If you were ever a theist...

[robvalue]

Evie: Annoyance? You are anything but.

(Guess who I voted for best overall forum member? )

Deidre: You are also anything but! You're lovely and it's really refreshing to talk to such an open minded theist.

As for atheism, "weak" atheism is just a description, as in it's not taking a really hard stance. It's not weak as in poor. It's more malleable, I guess. When people say they are "just agnostic", I would call that weak agnostic atheism. If you don't actively believe in a deity, you're an atheist, by definition. But if you also don't actively believe there isn't any deities, you're a weak atheist. It's the undecided default position.

However, you can be a "strong" atheist (an active belief that there are no deities) and still be agnostic. For example, I'm a strong atheist regarding the character Yahweh, but still agnostic. I don't deny the possibility of some cosmic coincidence where something vaguely resembling the character exists somewhere. How much it would actually match it is the issue, especially since the character isn't internally consistent by our understanding of logic and reality.

However! My problems are more fundamental. I don't know what a "deity" is. I have two "things" in front of me, one is a deity and one is an arbitrarily powerful non-deity. How do I tell the difference?

I hear tell of "breaking the laws of nature". However, all we do is model nature. We don't prescribe it. So obviously, if something can break a law, it's not a law. It just doesn't apply entirely how we have so far modelled it.