Removed from intro:[]
I have removed the following from the intro:
- As an example, a claim about the existence of god like "god does not exist"; an atheist does not necessarily accept as true as this is a claim about the existence of god. This does not necessarily mean that atheists actively believe that no gods exist. For the atheist then, this would be a basic belief.
I have done this because it is confusingly written and because it does take into account strong and weak athiesm which is addressed later in the article. --R Fitzroy 11:29, 31 July 2008 (UTC)
Problems with this page[]
Firstly, it presents there as being only two options "I believe God exists" and "I don't believe God exists".
Actually, there are three options, "I believe that God exists", "I believe that God does not exist", "I neither believe nor disbelieve that God exists". The second option it presents, "I don't believe God exists", is actually ambiguous, because it covers both disbelieving and neither believing nor disbelieving.
Secondly, it starts talking about "believing but not knowing" vs "believing and knowing", without ever addressing the question of how knowledge is defined. Are we approaching it as justified true belief? Or are we taking a Bayesian approach? In any event, since it fails to properly distinguish "I believe that God does not exist" from "I neither believe nor disbelieve that God exists", it missing the fact that while for "I believe that God does not exist", it is reasonable to ask whether belief amounts to knowledge, in the case of "I neither believe nor disbelieve that God exists", it makes no sense to ask if belief amounts to knowledge, since there is no actual belief there, just an absence of belief. Maratrean 13:14, July 9, 2011 (UTC)