The meaning of Atheism.

[Tiberius]

a) Strong and weak cannot help but borrow patriarchal inferences of masculine and feminine: macho and cowardly and therefore unnecessarily introduce the risk of attempts to humiliate, which isn't helpful to a rational debate.

Erm, how is that relevant? You asked for the words that describe the statements you presented. I gave you them. A "strong atheist" is someone who believes that there is no God. Your objections are merely your opinion; your dislike of certain words. You don't understand the words in the context they are in; you put your own context on top of them. To explain, there is nothing better about a "strong" atheist than a "weak" atheist. The word "strong" is to signify the strength of the belief in comparative terms; the strong atheist believes (actively) that there is no God, and the weak atheist has a more passive disbelief.

b) The idea that there is no God cannot be placed on a continuum with the idea that there might be a god or idea that there might not be a god. It's a concept about absolutes not relativities.

How is it placed in that continuum? Where did "there might be a God" come into it? I reject your statement that it is an absolute though. Strong atheism is a belief; nothing more. This is why I said there was a difference between gnostic atheism and strong atheism. You can be a strong atheist and still be fully accepting that there might be a God. It is only if you are a gnostic atheist (i.e. you believe you can prove God doesn't exist) that you are unable to accept there might be a God.

c) There is an emerging section of campaigning that says that a strong atheist is someone who actively opposes religion and a weak atheist is someone who says we shouldn't be too hard on religion.

No...there are words for that too. "anti-theism" and "anti-religious". Strong atheism is connected to neither. You can be a strong atheist and not be an anti-theist.

d) Strong atheist is two words, not one word.

...and when was the rule is written that only one word is needed to accurately describe a statement? Like I said, there are perfectly good words that exist already; and they can be used in conjunction with "atheism" and "theism" to create the words you wanted. I don't see any reason to re-invent terms when they already exist in perfectly understandable forms. If you really want to reduce confusion; try teaching people what words actually mean, rather than trying to come up with new ones.

a) Weak and strong - see the macho references above. Admittedly, relative concepts are easier for people who revolve around the agnostic camp to accept.

See above for objections.

b) Popular usage suggests that atheist and agnostic are mutually exclusive.

Argumentum ad populum? Popular usage does not automatically mean such usage is correct. In academia (especially in philosophy) the terms agnostic and atheism are very well understood, and are understood to not be mutually exclusive. I'd tackled this problem far many times to count, but if you want to explain how the terms are mutually exclusive, I'll take pleasure in showing you why you are wrong.

c) These are two words, not one word.

Again, see above objections.

Big problems with that. In usage, if not etymology, a theist is someone who follows a theological pattern of religious observance, i.e. a religion.

No, in usage that is usually "religious" or "religious person". I've never heard a religious person being referred to in a blanket statement as a "theist". Theism is the belief that at least one deity exists. If you are trying to redefine words here, I'm going to object at every possible corner. We've had theists come here and try that before. Guess what? Definitions are the accepted terms for the usage of words; if you disagree, then you are going to be adding to the confusion, not helping it.

The term anti-theist has been used to describe an anti-religious position which calls into question the literal meaning of the term theist.

The term anti-theist has been used against *some* religions because those religions are theistic. The comparison stops there. Hitchens is an anti-theist, and he attacks Christianity and Islam, as well as Judaism sometimes. I've never seen him attack Buddhism...I wonder why.

But in my mind it is possible to be a theist and atheist at the same time – an atheist priest for example, of which there are probably quite a lot in most mainstream churches.

This whole sentence is so full of fail I don't even know how to respond. You think a person can be a theist and an atheist at the same time? Well, you are wrong. Stop redefining words that have been around for centuries, and when they do not need redefinition. An atheist priest (in the sense that they enjoy the religion, just not the "god" part) would be a religious atheist, not a "theistic atheist". It really is quite simple; if you believe in God, you are a theist; if you don't believe in God, you are an atheist. You can't be both.

I think we have a fundamental problem with the words that are being used and if we don’t come up with new ones sometime soon, we will end up running forums which are entirely about what words mean, not the validity of the concepts the words attempt to describe.

I think the fundamental problem is that you want to wage war on the dictionary. If you don't understand what a word means, look it up. There is no need to invent new words. You may need to string a few words together to make a term more descriptive (agnostic atheist for instance), but just because you can't have one specific word for each individual stance on something, doesn't make it a problem. Do you want there to be separate words for "blue car", "red car", and "yellow car"? I think not. We use adjectives to add descriptive power to the noun; it's a literary technique, not a problem.

There are only 3 positions you can have on the subject of belief about God. If you want to introduce the concept of “knowing” then inevitably you have to have a scale which describes the possible combinations of knowing and not knowing.

Actually, if you want to be accurate, there are only two positions on the subject of "belief in God". Theism and Atheism. You have to be one or the other; however much you want to complain. However, when you dive more into the different types of atheist and theist you have, you need to add more descriptors, like agnostic, ignostic, strong, weak, etc.