(July 16, 2015 at 7:09 pm)Jenny A Wrote: Atheism is a word, word dictionaries describe the meanings of words as they are currently used. Why would I look in a specialty dictionary to define a commonly used word?
Quote:There is, unfortunately, some disagreement about the definition of atheism. It is interesting to note that most of that disagreement comes from theists - atheists themselves tend to agree on what atheism means. Christians in particular dispute the definition used by atheists and insist that atheism means something very different.
The broader, and more common, understanding of atheism among atheists is quite simply "not believing in any gods." No claims or denials are made - an atheist is just a person who does not happen to be a theist.
Sometimes this broader understanding is called "weak" or "implicit" atheism. Most good, complete dictionaries readily support this.
There also exists a narrower sort of atheism, sometimes called "strong" or "explicit" atheism. With this type, the atheist explicitly denies the existence of any gods making a strong claim which will deserve support at some point. Some atheists do this and others may do this with regards to certain specific gods but not with others. Thus, a person may lack belief in one god, but deny the existence of another god.
http://atheism.about.com/od/definitionof...nition.htm
About.com? Right, well you can use all of the user-generated websites you want to try and support your position, I'll stick to the actual philosophical standards.
