Strong Atheism is illogical?

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I was perusing old threads and ran across one on strong atheism. I’ve heard this also called gnostic atheism and hard atheism - sometimes even anti-theism. Since I am one, I don’t like any of those labels.

In that thread, strong atheism was criticized as illogical and unscientific. I am going to contend that in an absolute sense, that is true. But there is a “relative sense” where strong atheism is just the conclusion reached on what data is available.

And to start this off, I think the definition of strong atheism is the belief that gods do not exist.

So what does everyone think?

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Well it depends on how exact you want to be. Using myself as an example, i have no way to know that all possible theoretical gods dont or cant exist. But when it comes to specific gods, like the biblical one, i can certainly say with certainty they dont exist.

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Semantics, atheism is the lack or absence of belief in any deity deities. This description is separate from certain claims by atheists, but they all lack theistic belief.

Since the claim god or gods exist is unfalsifiable, then its negation is also unfalsifiable, and both are irrelevant to my disbelief in any deity or deities.

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There’s no basis IMO for anyone to say that “hard” or “gnostic” atheists are any more anti-theist than “soft” or “agnostic” atheists. In fact I severely doubt it. How one handles belief vs knowledge claims is just a completely separate issue from how you choose to coexist with theists or how harmful you think theism is or how you think it should be interacted with.

And as a “weak” atheist I arrived at the same conclusion. I just don’t want to be baited into making unsupportable knowledge claims with believers who will get distracted by my imagined “arrogance”.

In other words I doubt that I conduct my life differently than you. If you claim to know there’s a zero percent chance of gods, it’s not going to be substantively different from me, who thinks the “odds of gods” are so vanishingly small as to be equivalent to zero percent; even though I don’t think zero is knowable or defensible as am actual claim, it is more of a technical philosophical stance, a sort of distinction without a difference.

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TL;DR: What can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.

Belief, unbelief, disbelief, contrary belief – they’re all on a continuous scale. And one can hold any position on that scale for any reason. As for me, I tend to be on the side of “strong atheism” (I don’t really like the term, but I don’t have any good alternatives), with the following reasoning: I have not seen, heard, read, experienced or otherwise been presented with any convincing arguments or empirical evidence of a concrete kind in favour of the existence of supernatural beings (or the supernatural effects in general). Claims of the existence of supernatural gods(1) are such extraordinary claims that I will require extraordinary evidence to believe them, and as such, I see no good reason to assume they might be there. Until we get concrete objective evidence in favour of their existence, I consider the existence of gods to be quite irrelevant for me [Edit: in the way I live my life]. Also, I consider musings into the probabilities of hypothetical gods, goblins, trolls(2), nisse, mermaids, etc. to be quite futile.(3) and I act and live my life like there are no gods or supernatural phenomena. Thus, I see no reason to assume the possible existence of such beings or phenomena. However, if any evidence of a convincing nature in favour of the existence of a god/gods should pop up, I will reconsider. But until then: nopety-nope.

Edited to add: The above does not preclude me from arguing against supernatural stuff and in favour of naturalistic explanations. My background in physics and the sciences shine through here.

(1) as opposed to humans or animals that were/are treated like gods, like kings of the past, Hitler, Stalin, the Kim klan of North Korea, etc.
(2) apart from internet trolls, which are demonstrably real.
(3) Caveat: fictional stories, fairy tales, and mythology are OK as fun and games, for entertainment and for understanding historical contexts and cultures of the past. But not for serious consideration of any truth claims. However, myths like told in e.g. the Iliad, about possible historical events spiced up with interpretations of divine interference for dramatic effects, can have been spun around a kernel of real historical events (minus the divine stuff, of course).

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IMHO, it all comes down to proselytizing. Either side. In the effort to disprove one absolute you’ve merely replaced it with another absolute. Once you claim a lock on truth and wisdom you’ve just lost your own argument.

In other words, my confirmation bias is better than yours…

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