And the vast majority of people believe there is an invisible man in the sky, do you accept that claim as well just because it's easier?

Can you name 5?  Out of the 5,000 members here, I can name one strong atheist.

Theism is irrational.  This doesn't mean I'm not a weak agnostic atheist.  Belief in a god is irrational TODAY, if someday someone provides reason to believe it'll no longer become irrational.  Belief that our solar system is actually comprised of two suns is irrational, should someone by chance find a sun lurking behind the moon, then it'll be rational to believe.  Sam Harris is a weak atheist, Dawkins too is a weak atheist.  The shirt says "Believe in God we can fix that" because we can help people overcome theistic belief which they shouldn't be holding without proof.  We are still weak atheists.  

Exactly.  There are a great many people who irrationally cling to god belief because they fear a hell.  We believe both theists and agnostics who can't admit to their atheism or theism are being irrational, and both need help.

Is he?  I could have sworn that he was a strong atheist.  You would know more than me in this area, but doesn't Dawkins argue that the existence of a personal God is highly improbable?  Since God's existence is improbable, would he not believe that God doesn't exist?  I mean, if something is improbable...im not going to be agnostic about it...im going to say, it doesn't exist.  Anyway, fill me in

I happen to be one of the few atheists who is a strong atheist.  There are many reasons, but here is the main reason:  the God concept is rediculus.  We deny the existence of other ridiculus claims, like Santa Claus, Ghosts, Channeling, and so forth.  We are not agnostic a-claus's...we actively deny that Santa Claus exists.  God and Santa Claus have the exact same epistemic status.  It wasn't like one day Santa Claus was proven to not exist.  We reject Santa Clause's existence, not merely disbelieve it, because it is ridiculus for many reasons.  The same is true for God.

Weak atheism is fine.  However, I do wish weak atheists would make the final jump to strong atheism.  It appears, atleast to me, that this final jump is not being made because of the fear of being labeled dogmatic.  I understand this fear...we all came from religions that are inherently dogmatic.  I understand the desire and necessity of avoiding it.  Strong atheism is not dogmatic.  Do you think that if God came down from the sky and showed us his magical powers that I wouldn't believe it?  Strong atheists are just as open as weak atheists.

anyway, thats my pontification, I hope I wasn't off topic.  If I was, I apologise. 

Hmmm - let's try to re-frame the debate here, ad hominem aside. People's beliefs about gods form a vast spectrum which can never be labeled accurately and meaningfully for all with just a few words. In truth, we know that gods exist, in the way that unicorns or flying horses exist - conceptually.

Mundane horses also exist conceptually, but few reasonable people would argue that horses do not also exist in the real world.

The question then, is whether concepts of god are based on something actual, like horses, or made up, like unicorns and flying horses.

Is it your contention that the available evidence would support either of these propositions exactly equally? Even close to equally?

If so, then perhaps you are justified in your reluctance to be classed as an "atheist." I would say, very compassionately, that such an assessment is quite absurd, but if that is your assessment, your avoidance of the atheist label seems reasonable to me.

Though I believe that unicorns are invented and not real, because I've never seen one or any evidence of one, and there is no evidence in the fossil record that any animal closely related to horses had a horn growing out of the center of its forehead, that belief is not at the same level of certainty as my analogous belief about flying horses of the Pegasus type.

I know of know physical law nor evolutionary reason why some member of the horse family could not evolve a horn in the middle of its forehead, and so my disbelief in unicorns is slightly agnostic. I cannot claim that the possibility of someone finding a unicorn or a unicorn-like fossil is so small as to be completely negligible for all intents and purposes, as I can with the possibility of someone discovering a second sun lurking behind the moon.

I can, however, determine rationally that the possibility of real unicorns is remote enough that it is not worth funding researchers hoping to find one, and certainly remote enough to make basing my entire worldview around a belief in unicorns, or allowing belief in unicorns to play any significant role in my life, extremely unreasonable. If others sought to affect my life in significant ways because of their belief in unicorns, I would resist those efforts to the best of my ability - especially if thedir beliefs included a proviso that anyone disbelieving in unicorns should be srtigmatized, punished, discriminated against, etc.

But flying horses are a different story. The body of a horse is evolved in countless ways to support the lifestyle of a grazing, running, land-living animal. To take that body and graft great big feathered bird wings onto it where there are no muscles to support them or allow them to function is clearly the work of human imagination unfettered by any understanding of biology or physics.

So the flying horse. like the extra sun behind the moon, is an impossibility, because no sane intelligent person with a decent grasp of reality could believe in even the possibility of such a prodigy.

Perhaps most people here feel that the god concept belongs somewhere near the same category as the unicorn concept, but I think that if we take the time to identify the alleged attributes of any proposed deity that qualifies for the title according to common usage of the word, and review them carefully, we'll be forced to class gods with the Pegasus and the extra sun - clearly make-believe.

What I really like about this, is the implicit idea that atheists must be perfect.  The moment one of us may have had a lapse in judgement...or momentarily lapse into irrationality, people like yourself are right there to say "ah, ha!  I knew it!  They are dogmatic!"  Stop with the hyperbolic speech, please.  Atheists make mistakes like everyone else

Oh really?  do tell.  We all operate under what Sam Harris would call "conversational intolerance."  We don't tolerate and irrational claim...we press people, and ask them for evidence.  Any one of use would gladly accept a proposition if the evidence for it was cogent.  If Jesus Christ flew down on a cloud, and demonstrated his magical powers, I would have to believe it.  All of us would believe it.  But we refuse to believe any proposition, not just religious propositions, on insufficent evidence.  So when someone comes in here and claims a given religious proposition is true, we demand them to back it up with evidence.  If they do not do that, we are under no obligation to respect that belief; anymore than you would respect a holocaust deniar's beliefs. 

Categorically stating your opinion as though it were fact is a familiar tactic, but usually it's the tactic I see from the theist side of the fence.

 I have proposed some reasons why a person who is a very weak atheist (technically speaking, but not in the sense that the word is commonly used) would object to being classed as an atheist, beyond the stigma attached to the word.

And I have presented at least an outline of why I consider strong atheism more reasonable than weak or agnostic atheism.

Awaiting some rational responses.

If there are more people out there who are strong atheists - that is, as agnostic about god as they are about Santa or the Easter Bunny - feel free to chime in!

I have difficulty believing the 2 chaoses are the only ones...

Should common error dictate how we define words? These errors are responsible for destroying the useful distinctions that the words are intended to denote.

C. S. Lewis writes on this problem. He notes in "Mere Christiantiy" that the word 'gentlemen' once denoted a class of person, regardless of their behavior. However, common error confused the word with the meaning of 'polite'. Eventually, a polite person was referred to as a gentlemen.

Now, the original meaning of the word is lost to us, and we have a utterly superfluous word for 'polite'. Ask a person what a gentlemen actually is, and they won't be able to express the concept in one word any longer....

To define a word accurately, and to avoid repeating common error, is the best way to provide clarity for any situation.

This is untrue. Many people here are weak atheists. The reason for their zeal is their concern about the dangers of organized religion, as well as the dangers of dogmatism.

Nice categorical statement of your opinion as though it were fact.

Of course, you know perfectly well that it implies all sorts of things when used by actual people in actual communication.

Some of those implications - i.e. that atheists are immoral - are well worth fighting against.

What I don't understand is why it is so important to you or anyone else that a very, very weak atheist - that is, one whose atheism is so weak that they cannot reasonably support anti-theism (surely nobody will claim that this site is not anti-theism?), should somehow be forced to accept the same word to define their viewpoint as those whose atheism is strong enough to make them anti-theist.

Well - it seems to me that that horse has left the barn. C.S. Lewis'  objections aside, (and yours) - languages evolve, the meanings of words change, and trying to turn back the clock is futile.

If a person believes that god may exist, or may not exist, and that the evidence for either of those propositions is not significantly greater or more convincing than the evidence for the other, that person is a very weak atheist in a strict technical sense.

That person is certainly not an atheist in sense that the word is currently used in th eEnglish language.

Oh and BTW - I just happened to find a link that seems to indicate that most dictionaries come down on my side of this debate and firmly against yours.

http://www.evilbible.com/Definition_of_Atheism_3.htm

Unless these citations are incorrect; the Merriam-Webster online references are correct and squarely contradict your view.

 Nested quotes seem to whack out my formatting, so I'm not going to snip and clip this response.

Firstly, that was not a personal attack. It was more in the nature of an amused observation, and it was clearly directed at your statement, not at you.

You responded to my objection to categorical statements of opinion as fact with a categorical statement of your opinion as fact. Thus my satirical use of the word "nice" - I think you are being a little oversensitive, since any theist who did the same could expect at least that much irony in response. Note Sapient's first response in this thread: "Great approach you have there..."

However, I will respect your wishes and do my best to modulate my tone in our discussions.

You went on to reiterate your categorical statement, that the "a" prefix can only be interpreted one way. Since every major dictionary definition of "atheism" includes the meaning "denial" while only some include disbelief, the sources do not seem to support you. In fact, it would seem that the usage example given for sense 1 in the OED is, itself, a direct contradiction of your interpretation. (See my earlier provided link.)

 Next you mischaracterize my viewpoint - I think you know that my assertion that words are defined by usage (which you have not responded to directly - are words in every language subject to definition-alteration through usage, or not?) cannot reasonably be taken to mean that I "take that approach to everything."  Sorry, but this seems disingenuous to me.

You go on to further mischaracterize my viewpoint; languages change based upon an evolutionary process spread across the entire population of speakers; this is in no way equivalent to claiming that we can just take a vote, especially within a tiny minority of that population, to establish word meanings.

Your argument about "your" vs. "you're" I would characterize as a straw man and a red herring. Do you deny that languages evolve and word meanings change?

Do you believe that any individual or small group (relative to the population of native speakers) can or should be able to halt that process?

Looking at the various etymologies and archaic meanings, it appears likely that the word originally meant something more like "evil" - because it reflected the then-near-universal association of morality with gods. The word evolved to carry a different meaning, although many people still have that association, and it's one I hope will eventually vanish. But I think it extraordinarily likely that there must have been many people who tried to object to or block that transition using some of the very same arguments you are using. 

Your comprehension of the logical fallacy of equivocation seems flawed to me, as well. Here is the wikipedia example:

A feather is light.

What is light cannot be dark.

Therefore, a feather cannot be dark.

Please explain how any statement of mine had anything to do with that fallacy.

You go on to cite C.S. Lewis again. While such an unrealistic expectation of and support for some methodology by which the orthodox might control linguistic heresies seems quite appropriate coming from a man of his beliefs, I find it jarringly odd to see them echoed by a freethinker.

Finally you describe the undesirable result, in part, as having two words for atheist - clearly we need at least two words to capture the meaning, since the major dictionaries all have either both disbelief and denial or denial alone.

There is a significant difference between mathematical language and natural language, one which your arguments seem to indicate that you either misunderstand or would wish to eliminate.

Neither prefixes nor words are as static and clear-cut as you seemingly would like them to be. Of course this causes confusion, but it also adds descriptive power and flexibility. That's the tradeoff.

 Drilling up from the definitions page I cited earlier, I find a rather thorough discussion of this issue. If you can see past the (totally unnecessary) pejorative terms and hyperbole, I think his case generally holds up better than yours.

 http://www.evilbible.com/Definition_of_Atheism_1.htm

The statement, "I don't believe x," as used conversationally, almost always means, "I believe x to be untrue," not "I have no belief about the truth or untruth of x."

Same with "disbelieve" - if you say you disbelieve someone's statement, that is completely different than saying you are unable or unwilling to make a decision about the truth of the statement. It means you have made a determination (though varying levels of certainty could be intended) that the statement is false.

Why should the usage of the word disbelieve be different with regard to theism?

May I interject? It seems as though the gradual changing of words in how the language eveloves. The language is defined by the vocabulary and syntax people agree upon. Regardless, the point in my words is to convey meaning. If Agnostic conveys the meaning I want, then I use the word Agnostic.

I don't believe your satements are correct. When I say that, it means I believe your statements are incorrect. Would it mean something different in your version of English?

Have you ever encountered anyone that would use that phrase to mean, "I am completely undecided about the correctness of your statements." -?

Have you ever seen the word used in that way, except in the context of this particular debate?

Did you read the usage example for your definition of the word in the OED?

Here's the citation: 

Atheist:
1. One who denies or disbelieves the existence of a God.
2. One who practically denies the existence of a God by disregard of moral obligation to Him; a godless man.
    B. attrib. as adj. Atheistic, impious.
 

[Note: The last word usage example for sense #1 is:  1876 GLADSTONE in Contemp. Rev. June 22 By the Atheist I understand the man who not only holds off, like the sceptic, from the affirmative, but who drives himself, or is driven, to the negative assertion in regard to the whole Unseen, or to the existence of God.]

 Seems a very odd choice for a usage example if the editors of the OED intended "disbelieve" in the way you are claiming. In fact, it seems much more likely to have been added specifically to contradict such an impression.

If the OED doesn't mean it in your sense, I don't believe that the others do, either. 

In either case, it's just one small part of this debate.

Most people also think "Theory" means basically a guess. Dictionaries often say so too. And it is a completely incorrect definition of the word.

An excellent point of comparison.

Languages evolve, and evolution is a messy process.

Perhaps theory will mean guess in a hundred years, and nothing else - but I doubt it.

Ignorance is one factor in the evolution of languages, but it is not the only language-shaping force.

Leaving aside the meaning "guess," the word theory has at least three distinct and widely recognized meanings. Unfortunately, many people have a poor understanding of the distinctions, which is where the fallacy of equivocation really does arise.

There is the conversational use. A character on a cop show might present a theory about the crime - not just whodunnit, but some more or less detailed scenario of how, with a more or less systematic attempt to show how the available evidence supports the scenario. A perfectly acceptable use of the word.

Without going into too much detail, I think most people recognize that a scientific theory, while meeting the criteria of the first meaning, must also meet a more restrictive set of criteria.

Within the scientific use, there is yet a third broadly (though perhaps not broadly enough) recognized, use of the word; the quasi-capitalized version reserved for certain constructs like the Theory of Evolution, or Quantum Theory, which fits a more restrictive definition yet.

 Messy, but the distinctions are clear enough that we can make a reasonable judgment:

Creationists commit the equivocation fallacy twice over, first by equating the Theory of Evolution to a scientific theory in the more general sense, and then by elevating their weak cop-show theory to a scientific one.

The situation with "atheism" is quite a different one. As the usage example associated with the OED definition (cited above) proves conclusively, by 1876 an authority sufficiently respected to be used as an example in the OED offered, and was quoted by the OED offering, a definition that matches the one I'm supporting and specifically excludes the one being offered in this thread.

The word atheist has not had that definition in our language, then, for well over a century, if indeed it ever did - which nobody has demonstrated, either.

 To break a word into its roots and declare that any meaning that doesn't conform strictly to those roots (as interpreted by the claimant, to be sure) must be incorrect, seems like pure sophistry to me.

So the situation with respect to the word atheist is that it has one broadly accepted meaning, which though a bit indistinct, like all such words, definitely does not include the meaning which a tiny and vocal minority is laboring to foist upon it.

There are people in this world who will state without reservation that god exists. These are theists, most would agree. There are those who will state that god does not exist, and they are clearly atheists.

Then there are many others who are unsure, to varying degrees. Those who think the atheist statement is certainly, or almost certainly, or very probably correct are generally considered atheists, but people who withhold a decision about the two opposing statements are not referred to as atheists in the English language.

There is a truth which the proponents of this altered definition are trying to capture here. In an important sense, anyone who is not comfortable basing determinations of philosophical and ethical truth upon a deistic faith should see themselves as more closely philosophically akin to atheists than to theists.

But to attempt to somehow force people to accept an altered definition of the word atheism that declares that all human beings must be classified as theist or atheist is, I believe, futile if not counterproductive, and based on very flawed reasoning. Language is not mathematics.

If we could re-define the words so that atheist meant anyone who is not a theist, atheists would, in a stroke, change from a tiny minority to a plurality, and perhaps a majority, of humanity. How lovely that would be!

What this attempted re-definition does in reality, however, is to polarize and antagonize those people who believe that neither theists nor atheists (in the sense in which I and nearly all English speakers use the word) have a significantly more convincing case.

It serves to remind them of where they disagree with atheists, rather than where they agree, and it appears to them as a cynical, dishonest attempt to mislabel people who take an agnostic view of the whole theist/atheist debate, based on thoroughly specious reasoning, and undertaken in service to an ulterior motive.

Nobody ever concedes these debates, and sooner or later they always devolve into graceless, pointless acrimony.

At some point, you decide that the record as it stands will convince any unbiased, rational, intelligent, critically thinking reader that you have made the better case.

I'm content to let the record stand on this one.

Alright, since I thought you were at least somewhat in agreement with me on this issue, I'll try one more time before I step away.

I agree that since atheism is not an idiom, it is necessarily, by morphology, some sort of negation of theism, or belief in god. But is it really so simple as all that?

Consider the word achromatic, which comes from the roots "no color." The primary definition in Merriam-Webster is of the refracting action of a type of lens that does not produce certain color distortions. The second is of a substance that is not easily colored by usual staining agents. Not until the third listing do we see "possessing no hue."

Consider the words amoral and immoral. Both prefixes mean "not," and yet the meaning of the two words is quite different and conveys an important distinction.

My issue isn't with the roots of the word anyway, it is with the assumption, or declaration, that theism is treated by the language (or should be) as if the negation were Boolean - that anyone who is not theist is atheist, that anyone who does not believe proposition x must disbelieve proposition x.

The English word "atheist" means and long has meant exactly what both I and the OED-cited authority in 1876 said. It specifically does not include the meaning proposed here, regardless of what the root words are.

In trying to declare that every human must be either atheist or theist, the proponents of this notion are led to (absurdly) attribute the same status to the condition of belief generally, so that it will seem that dictionary definitions agree with them.

I'll revert to the cop-show analogy. Two detectives interrogate a witness, and he makes some statement, the truth or falsehood of which is essential to the case.

One cop asks the other, "Do you believe him?" The other might reply in the affirmative or in the negative. Or he might say something equivalent to, "I don't know."

If you accept the reasoning presented here, he should instead say, "No, I don't believe him." Since he doesn't believe that the statement is true, he must believe that it isn't true, and his saying that he doesn't know doesn't reflect a possible condition of belief that has any significance.

Let's move the scene to the jury room. Five jurors believe the statement is true, two believe it is false (in other words - they disbelieve the statement), and the other five are uncertain.

Suppose that one of the jurors who disbelieve the statement tries to browbeat the undecided jurors into voting with him by declaring that since they don't believe the satement, they must disbelieve it, therefore they must vote with those who believe the statement to be false.

Do you think this argument would sway the undecided? If so, in which direction?

It would not sway them into saying that they disbelieve the statement. 

It would certainly diminish the credibility of the person trying it, and the cause of both disbelievers in the statement by association - no matter how justified their opinion that the statement is false might be.

It is ridiculous, and therefore seems desperate.

This is, of course, precisely the position I think we are in here.

Dictionaries have a problem with submitting to the commonest usages. That's why they can seem flat wrong sometimes.

The term "agnostic" is a good example. Most people use it to mean something like halfway between an atheist and a theist. But analyzed philosophically this just doesn't work.

In the case of "theory", I typically use "Scientific Theory" to minimize misunderstanding, to imply that I am referring to something more akin to The Theory Of Relativity rather than something like "I have a theory that the Pope eats his boogers."

Okay, try and follow me on this.

If you're saying that you can't know either way, you're basicly ascribing a "maybe" to the god-idea. Seems like a safe middleground. It isn't.

Before I can rightfully say, that monkey's might fly out of my butt, I would first have to show how such a thing could be possible in the first place. Now if there were a known god-concept that could technicly speaking exist, while it hasn't been proven to exist yet, you'd have a proper reason for proposing that said god might exist. Untill then you can't even rightfully use a "maybe" and what's called hard atheism (or strong atheism) is the only viable stance.

I should add, that once you do have such a 'possible' god, it's arguable that applying the term god becomes absurd.