Because of flexibility in the term
god, it is possible that a person could be a positive/strong atheist in terms of certain
conceptions of God, while remaining a negative/weak atheist in terms of others. For example, the God of
classical theism is often considered to be a personal supreme being who is
omnipotent,
omniscient,
omnipresent, and
omnibenevolent, caring about humans and human affairs. One might be a positive atheist for such a deity, while being a negative atheist with respect to a
deistic conception of God by rejecting belief in such a deity but not explicitly asserting it to be false. Positive and negative atheism are frequently used by the philosopher
George H. Smith as synonyms of the less-well-known categories of
implicit and explicit atheism, also relating to whether an individual holds a specific view that gods do not exist. Under the negative atheism classification, agnostics are atheists. The validity of this categorization is disputed, however, and a few prominent atheists such as
Richard Dawkins avoid it. In
The God Delusion, Dawkins describes people for whom the
probability of the existence of God is between "very high" and "very low" as "agnostic" and reserves the term "strong atheist" for those who claim to know there is no God. He categorizes himself as a "
de facto atheist" but
not a "strong atheist" on this scale. Within negative atheism, philosopher
Anthony Kenny further distinguishes between
agnostics, who find the claim "God exists" uncertain, and
theological noncognitivists, who consider all talk of gods to be meaningless. ==See also==