t want to show himself for one reason or another is extra-Biblical, and sounds a lot to me like a justification for this non-existent god never showing up in well recorded history.
Sorry, but that just doesn’t match the definition of strong atheist with which I’m familiar, and which I’ve laid out in previous posts. The strong atheist does, in fact, maintain that he can prove that the existence of a god or gods is a logical impossibility.
Please remember, in this context, “strong” and “weak” are misleading terms, since they’re loaded with extraneous meanings when used in common parlance. The “strong” atheist is not simply somebody who’s really sure, and the “weak” atheist is not simply somebody who’s not quite as sure. The terms have much more precise meanings.
The strong atheist would disagree with you competely and utterly on this point. He maintains that it is possible to prove that no god exists, and that he can, in fact, give you that proof. He maintains that it is knowable.
Then you’ve got WAAAAY different voices in your head than I do! 
When I say that I do not believe in god, the only thing I am describing is myself. i am not making a statement about anything other than my own loack of belief in a god, the implication being that I have no reason to believe.
Personally, I don’t care what word is used, but I do get irritated by theists that seem to want to have it both ways. They want to call us atheists if all we’ve said is “I don’t believe” but then come right back and say that atheists all believe that no god exists. You can’t use a word in one common usage way and then define it much more narrowly, as even dictionaries seem wont to do.
Also note that strong atheists are a SUBSET of weak atheists/non-theists.
So what do you call someone who dogmatically states that no gods exist, but who when asked for proof pooh-poohs the need, saying that gods are just absurd? Classification of people into theists and various types of atheists are not statements of the validity of the belief, just the existence of the belief. I personally am pretty sure that no gods exist, but it’s a big universe.
I was address ing agnosticism here. The big weakness of this position (the classical one, not the cover for weak atheism one) is that the agnostic must say that he would not know that God existed if God came down and dope slapped him.
Arguing the viability of proofs of strong atheism would be interesting, if we could turn up someone willing to defend them. I assume you are not a strong atheist. I gave what I consider a good argument - I also was in a long debate with someone on a.a.m who claimed that the default position for anything was belief that it did not exist, not lack of belief in it existing. I wouldn’t wish that experience on anyone.
weak atheism: no belief if gods
strong atheism: belief in no gods
agnosticsm: the existance of god is not intellectually knowable. You can be an agnostic theist or an agnostic atheist.
Common usage of agnosticism has little difference from weak atheism.
As MEB has pointed out, the question gets more complex. As a “believer” if he believes in Shiva and (unless he’s Hindu) you are likely to get an answer of “no.” Does that make that person an atheist. Likewise, a Hindu may not believe in the J/C God, does that make him an atheist.
Am I an atheist?..I’m a Deist. I believe in no personal God…but God as Universe. God as serendipity and luck and love and beauty and joy. God as a convienent place to put gratitude and hope. Thank God I have my wonderful children, and I pray to God that they remain healthy and happy their whole lives.
I don’t think that’s it at all. Strong vs. weak atheism is actually a distinction between two logical positions, not a descriptor of how you “come across”. For me, it’s not something that’s at all important on a day to day basis. I simply have never seen any believable evidence that gods exist, so I don’t believe in them. I don’t spend each day pondering whether I don’t believe they exist, or whether I believe they don’t exist. In a practical sense, it’s a silly distinction. It only comes up in arguments with theists who try to suggest that not believing in God is a “belief” that is on a par with theirs.
The problem with the theist’s line of reasoning is that the God they believe in is undefined (or ambiguously defined), which renders it unfalsifyable. We can never prove that this God doesn’t exist, because they can simply change the definition at will. By imbuing God with the quality of being “supernatural”, it shelters Him from any attempts to disprove Him in the natural world.
After doing that, the theist then attempts to equate his belief with the atheist’s lack of belief, saying that believing in this undefined thing is logically equivalent to not believing in this undefined thing. The only logical response to such an assertion is to relegate God to the same position as all other unproven things. The rational default position is to only believe that for which there is evidence, pending any evidence showing up in the future.
But as a practical matter, lacking belief in God because there is no evidence isn’t really any different than saying God doesn’t exist. It doesn’t imply any lack of surety. It doesn’t mean I haven’t made up my mind. But it’s the only position that makes sense to me. I can’t conclusively state that something doesn’t exist if that thing isn’t even defined. It only becomes important when theists try to level a playing field that isn’t level.
OK, I’ll try…
Two good arguments why “God” cannot exist:
The first is the Epicurian argument, expounded above by Early Out. I quite like it.
The second is my very own - I’ve never seen it anyplace else - so it’s probably easier to poke holes in. But here goes anyway.
It is claimed that God is Omniscient. In other words, God can, theroretically, know the position (and other characteristics) of every last atom in the Universe at once. But the most concise way of describing all this information is the very atoms themselves (since it certainly takes more than a single atom to record the position of a single atom). Ergo, the only way in which an omniscient God can exist is if God is the Universe.
Now, if God is the universe, and knows all, then the very knowledge of All takes up All, leaving nothing which our hypothetical God could use as a substrate on which to formulate any volition. God would simply be knowledge without action. To me, this definition renders God as a rather meaningless concept.
This cas also be taken merely as a stronger way of saying that there cannot exist a simultaneously omnipotent and omniscient God.
Dani
The difference is that Exodus is a story…not evidence. There is nothing that would indicate any of it is true.
The fact is, even if there were proof offered up in defense of the existence of god, if he is of the christian variety, he is not worthy of worship in my opinion, so it wouldn’t make a difference anyway.
Well, the omnipotence vs. omniscience argument I have heard is that if God knows the future for sure, he is unable to change it. If he is able to change it, then he does not know the future. That’s not quite the same as your’s.
Most theists would say that God has an existence outside the universe, since he had to be somewhere to create the universe, and so could store information about where everything is in that supernatural realm.
But the real problem with strong atheism is that it assumes certain characteristics that make up a god. You made this explicit, but many do not. Were the Greek gods gods? They were not omnipotent, and I don’t think they were omniscient. Even the old OT god is neither - he asks were Adam and Eve were in the garden, and in one passage cannot help the Israelites because their enemies were using iron chariots. (Don’t bother giving me the explanations for these, religious people, I’ve heard them.) So, one can be strongly atheistic about certain God definitions, but not others. I wonder how anyone can prove the deist’s god does not exist - for all intents and purposes the universe with this god is equivalent to that without any god.
That also is why I am so offended by attempts to define atheism as only strong atheism. It seems like a strawman to allow theists to call atheist illogical and simplistic. It is really not that different from defining all religions as fundamentalist inerrant creationists, and then saying anyone who isn’t is not really religious. It is an obnoxious argument.
Your argument for strong atheism, just to make sure you know I’m not accusing you of all this stuff, sounds fairly reasonable - given certain definitions of god.
That’s good, too!
Couple this - meaning God is not observable by any potential physical means - and the fact that God appears to be unwilling to interfere with the universe in a way that will “give away” Its existence, and you have a God that even a theist must acknowledge is completely unknowable in principle. Hey - if any theists are willing to settle for this (basicly, embrace agnosticism), I’ll be willing to meet them there
Anything less than omni-everything is NOT “divine”! As A.C. Clarke (I think?) said (Paraphrasing) - “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” 21[sup]st[/sup] century technology would leave a middle-age person completely speechless, and in awe of what they might think is God incarnate. An advanced space-faring alien species might sppear so to us - but I don’t see having, say, a million year head start on us as being a deity!
No Prob; I figured out about half-way through that you were addressing a different issue already 
And I think my definition of God is the only interesting one worth challenging. A “Von-Denikenesque” super-technological but less-than-divine being from elsewhere would be very exciting scientifically, but hardly divine!
Dani
The omni-, omni-, omni- capital-G God of Christianity is certainly the best known deity around these parts; if you concede that the God of Islam is essentially the same as the God of Christianity (at least as far as the “omni-, omni-, omni-” part goes), then that’s what about half the human race means when they say “God”. On the other hand, half the human race doesn’t mean that when they talk about God or gods or the divine or the Tao or whatever. Historically, most gods believed in by human beings (Quetzalcoatl, Thor, Zeus, etc.) haven’t resembled the God of Western monotheistic religions.
Furthermore, suppose an entity exists which is not omnibenevolent, omniscient, omnipotent, etc., but did somehow cause the entire scientifically observable Universe to come into being. Surely that would be a bit more than just a “super-advanced alien”, no?
Apologetically speaking, I think it’s a serious mistake to implicitly concede to Christian theologians that their definition of God is the only one worth arguing about. Too many Christian arguments for the existence of God rely on eliding the distinction between the Christian God and some other definition of God or gods: the argument from design, for example, is used to attempt to prove some intelligence created the Universe, and it’s too often then leaped from there to an omnibenevolent, omnipotent, omniscient God, which the argument from design (even if you accept it as far as it goes) actually doesn’t even remotely demonstrate; followed by a short, slippery slope to a Personal Relationship with Jesus Christ.
Strong atheists do exist. I’m a strong atheist wrt several definitions of god, not least among them the standard tri-omni western deity. Specific definitions of god CAN be disproven, either because the definition would imply certain facts which aren’t true, or because it is logically incoherent. But when you start getting into very broad definitions of god, that’s not always the case.
If you say god is the universe, or love, or this funny shaped rock you picked up in the backyard, then your definition of god certainly exists.
Interesting. I also consider myself agnostic and I used to use the term ‘unknowable’ but ‘inconceivable’ seems to be a more applicable term. In essense, I just can’t wrap my brain around the concept of god in the same way I can’t conceive of anything as vast as the universe. I can only accept it on an abstract level, but I couldn’t possibly quantify it in my mind in any intellectual terms. My brain simply will not comprehend infinite.
So, as to the question of whether god or gods exist, I say it’s possible, but I don’t know. I say it’s also entirely possible for someone with more experience in this matter to comprehend the concept better than I do. Bill Gates, a billionaire, probably ‘gets’ $7.2 trillion (our national debt), whereas for me, who currently has $11 in my savings account, that much moolah is simply inconceivable!
But do you believe in a god or gods? If you lack such belief, you are a weak atheist (or agnostic atheist). If you believe in a god or gods, but aren’t sure, you are an agnostic theist. You either believe in something or you don’t. That’s why I was convinced to start calling myself an atheist, and why so many atheists look at people who call themselves agnostic as “wannabe” theists–if you don’t believe in a god, why define your belief by “I’m not sure”? There are plenty of things that I don’t believe in (namely, everything that I don’t have evidence for, including both god and polka-dot space wombats). I’m not certain that any of these things don’t exist, but I still don’t believe in them.
So, I think the general concensus is that there are plenty of strong atheists toward specific definitions of god(s), but very few in the “I believe that no god exists” camp. Therefore, can people please stop calling us dogmatic believers with a belief system that lacks evidence as much as theists? We have no evidence for or against god(s), so, like everything else which we have no evidence for or against, we don’t believe in god(s), or space wombats, or TV-watching toasters.
Well, you might say this is wishy-washy, but I have many moods. Some days, I think there must be a god or supernatural force or whatever for whatever reason (hey, all the lights were green & I was in a hurry…). Other days, when I’m feeling logical, I’m more practical about lucky breaks (hey, they’re just traffic lights.) It kind of varies with my mood and what’s going on in my life. I seem to become more spiritual when the need arises. I don’t spend every day of my life thinking about it. I’m doing okay with that. I’m not a wannabe theist or atheist. I don’t focus on belief. But it’s also fun to speculate. So do I believe in god? Not today, but ask me tomorrow. I guess that’s why agnosticism is so comfortable. I can accept my limitations. I can also accept that of others.
See, that’s something that bugs me. When people focus on black and white, they tend to ignore shades of grey in between. I really hate to pigeon-hole anyone into specific categories. I’ve met many a “believer” who goes through periods of doubt. Surely, there are atheists who were once believers and believers who were once atheist. If I may be so bold, it’s the dogmatism of both camps that create such insufferable intolerance.
That makes sense. I’ll accept you as an atheist-today-theist-tomorrow agnostic, but I’m not sure that’s what most people mean when they use the term.
What was black-and-white or dogmatic about my statement? I’m saying that there are shades of atheism, but the majority of us believe nothing dogmatically, meaning we don’t have any particular belief, only a lack thereof. I don’t believe god(s) exist. Neither do I believe god(s) do not exist. I am in that very grey area between that you’re claiming I tend to ignore; I’m just not in the same part of the grey area as you (shifting between the two beliefs).
What is dogmatic about atheism? There are a few strong atheists who believe they have evidence that there isn’t a god or gods. They are rare. Most of us simply don’t believe in something. Are people who don’t believe in space wombats (but don’t discount the faint possibility that they could exist) dogmatic in their beliefs, or is it just those of us who don’t believe in deities (but don’t discount the faint possibility that they could exist)?
I’m sorry, I guess my response was a bit cryptic. You do appear to me to be in a grey area, as am I. Nothing wrong or dogmatic about that. I was agreeing with you that it’s the more dogmatic, be they atheist or theist, who tend to make this topic unbearable by deciding that’s what right for them should be right for you or you’re either ignorant, blind or completely illogical (or all of the above). I don’t gather you feel that way.
I was under the impression that strong atheists say that God does not exist period, as opposed to saying just that they lack belief in God. It seems to me the polar opposite of strong theists who not only believe in God but are convinced that God exists. It goes above and beyond a matter of faith and enters into the realm of knowledge (or the claim of knowledge). Weak theists/atheists are much closer to the middle ground because belief or non-belief does not necessarily require evidence. It requires only faith in the unknown. Therefore, agnostics simply say “I don’t know.” The next step would be to say “I believe / do not believe in God.” (weak theism / weak atheism). The further step would be to say “I know God does / does not exist.” (strong theism / strong atheism). Only the latter requires evidence or lack thereof. From there, it’s only too easy to say my evidence trumps your evidence. And you have dogmatism.