Atheism's Definition - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

[Magicthighs]

I sent an e-mail to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy's webmaster concerning their definitions of Atheism and Agnosticism which can be seen here:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/atheis...sticism/#1

I get this website thrown at me a lot by theists who want to define atheism as the claim that god does not exist"

I share your annoyance with that article, in fact, I stumbled upon this website when I used google to see if I was the only one who felt this way.
If I remember correctly, there used to be a separate article on atheism, which they now seem to have merged with the article on agnosticism. I may be wrong, however.


The reason I created an account and am currently posting here is because of this part of their reply:

"In our understanding, the argument for this broader notion was
introduced into the philosophical literature by Antony Flew in "The
Presumption of Atheism" (1972)"

This is simply false. Here are just a few examples that predate Flew:

Baron d'Holbach: "All children are atheists, they have no idea of God".

Robert Flint: "every man is an atheist who does not believe that there is a God, although his want of belief may not be rested on any allegation of positive knowledge that there is no God, but simply on one of want of knowledge that there is a God"

And, arguably, Bertrand Russell: "I ought to call myself an agnostic; but, for all practical purposes, I am an atheist. I do not think the existence of the Christian God any more probable than the existence of the Gods of Olympus or Valhalla. To take another illustration: nobody can prove that there is not between the Earth and Mars a china teapot revolving in an elliptical orbit, but nobody thinks this sufficiently likely to be taken into account in practice. I think the Christian God just as unlikely"