Slashdot Mirror

Yes, he does. When he takes on, for example, the classical arguments for the existence of a deity, he is arguing philosophy. When he argues that to be "God" implies special creation, he's making a philosophical claim. Moreover, he's doing it far worse than most theistic critics of those arguments did, let alone the milennia of secular philosophers who tackled the same issues.

He mostly argues against the Design argument. It may have once been a philosophical argument, it is not longer in the that realm precisely because of theories like natural selection making an argument for or against design completely outdated and not even wrong. He argues against many other arguments that may have once been philosophical, but are rendered moot by science (eg morality, beauty, society). And here's the main point you continue to miss: the average person who is religious DO NOT have a degree in philosophy. They don't know what epistemology is, or what ontology is. They are convinced by arguments from design, morality, beauty, etc. Dawkins is writing for those people. And for most people, it is the morality aspect of theism that keeps them believing - they couldn't care less about the philosophy and probably would think it is just all just splitting hairs. Most people are sensible enough to know that the advanced arguments in epistemology are complete bullshit and are only there to keep people who enjoy that kind of thing busy, because who knows what they'll get up to if they had time on their hands.

(And, by the way, I didn't even mention Dawkins' introduction to Lawrence Krauss' latest book, which even embarrassed Krauss.)

There's a few videos on Youtube of an open discussion between Dawkins and Krauss in front of a crowd in a theatre. There are other videos out there of Krauss, none of which indicates his embarrassment of Dawkins' views, let alone his introduction. Looks like you've just read a cherry-picked review with cherry-picked out of context quotes from Krauss. Go look at those videos. Krauss even admits to coming around more to Dawkins' way of thinking.

I don't think you actually understand what philosophers actually do, and I'm not sure that explaining it in any detail would actually help. So here's the bumper-sticker version: Philosophy is the field of human endeavour from which other fields of human endeavour are born.

Sorry, but that's what you philosophers tell each other to make yourselves seem more important than you actually are. Once the "other fields of human endeavour are born", the philosophy that gave birth to them becomes useless and provides no other useful input. That's simply just what happens.

I'll give just one example: Semantics, the study of word meanings, was developed by philosophers, and graduated from the philosophy department to the linguistics department, with help from the computer science department. All of this happened after "the advent of relativity and quantum physics".

And philosophy now no longer plays any part in linguistics: only science. Anthropology studies languages and, or course, other human communications. Philosophical arguments have no place in linguistics. It's disgusting that you're basically arguing a genetic fallacy, or worse, a master-slave analogy. Philosophy gave birth to new sciences, therefore philosophy is still the master. No. Wrong. Ridiculous. That's just trying to steal credit for other people's efforts. That's just saying "I gave birth to you, so I still own you, not by the virtue of continued achievement, but because of origins". This is the same kind of evil slavery thinking that justifies the doctrine of original sin that somehow we all have original sin purely from being born, and that original sin happened in the first place is because the creator owns the created.

What you're indicating is that everything that isn't science (and in particular, everything that is humanities) is

But in the last 100 years, experience with officially atheist governments have not produced happy outcomes, by and large. Indeed, they have been terribly bloody.

But how is it fair to describe those countries exclusively as being "atheist governments" as if atheism was the driving force behind their actions? Can you draw a necessary connection between atheism and the ideologies that drove those regimes? What you're doing is the equivalent of saying that Iran's government is theistic, so that explains why they oppress women. Theism itself doesn't necessary imply actions, as one could be a theist and not act upon it in any way. However, theism as a term carries more baggage than atheism. How many theists have gods to which they ascribe no attributes?

Let's consider a government who outlaws theism. Let's say that this government is atheistic in nature, but how does a personal lack of belief in gods lead to the notion that all theistic belief should be purged? No, that's something else.

Unless you can draw a necessary connection from atheism, what you have there is as useful as stating that a lack of interest in sport is causing a decline in tennis in favour of football.

Oops Hitler was Christian. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_views_of_Adolf_Hitlert (More) perverted and fucked up christianity, but christian none-the-less. Many of his actions against the jews were in the name of god.
Mao and Stalin killed most people for political reasons, not because they weren't atheist.

Atheism has no agenda, it is simply without theism. Babies are atheists until they have their minds poisoned. Won't you think of the children?

I used to be a Christian. I stopped at thought about it when I met other Christians who believed that crap - and came to the only rational conclusion when thinking about gods - there aren't any.

That's a bit silly. There are idiots in all fields of life. Just because you happened to be exposed to idiot Christians (hence idiot Christianity), or, for that matter, idiot Muslims/Islam, Jews/Judaism, Buddhists/Buddhism etc., it doesn't imply that either of those things themselves are idiotic, only that they have idiotic elements within them. That can be generalized to Theism as a whole: while there are clearly silly concepts of gods, there are some very clever ones that avoid all the typical attacks made against the former, and whose defenders/followers actually join the Atheist in attacking the former. The problem I see then is that Atheists and silly-theists both look at the question as if it had only two camps, when actually it has at least three.

An excellent example of the 3rd camp, which names itself "classical theism" (as opposed to the modern or non-classical variety which Atheists usually battle against) is Edward Feser's blog. It is a good starting point for one to see that in this, as in everything else, the world isn't structured in black and white, and not even in mere shades of gray, as the more sophisticated two-camp actors would like to think, but actually has many colors, and shades between all of them.

"Evolution happens" (e.g. bacteria, -some of- more complex organism evolution) is a provable claim, and noncontroversial even going by what is described by, say, the bible itself regarding hybridization.

"There is evidence of human evolution" is a provable claim, and "evidence" is provably not "proof", and you yourself are denying "evolution" (as you erroneously use the term) is "proven" with your own sentence.

"The sole causal factor leading to human biology is evolution", is not provable, is not even testable, and as such is not science.

Just make up your mind as to what your claim is.

And no, there is a great deal of evidence for Judeo-Christian theism. That you aren't aware of evidence, does not mean there isn't any. To introduce a little philosophy into the discussion, you claiming that, is -impossible- to state validly as an epistemological claim (a claim of possible actual knowledge), always, for every topic. There may or may not be evidence for the Copehangen Interpretation of QM being better than the Everett Interpretation. There may or may not be someone who knows the evidence, indeed the facts, of what happened at 1 AM on the corner of Main and State street, when people heard gunshot fire. You know whether you know something. You can say whether somebody else knows or has evidence of something. You can -never- say that you know nobody has evidence of something, because that states that you have universal psychic powers to scan everyone's brain and note the absence of the evidence in everyone else on Earth's brain. It's Philosophy 101.

For the wider question of "evidence", here's something peer-reviewed to get you started.

http://profezie3m.altervista.org/archivio/TheLancet_NDE.htm

Since I've done it a hundred times, and simply don't feel like doing it again tonight, I won't argue the endless goalpost-shifts on this as to whether it is "proof" or not. Virtually nothing in existence is "proven". You want evidence, you now have evidence. More is available for the price of a google search.

The Last Question is better. This whole Omega Point crap is nothing but extrapolating the claim of theism of the Intelligent Design argument not that of the currently known science.

Ah, but you conveniently forget that your memory of your shirt is a physical one.

A physical memory? So (according to you) in the absence of any empirical evidence, a sincere belief will suffice as evidence for the existence of something?

On the contrary, no one "remembers" god.

That is *exactly* what people do. You've nailed it - ironically assertign a framework in which theism is perfectly reasonable.

And yet you've never substantiated your argument that the Zokooloo is a strawman.

So you snipped the section in question and then later claim that it didn't exist, and then later still tried to debunk and then later still, claimed you didn't have because it amounted to fancy book larnin' which you don't agree with. Nice going.

Your homework is to work through the examples in the counterargument section http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell's_teapot, and refute them. One by one.

then wait and automatically win in every possible practical sense

Thanks for the laugh.

Even a single one of the ones "cherry picked" or of the 2500, is sufficient in itself to counter your claim.

Not quite, since even a stopped clock is right twice a day. Make enough predictions and ignore all the failures doesn't mean when you are right it was by actually knowing in advance.

Also, I note you are willing to accept his listed predictions with his assigned probabilities, but not willing to accept his statements about what the Bible says with regards to 100% accuracy required versus prophets who are occasionally right but are instead the work of Satan.

No, the very definition of randomness that the specific outcome cannot be predicted in advance. [..] That we observe by default a given distribution of that randomness

All I'm talking about is the distribution. To deviate significantly from that distribution becomes more and more unlikely. If somebody won a 1 in million lottery every week for a year, we would conclude that he either gamed the system through some kind of deception, or something supernatural is happening that science could not explain.

That we observe by default a given distribution of that randomness, does not mean the causality is specifiable, nor that the effects are not manipulable

Science hasn't shown a mechanism to manipulate them in the manner of miracles you are talking about. Doing so would either require technology beyond anything we know about or supernatural intervention. And here's the big point you keep on ignoring: a divine being has no need to respect the physical laws anyways, so the only point of your sophistry is to drape mythology in quantum science.

If my interpretation does not correspond to scientific understanding, you complain. If it does correspond to scientific understanding, you complain. What exactly do you want?

I want a consistent answer for what a supposedly inerrant document based on divine revelation says, so that I don't throw it in the dustbin with all the other mythologies.

Again, if I ask a 1,000 people a question they can't answer with the evidence at hand, and they make up a bunch of fantastical stories that differs from the answer when better evidence comes along, I'm not going to bend over backwards to lend credence to their explanations.

I don't like the argument because it doesn't work.

Of course you think it doesn't. You're wearing Bible-prism glasses and suffering massive cognitive dissonance.

You are assuming that the information conveyance proposed by Genesis is -intended to be- the information of a specific ordering. This is your assertion, and it is highly-debatable within the context of theism itself

Ah, good timing. Here's another example of said massive cognitive dissonance. If I said, "On day one I did this, and on day two I did that," you'd sound like a raving lunatic to claim I didn't intend a precise ordering.

not for the least reason that this cannot be the expectation based on the content of the book--it would, on the face of it, be internally inconsistent on a basic level given the accounts of those seven days, taken on the literal, specific level you are taking it.

The Bible is full of inconsistent drivel, as would be expected of a mythology pulled together from various sources, which requires all sorts of pretzel twisting from the believers. However, in this case I don't believe it is inconsistent in the exact manner you specify.

For instance, we have animals being described as created on multiple days.

Day 5 was birds and sea creatures. Day 6 was land animals and man.

it is possible that -a literal timeline is not being presented-

Even if

Yes, this is indeed tedious. So I'll respond once more, and be done, and then wait and automatically win in every possible practical sense, whether this outcome is evaluated by your worldview or mine.

I didn't "wave my hand", I asked where they were specified, to which you waved your hand.

It was a totally-irrelevant red-herring on your part, and unnecessary for the point at hand. Even a single one of the ones "cherry picked" or of the 2500, is sufficient in itself to counter your claim. I have to assume you already understood enough about necessary and sufficient conditions to know this, before you suggested otherwise.

When we do experiments the particles follow a random distribution, which can be predicted in advance.

No, the very definition of randomness that the specific outcome cannot be predicted in advance. You can wrap this conceptually in a broad self-evident statement, equivalent to "we can predict as an outcome that 100% of the time there will be an outcome", but this does not address the question. That we observe by default a given distribution of that randomness, does not mean the causality is specifiable, nor that the effects are not manipulable--as we are beginning to do with the basic notion of quantum computation--certainly, even at our basic level of utilizing it, the quantum behavior has macro effects (e.g. all the results to the world of actions proceeding from the computation). You stipulate a further range of utilization is not possible because... you say so, and without any further basis. This does not enhance your refusal to agree random means random, and that things that are possible (indeed, -certain- given time) are, because they are directly possible, therefore impossible. Nor does it enhance your overall misdirection of the probability of a given event occurring to be representative of the likelihood a worldview is correct that states the improbable events occur. Purely referencing science alone, it may be highly improbable given event will occur, though it is -100% certain- it is true we live in a context of reality where highly improbable things occur. Just stop dodging here. You're only confusing yourself.

Except there is no reliable way to distinguish between "correct" dogma and incorrect dogma that gets relabeled as allegory or otherwise re-interpreted to fit the facts.

If my interpretation does not correspond to scientific understanding, you complain. If it does correspond to scientific understanding, you complain. What exactly do you want?

Which is a blatant lie. You just don't like the argument because you see the world through Bible-prism glasses.

I don't like the argument because it doesn't work. Okay, if you prefer, I assert you haven't made a good argument--you have indeed provided -an- argument per se.

Yet that's essentially what you are re-interpreting Genesis as. The plain facts of what God did and when are listed, then you claim what was explicitly described in a precise ordering was not intended to be described in a precise ordering. By referring to Animal Farm and allegories, how is this any different from mythology?

Wait, this is or is not what God did? Are you stipulating that your interpretation corresponds to reality, or does not correspond to reality? You are assuming that the information conveyance proposed by Genesis is -intended to be- the information of a specific ordering. This is your assertion, and it is highly-debatable within the context of theism itself, not for the least reason that this cannot be the expectation based on the content of the book--it would, on the face of it, be internally inconsistent on a basic level given the accounts of those seven days, taken on the literal, specific level you are taking it. For instance, we have animals being described as created on multiple days. It is, indeed, -possible- that the entire history of Judaism missed multiple contradictions, a few paragraphs apart, in one of

What is this, refutation-by-asserted-category?

If you assert by category while earlier arguing for a specific claim (not category), then my refutation will be that you didn't meet the earlier claim.

Except, as a matter of basic fact, adults factually do believe in them.

I was referring to Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy, hence "concede that Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy is less likely to be true then the Biblical god" and "the lie is revealed and rational, grown adults don't believe in them [Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy]".

Waving your hand at a sentence that says there are more

I didn't "wave my hand", I asked where they were specified, to which you waved your hand.

still destroys your notion of equivalence between theism and Santa, as previously stated

No, it doesn't, since going by his figure of 2500 prophecies, showing only 13 means he likely cherry-picked the best examples, but furthermore, he explicitly stated that the Bible itself claims that there were "2000 of which already have been fulfilled to the letter--no errors" and "God's prophets, as distinct from Satan's spokesmen, are 100 percent accurate in their predictions. There is no room for error."

If I asked a children about evidence for Santa Claus and documented it all, I'd get similar results. But I've already conceded the Biblical god is more likely to exist than Santa Claus in my previous post, however remotely, if only because the lie is revealed. Though, again, the main reason I stepped in was because you claimed quantum mechanics provided believability.

Don't worry about it. This thread will be quite over, and judging your degree of motivation, you'll be well along toward the point of you getting naturally deselected by then--at which point you and this discussion will be irrelevant.

*shrug* If you don't want to back it as the paper I was looking for, then fine.

I'm not contending the event isn't improbable.

Well that's the entire point. When we do experiments the particles follow a random distribution, which can be predicted in advance. To claim outlandish miracles are allowed in physics is to claim observation of things you wouldn't expect to see in the lifetime of the universe.

No, I'm appealing to it as it properly is, as a matter of science.

I haven't seen any quantum science out of you, other than an appeal to a magic box to drape your mythology in respectability.

For those rare events, you are wholly assuming that the probabilities aren't manipulable, simply because you haven't seen it, and in the face of the fact you do not understand the "why" of the causality here, to be able to exclude anything.

That isn't science, as the science shows random distributions. If you want to claim they can be manipulated by a divine origin, then that's a mythical assertion on your part, which is besides the point, since a divine being has no need to respect the physical laws anyways.

I -noted- it is wholly supportable under hard physics, correctly.

It absolutely isn't. Please cite the science that demonstrates it.

Are you saying that this may have decreased the efficiency of the DNA propagation of members of the Catholic Church

This discussion is already tedious and bizarro world enough as it is: I don't know where you got that interpretation from, so I'm going to ignore the whole "Galileo was a Christian" sidetrack. The main point is that Church doctrine based on a plain reading of the Bible caused controversy around Galileo's work.

Cite away.

http://bible.cc/psalms/104-5.htm : "He set the earth on its foundations; it can never be moved."

It's not a goalpost shift to refute what you stated. In comparing the believability of the Biblical god versus Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy, you made a reference to a survey regarding "eyewitness reports". The survey says nothing about eyewitness reports for the Biblical god.

It gives specific numbers and percentages of those experiencing events specifically called for by a theistic metaphysics. It's Table 2. I thought you were arguing with the standard infinite-regress that those experiences "aren't specifically Christian enough", as if that were necessary to serve as evidence relative to Santa. If your claim is it isn't there at all, simply read Table 2. And yes, this is "eyewitness accounts", and the fact they are dead (or apparently so) at the time only adds to its value as relevant evidence. That they are eyewitnesses is a given by the fact they are reporting the experiences, personally.

The Biblical god is a specific creation myth. Having a near-death experience that hints at something beyond this mortal coil can be evidence for any supernatural explanation of our origins, like, for example, Buddhism.

What is this, refutation-by-asserted-category? Okay, all your stances are merely postmodern atheism, which has been extensively refuted and is merely a function of moral relativism. There, I categorized your stance--no need to actually provide substantiating argument, correct?

If you're going to link to "evidence", then I'm going to critique it, especially when it makes ridiculously strong claims.

Then do so, and critique it. Waving your hand at a sentence that says there are more, and your stance is likely even worse than explicitly addressed by the link, as if that addressed any point, does nothing. To critique it, you'd need to actually challenge a given claim--of which, we can toss out the majority listed a priori and it still destroys your notion of equivalence between theism and Santa, as previously stated.

If you want me to concede that Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy is less likely to be true then the Biblical god, I will be happy to do so, as the lie is revealed and rational, grown adults don't believe in them.

Except, as a matter of basic fact, adults factually do believe in them. You have no better argument here than just stating directly, obviously-false characterizations? Again, refer to the list if you need evidence adults do, and indeed adult scientists far more knowledgable on the subject than you.

If that's what you say presents a scientific and rational justification for a belief in a Biblical god, then I will look at it. However, I don't want to spend time looking at it and then having you say he didn't address the issues, and there is another paper elsewhere that does.

Don't worry about it. This thread will be quite over, and judging your degree of motivation, you'll be well along toward the point of you getting naturally deselected by then--at which point you and this discussion will be irrelevant.

Quantum probability is centered around Planck's constant, an incredibly tiny value. The more mass and energy you put into equations, the more improbable that something that violates classical physics occurs.

This does not address the question. Once again, if I wish to say a given event -can- or -cannot- happen, tell me the specific causal steps that determine that for the proposed event and context. I'm not contending the event isn't improbable. I'm contending you cannot specify the all the causal factors involved--which is true by definition, because if you could, QM would be fully deterministic by reference to those causal factors, which it is not.

I'm not going to pretend I know much beyond those generalities, but then again I highly doubt you do either, and I doubt you even know that much. You're just appealing to it as a magic box to lend credibility to the incredulous, where anything can happen. The New Age mystics have la

I like to say it this way:

Equal opportunity is a critical component of a decent society. Without it, much potential can be lost for no good reason.

Equal identity is a wholly false path, as is equal capacity.

Our unique identities and capacities are things we learn about ourselves and others once they have had some time to develop, hopefully as a consequence of intelligently choosing one or more well-adjusted paths made available through said equal opportunity.

Income inequality, rabid "isms" such as feminism and theism and sexism, and exposure to folklore (such as "women can't program" or "men can't cook") all work to make us poorer at making the best life choices we can.

You cite a survey of near-death experiences that in no way whatsoever quantifies eyewitness reports of the Biblical god or Jesus.

Ah, nice goalpost shift, but I'm under no illusions you will not reduce the scope of what would correspond to theistic metaphysics to whatever degree is necessary to exclude it. Referring to your original statement, though, note the degree to which the experiences described in the second table correspond better or worse to the test results (i.e. effects of death) predicted by proposing Santa or the Tooth girl.

Ok, so where is this list of approximately 2000/2500?

Somewhere entirely unnecessary for it to be to refute your statement. What is given is sufficient to do so, and many, many other examples are available for the cost of googling. Goalpost shift #2.

Also, there's a Wikipedia page on prophecies, and you can see plenty of questionable accuracy with the usual variation of apologists who take different tacks to explain them.

Goalpost shift #3. Are you acknowledging that theism is considerably more plausible than Santa, or not?

It's no different than if I said rational and scientific people don't believe in Zeus or any number of primitive mythologies.

Correct that it is no different--and your argument would be fallacious in that case as well. Zeus is in fact not true, but that has nothing to do with its origins as a belief or its age, or your characterization as (untrue) "mythology". Additionally, it would be literally factually wrong as a statement, though not as easily-refutable as I did earlier for Christianity's case. I assure you there is at least one scientist in existence that believes in Roman polytheism.

It's not a fallacy to note that many primitive beliefs have been dispelled with our advancements in science and reason.

True, it's just fallacious to say that this is relevant or determinative. Look, I'm not failing to credit you with not taking the time to obscure your fallacies with carefully-constructed language. I only questioned where this language comes from, as it seems a direct parroting of Dawkins, Hitchens, et al. How old does a given position need to be before I can determine from that it is not true? Can you give me an expiration date on true concepts? That'd be very handy to have.

Try naming the paper that critically looks at the issue as I asked. It's not my responsibility to uphold your side of the argument.

Again, under no illusions you'll conclude anything suggested insufficient or otherwise unsuitable without even reading it. Though, any of the references would be suitable as a point of dicussion, say, Freeman Dyson's Infinite In All Directions, as a work of a theoretical physicist encompassing his presentations given as part of the Gifford Lectures, which have as their subject matter specifically what you are asking for.

You seem to be having difficulty with the basic fact that there is no problem with events described by theism in hard physics. On this, I see no reason to make all these digressions. You are simply wrong on the science per the science.

So, okay, since we're talking about quantum probability, please give me the specific causal factors leading to the particular values of random we observe. Preferably, weight the different causal factors in a scientific sense, such that we know the steps leading deterministically to the particular values of random.

Yes, I know what I'm asking for there, and feel free to conclude the question is not something resolvable or even addressable within the context of "random". Then we can move on to the notion that "random" isn't a causal explanation, it is, in fact, a placeholder-word for a lack of causal explanation. Lacking causal explanation, you believe that this cannot be a hard physics-based mechanism for miracles, -for no reason whatsoever-, as neither you nor science in general can say anything about the causality at tha

What you describe is agnosticism, lack of belief in God. Atheism is the explicit belief that God doesn't exist.

You may choose that narrower definition if you wish, but it isn't universal and you shouldn't regard it as such. I consider myself atheist in the sense that the god hypothesis is unproven and unnecessary to explain our observations of the world. Wikipedia's first paragraph on it is reasonable in my opinion.

Atheism is, in a broad sense, the rejection of belief in the existence of deities. In a narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there are no deities. Most inclusively, atheism is simply the absence of belief that any deities exist. Atheism is contrasted with theism, which in its most general form is the belief that at least one deity exists.

What you describe is agnosticism, lack of belief in God. Atheism is the explicit belief that God doesn't exist.

That is wrong.
Agnosticism / Gnosticism is a position on the question "can we know something about god?". A Gnosticist says yes, an Agnosticist says no (i.e. God is beyond our mental grasp / God is within our mental grasp)
Atheism / Theism is a position on the question "do I believe in god?".

What you are describing (belief that there is no god) is sometimes referred to as "strong atheism" (which is sad, because this causes the confusion) or "antitheism".

This makes more sense from the etymology point of view (atheism = without god)

One can be a theist gnosticist, a theist agnosticist, an atheist gnosticist and an atheist agnosticist. (Well, not all at the same time ;) )

specifically the position that there are no deities.

The term atheism originated from the Greek (atheos), meaning "without god(s)"

the burden of proof lies not on the atheist to disprove the existence of God, but on the theist to provide a rationale for theism

This is from your linked article which I clearly misunderstand because of my sub-kindergarten reading comprehension
Looking at the companion link I provided you you get this quite unambiguous precision, which I understand I am totally not comprehending either:

In some senses, agnosticism is a stance about the difference between belief and knowledge, rather than about any specific claim or belief. In the popular sense, an agnostic is someone who neither believes nor disbelieves in the existence of a deity or deities, whereas a theist and an atheist believe and disbelieve, respectively.In the strict sense

Anyway, it's not really important, it's just 'names' so to speak, and I was just trying to give a nice hint at my parent poster as to which term is better suited for what he was talking about (as far as I understood him)
Now, you bolded *exactly* just as you bolded *teached* (thank's again). Could you be nice and tell me what is gramatically wrong with it ? I honestly don't know but would apreciate being taught about it :)
Have a nice day...

You are confusing me with your "nope" linking to a wikipedia which says exactly what I was saying
have been teached

That's because, apart from basic kindergarten grammar skills, you also lack reading comprehension:

Most inclusively, atheism is simply the absence of belief that any deities exist.

There. Now for antitheism:

Antitheism (sometimes anti-theism) is active opposition to theism.

What you are describing is agnosticism
Atheism does indeed imply a strong belief in the non existence of a deity exactly as the opposite view of theism
It's just a definition, though, not that it matters that much in this conversation :)

ya, except it isn't.

Theism is the belief in a god. The A, means no or not. I don't believe, I'm not making a statement for or against.

A philatelist is a stamp collector. I am an 'Aphilatelist'. Am I making any type of assertion of a negative?

Of course there is a difference, I can actually see stamps. Kinda helps with the credibility. That and no one is killing anyone else over invisible stamps.

Wow, I'd like the US to resemble your comments. But here, it seems that organized religion keeps trying to worm its way more and more into the government. You can't get elected to any national office unless you are religious (this is not a rule, but many surveys even reported here on slashdot show that a majority of people don't trust, and won't vote for, atheists). I'd love to see theism die out, but in the US it is hardly on its last legs. It seems poised to keep on destroying lives and practicing exclusionism in the name of rules supposedly handed down by an invisible friend.