Jeff asked:

Due to the inherent ambiguity of the term "God", the proposition "God exists" can be either true or
false depending exclusively upon the definition of the term. Atheism — to be understood as "without
belief in God or gods" — erroneously concludes that the proposition is always false. In fact, if we
grant atheism validity, atheism itself would thereby conclude that "God" is to be understood as a
conceptual manifestation — and thus existent, if only as a concept. Does this prove that atheism is by
definition untenable?

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You seem to be playing around the meanings of words used and reaching conclusions based on
differing uses of the words. Consider the following argument:

"All banks are financial institutions

All rivers have banks

Therefore all rivers have financial institutions."

Now given that each of the premises are true we must logically accept the conclusion. The reason we
have however for avoiding the conclusion is that the word 'bank' is used in two different ways. You
seem to be making an analogous move with respect to God. Of course the spoken words 'God exists'
can be true or false depending on the meaning we give to those words, in some possible world the
utterance 'God exists' means 'there are dogs' which in that world is a truth. Clearly and atheist who
denied this would be wrong. However whilst the word God may have different meanings depending
upon the concept employed of God, each use of it has a specific determinate meaning which can be
true or false.

'Atheism — to be understood as "without belief in God or gods" — erroneously concludes that the
proposition is always false'

The mistake you make here is to confuse the actual meaning of the word atheism as used and the
possible meaning. As illustrated above if 'God' actually means 'dogs' then atheism would be false in
not believing in God, but given that the word 'God' has a definite content we can deny God's
existence. Atheism doesn't assert that the utterance 'God exists' is necessarily false, rather given the
actual meaning of the utterance it is false.

What's more, under your analysis the theist suffers equally. God exists can be true or false and so to
assert that God exists erroneously concludes that God exists is always true. Unfortunately I didn't
really understand what you meant by your penultimate sentence, if atheism does deny that we have
the concept of God then it would seem that it is false; there are however two options here both of
which are highly plausible. First the atheist can just say that we don't have a coherent concept of
God, it is in fact self contradictory, in a similar way to my concept of a round square. Secondly they
can say yes we have the concept of God but so what? Unless we have some sort of Ontological
argument which defines God into existence by virtue of having the concept God then the atheist
looses nothing.

Mike Lee