I think you might not understand what I’m saying. You are right that some atheists, in fact most atheists, consider the term “God” to be well-defined, i.e., to have meaning. They are the WEAK atheists. That puts them closer to theism. But the STRONG atheists do not believe the term “God” to be coherently defined. That puts them farther away from theism.
I think there is a problem with your definitions. If I am reading them correctly, all strong atheists are also weak atheists. That is, all who deny that God is a meaningful word also assert that this meaningless being does not exist.
But there is a difference between “unicorn” and “bliffle”. “Unicorn” is a meaningful word for something that does not exist. But “bliffle” is not a word for anything that exists, and also it is not a word for something that does not exist. Strong atheists claim that “God”, “Allah” and “Yahweh” are like “bliffle”, not words at all. Weak atheists claim that “God”, “Allah”, and “Yahweh” are words like “unicorn” or “mermaid”.
Of course not. I’m not talking about theists. I’m just defining the two kinds of atheists.
Yes, of course. “Unicorn” and “mermaid” are very meaningful words. If “Sherlock Holmes” were meaningless just because Sherlock doesn’t and never did exist, you wouldn’t be able to read A. Conan Doyle’s books.
Dictionaries define weak atheism as an absence of belief in deities, and strong atheism as the claim that no deities exist.
I think I see a problem with consistency in this remark. It is Possible to read books about God just as it is possible to read books about Sherlock Holmes. By the reasoning used in the sentence I just quoted, it seems to follow that the term God is at least as meaningful as the phrase Sherlock Holmes, because you can read books about God. Am I missing something?
The sun was once worshiped just as was Zeus. Zeus was a deity that did not exist, but the sun was a deity that did and still does exist. Since everybody believes the sun exists, nobody should claim that no deity exists. Aaron’s golden calf (Exodus 32) was a deity that existed, and who knows but what it still exists somewhere, maybe buried deep underground somewhere. If so, it is an existent deity. Maybe the claim was that atheists don’t worship any deities, not that no deities exist.
Google ‘strong weak atheism’ and you’ll see lots of websites have definitions, all very similar. None I looked at say ‘god’ is meaningless - ‘god’ is defined in dictionaries so it obviously isn’t meaningless.
Are you claiming that the sun was never worshiped? What if the golden calf of Aaron were to be dug up and proved to exist? Would you say Aaron’s golden calf was not a deity that exists? Even if it is never dug up, which it probably won’t be, would you say that Aaron’s golden calf was a deity that existED?
Yes, people thought the sun and idols were deities but that doesn’t mean they ever were, does it?
I’ve never met anyone who believes that ‘God’, ‘god’, etc., are meaningless words so can’t answer.
Nobody believes that “god” spelled with a little “g” is meaningless, just like they don’t believe that the word “deity” is meaningless. Or the word “unicorn”. But indeed there are people who believe that “God” (capital G), “Allah”, and “Yahweh” are meaningless words, See en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theological_noncognitivism
Never met anyone with such beliefs.
Strong or positive atheism holds that God does not exist with certainty.
That can’t be right because many Christians hold that. They say “There is not enough evidence to prove that Yahweh exists”, “so we believe in Yahweh on faith”.
