Reply #51: I think the term "strong" atheist was created in an attempt to reclaim

[beam me up scottie]

the original and broad definition of the word "atheist", which means "lack of theism".

Christians tried to redefine the word to mean one who denies god, and unfortunately, this is the definition that made its way into English dictionaries.

I like to refer to "strong" atheists as Dictionary atheists for that reason.

The simplest explanation, as usual, can be found on Wikipedia:

Implicit and explicit atheism

The terms implicit atheism and explicit atheism were coined by George H. Smith (1979, p.13-18).

Implicit atheism is defined by Smith as "the absence of theistic belief without a conscious rejection of it." Explicit atheism is defined as "the absence of theistic belief due to a conscious rejection of it", which, according to Smith, is sometimes called antitheism (see below).




A chart showing the relationship between the weak/strong (positive/negative) and implicit/explicit dichotomies. Strong atheism is always explicit, and implicit atheism is always weak.

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The terms weak atheism and strong atheism (or, alternatively, negative atheism and positive atheism) are often used as synonyms of Smith's less-well-known implicit and explicit categories. However, the original and technical meanings of implicit and explicit atheism are quite different and distinct from weak and strong atheism, having to do with conscious rejection and unconscious rejection of theism rather than with positive belief and negative belief.

People who do not use the broad definition of atheism as "lack of theism", but instead use the most common definition "disbelief in or denial of the existence of God or gods" <4> would not recognize mere absence of belief in deities (implicit atheism) as a type of atheism at all, and would tend to use other terms, such as "skeptic" or "agnostic" or "non-atheistic nontheism", for this position.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atheism#Implicit_and_explicit_atheism

Not really simple, is it? :banghead: