Shades of Atheism
There are few things worse than a dictionary definition in theology. I admit guilt of this last week. Would you accept that I as a non-theist could look up Christianity in the dictionary than argue with a Christian what their beliefs were?
I am an atheist. I discuss that on the AF board and elsewhere. I suppose you could say I’m part of the “Atheist Movement” and here is how I define the words.
I define my Atheism as meaning without belief. That is a goal state not something I could claim I have attained in my life right now, but I seek to have no belief. For me to “believe” something, for lack of a better word, it needs to be supported by evidence. I fail at this a lot, but I think it is an in intellectually honest position. This is often called “weak” atheism.
“Strong” atheism is not a position I can defend. In it’s own way it is just as unreasonable as theism and it is really unnecessary. It is the assertion that there is no God. You’d need to go to someone else for a defense of it.
Agnosticism is not a belief system of its own, it is a statement of whether the existence of God is provable. You can have a Christian agnostic or an non-theist agnostic, both believe that the existence of God is non-provable, one acts like there is a God the other acts as if their is not. There is a lot of gray in there but all someone who is an agnostic says about belief is that the existence of God is not provable.
I am technically an agnostic weak atheist. Generally speaking I just say atheist.
You can say I’ve redefined words and merged meaning, etc. I don’t think I have. I think I’ve sought to find words that convey meaning. This is not a obfuscation, atheists talking to atheists are not confused by these differences, just as Christians are aware of the denomination differences between themselves, however from the outside the difference is not so apparent.
–Zafkiel