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Nontheism covers a range of both religious and nonreligious attitudes characterized by the absence of espoused belief in a personal god or gods. The term nontheism is generally used to describe apathy or a noncomment toward the subject of God and differentiates from an antithetical, explicit, atheism. Nontheism does not necessary connote atheism or disbelief. Nontheism can be expressed in a variety of ways. Strong or positive atheism is the positive belief that a god does not exist. Someone who does not think about the existence of a deity may be termed a weak or negative atheist, or more specifically implicitly atheist. Other, more qualified subtypes of nontheism are often known as agnosticism: strong or positive agnosticism is the belief that it is impossible for humans to know whether or not any deities exist. It is a more precise opinion than weak or negative agnosticism, which is the belief that the existence or nonexistence of any deities is unknown but not necessarily unknowable. Philosopher Anthony Kenny distinguishes between agnostics, who find the claim "God exists" uncertain, and theological noncognitivists, who consider all discussion of God to be meaningless. Some agnostics, however, are not nontheists but rather agnostic theists.〔 〕 Other related philosophical opinions about the existence of deities are ignosticism and skepticism. Because of the various definitions of the term ''god'', a person could be an atheist in terms of certain conceptions of gods, while remaining agnostic in terms of others. ==Origin and definition== The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' (2007) does not have an entry for ''nontheism'' or ''non-theism'', but it does have an entry for ''non-theist'', defined as "A person who is not a theist", and an entry for the adjectival ''non-theistic''. An early usage of the hyphenated ''non-theism'' is by George Holyoake in 1852,〔"The Reasoner", New Series, No. VIII. 115〕 who introduces it because: This passage is cited by James Buchanan in his 1857 ''Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws'', who however goes on to state: Spelling without hyphen sees scattered use in the later 20th century, following Harvey Cox's 1966 ''Secular City'': "Thus the hidden God or deus absconditus of biblical theology may be mistaken for the no-god-at-all of nontheism." Usage increased in the 1990s in contexts where association with the terms ''atheism'' or ''antitheism'' was unwanted. The 1998 ''Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics'' states, "In the strict sense, all forms of nontheisms are naturalistic, including atheism, pantheism, deism, and agnosticism." Pema Chödrön uses the term in the context of Buddhism: 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「nontheism」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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