Definition of Atheism

[Mister Agenda]

You're missing the point. Instead of arguing over definitions, you could be defending a proposition. Why not do that instead? It'll force the theists you talk to into a difficult position where they'll have to try to rebut strong arguments. Simply repeating "I lack belief!" at them ad nauseum accomplishes nothing.

If they can't understand someone lacking belief in something, they'll never understand a cogent argument, the first of which is to explain that they need to define what they mean by 'God' in order for the discussion to proceed, and the second of which is to explain that the burden of proof is on them to present an argument for their belief which is not fallacious, rests on reasonable premises, and has evidence to support it.

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This whole conversation seems ultimately useless, because the "lack belief" crowd is wrong anyway. There are good reasons to belive that the proposition "God does not exist" is true. If you don't believe that, you should.

Predictably, someone will probably come along and say, "but which god? neener neener neener!" The answer is: all of them. For any being which the word "God" in the above proposition can refer to, either there is a strong argument against that being's existence (see: argument from evil, argument from divine hiddenness, etc.), or allowing that thing into the set of things which "God" can refer to broadens the concept into uselessness and makes us all theists by default.

Funny how these sorts of posts never share their devastating argument against any sort of God existing. That's all it would take to get us on board: a proof that no concept of God refers to anything real. You can start by taking down the God of deism. I'm aware of no argument against it stronger than 'no good reason to believe it is real'. I've been waiting for this one and eagerly look forward to you taking it down for good.

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Dictionaries don't work that way, that is, they don't settle what the definitive meaning of a word is; they give usages of a word. Come on now.

Usage of the word is the entirety of your argument. Your position is that we should adhere to some sort of usage common among theists, taught to many of them by their biased pastors, over the most common usage among ourselves.

For some reason, you can't accept anyone adhering to a different usage than the one you prefer, so you started an entire thread about it. Strong atheists who want to rail that weak atheists shouldn't even call themselves atheists unless they convert to strong atheism are facing an uphill climb, since I've never been in any group of atheists where weak atheists weren't a strong majority.