The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to atheism:
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Atheism – Philosophical theories characterised by absence of belief in deities. [1] [2]
Atheism can be described as all of the following:
Either the lack of belief that there exists a god, or the belief that there exists none. Sometimes thought itself to be more dogmatic than mere agnosticism, although atheists retort that everyone is an atheist about most gods, so they merely advance one step further.
(a) the belief that there is no God; (b) Some philosophers have been called "atheistic" because they have not held to a belief in a personal God. Atheism in this sense means "not theistic". The former meaning of the term is a literal rendering. The latter meaning is a less rigorous use of the term though widely current in the history of thought
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: ISBN / Date incompatibility (help) – entry by Vergilius Ferm In this interpretation an atheist becomes: not someone who positively asserts the non-existence of God; but someone who is simply not a theist. Let us, for future ready reference, introduce the labels 'positive atheist' for the former and 'negative atheist' for the latter.
Belief in a deity, or deities, as opposed to atheism
belief in the existence of a god or gods