The meaning of Atheism.

[Existentialist]

I think not. But when people start telling me that I must conform to a dictionary, that I am "wrong" if I don't conform, it automatically causes me to feel rebellious. I think that's ok.

It's not OK as a principle if you want to communicate effectively. It's merely arrogant and stubborn ;unattractive and unproductive attitudes.

"effectively" - would that mean efficiently, quickly, like a well-run production line in a competitively successful factory producing a good product? I don't want my communicating to be like that. I'd rather linger around concepts inefficiently musing on their multi-faceted possibilities, occasionally inhaling from a metaphorical joint and then asking my fellow debaters "do you mean this", while they muse for a while and say "no, I don't think I do" and take another afternoon to decide what they do mean - rather than have people say I'm arrogant, stubborn and unattractive - that's not how I make friends!

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Fuck it, let's just throw away the dictionary all together

I may be wrong, but I detect anger - the sort that comes from fear, from anxiety. It tends to make me think I might have touched a nerve, that it has been noticed that a fragile set of constructs is under threat from a potentially more intellectually demanding ethical framework. We will have to see how this pans out.

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Sorry Adrian I wasn't ignoring your questions, just dealing with the points I found most interesting first. I'll come back to any questions I don't answer in this post.

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.

I'm afraid I think you are being extremely unrealistic about the way that the words strong and weak are perceived. I think that the statement "Your objections are merely your opinion" falls into the category of dismissiveness, which is far from being the objective stance you are claiming. I think I have put forward legitimate cultural concerns about the use of a particular set of polar opposites. I really do not think that dismissing it as mere opinion is respectful of another's right to hold an opinion. It's a shame.

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.

Well hang on. If anti-theism is a word for anti-religion then that means theism is religion, which confirms my critique of your later statement that Theism and Atheism are the only "strictly" possible beliefs in relation to belief in god.

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?

Well that's a straw man if ever there was one. My position is that belief or non-belief in the non-existence of god is an extremely important concept, important enough to have their own unique, exclusive nouns which do not require any adjectives to explain them. Not any statement. In this context, just this one. I think that's reasonable.

Like I said, there are perfectly good words that exist already;

Perfection? Scary.