Strong atheism is a term popularly used to describe atheists who claim the statement "There is at least one god" is false. Weak atheism refers to any other type of non-theism, wherein a person does not believe any deities exist, but does not claim that same statement is false.
Historically, the terms positive and negative atheism have been used for this distinction, where "positive" atheism refers to the specific belief that gods do not exist, an...
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Strong atheism is a term popularly used to describe atheists who claim the statement "There is at least one god" is false. Weak atheism refers to any other type of non-theism, wherein a person does not believe any deities exist, but does not claim that same statement is false.
Historically, the terms positive and negative atheism have been used for this distinction, where "positive" atheism refers to the specific belief that gods do not exist, and "negative" atheism refers merely to an absence of belief in gods. Because of flexibility in the term "god", it is understood that a person could be a strong atheist in terms of certain conceptions of God, while remaining a weak atheist in terms of others.
The "strong" vs. "weak" distinction did not come into common usage until the early 1990s. The terms negative atheism and positive atheism were used by Antony Flew in 1972, although Jacques Maritain used the phrases in a similar, but strictly Catholic apologist, context as early as 1949.
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