Just a heads up. There’s a Dembski interview at the website.

So?

Epistemologically “absolute certainty” is an impossibility, even for God (as even Plantinga has admitted in one of his rare moments of lucidity)

I agree and I am actually surprised that a theist acknowledges that.

This is why if somebody claims that the god they believe in is omniscient then I can say that I am 100% certain that that god does not exist given that just like we could be a brain in a vat who are being fed stimuli simulating the world so could god be a god in a vat being fed stimuli that simulates him being a god and even if their god existed and was indeed the ultimate reality he still couldn’t know that it was so as he could still be a god in the vat and not know it.

This means that no god can be omniscient and thus if somebody claims they believe in an omniscient god I can positively disbelieve in it (isn’t that what WLC call a knock-down argument? ;-)).

Of course, this means that I think there is a higher probability of the greek pantheon being true than the probability of the christian god as conceived by most christian* being true.

* I say “as conceived by most christians” in case there are any christians that do not believe god to be omniscient.

Richard, while I agree with your view on Atheist/Agnostic I think what Tony is referring to is that many theists define agnosticism as neutral (don’t know if there is a god) and atheism as equivalent to 0% chance that there is a god so they would see a 10% chance as reason to think someone is an agnostic rather than an atheist.

-More or less, yes.

Thus an atheist is always someone who is certain the probability that any god exists is less than 10%. Which is definitely the definition of denial. Thus all atheists deny a god exists. QED.

-The first sentence definitely applies to me. I like the scale Richard Dawkins came up with, and I tend to think I’m at 6/6.5 out of 7. I don’t believe God exists, and I’m about 99.5% certain he does not exist.
I guess I can’t quite wrap my head around non-belief = certain knowledge.

Julien Rousseau: I don’t think that’s what Tony was referring to; but yes, the “atheism requires absolute denial” straw man attack is one I’ve seen before (although I’m shocked to hear Craig would resort to it).

Epistemologically “absolute certainty” is an impossibility, even for God (as even Plantinga has admitted in one of his rare moments of lucidity), and therefore it’s just silly to require it of anyone, atheist or theist. There is always some nonzero probability, however small, that you are wrong about anything (with the sole exception of raw uninterpreted immediate experience). Thus anyone who thinks that that eliminates all knowledge or belief can’t even be a theist, much less an atheist. Either way, it’s just an absurd standard of certainty in assigning belief, which in practice no one lives by, nor should they.

They generally do that (in my experience) so that they can straw man our position by saying that it takes as much faith to be an atheist (= believing in a 0% probability for god) as to be a theist.

An example is William Lane Craig in his debate with Christopher Hitchens as evidenced by this video taking the salient portions of their debate (the uploader subscribes to the Craig definition of atheism):

Tony: [an atheist positively asserts that God does not exist] I thought atheism was “a lack of belief in a higher power(s)”.

Those two statements are semantically identical.

For every proposition P that you know about, you have assigned some probability of it being true (you can’t not; your brain does it automatically, even if you don’t attend to doing it consciously). If you do not believe P is true, then you are assigning it a probability below 50%. In fact, usually when you say “I lack belief in P” you don’t mean, e.g. “I believe there is a 40% chance P is true” or even 20%; you typically mean less than 10% (1 in 10 chance P is true). That’s simply exactly the same thing as denying P is true. Because when you say “I know P is false” you are basically again saying “there is less than a 10% chance P is true.” The one sentence literally translates into the other sentence. They are the same. Thus “lack of belief” and “denial” are identical and it is a semantic fallacy to distinguish them.

The grey area arrives when you assign P a probability between 10% and 50%. Let’s say you think there is a 40% probability some god exists. Are you denying god exists? Sort of. You’re still saying probably he doesn’t (60% chance in fact), and that’s technically still a denial. But that’s not usually what we mean by denial, because of the following: does a 40% chance mean, rather, that you merely lack belief or certainty that some god exists? That might be a better way of putting it. After all, a 40% chance is still pretty good; good enough to operate on the assumption it’s true, even if you aren’t sure. After all, if there was a 40% chance it was going to rain, you’d carry an umbrella, right? But now this isn’t what an atheist is. Atheists aren’t carrying umbrellas (e.g. praying generically; picking a religion and sticking to its principles “just in case”; etc.). Thus atheists are never in the grey area. They aren’t hedging bets. If they were, they wouldn’t be atheists. They’d be something else. Thus an atheist is always someone who is certain the probability that any god exists is less than 10%. Which is definitely the definition of denial. Thus all atheists deny a god exists. QED.

(On where agnostics who insist they aren’t atheists would fall in this spectrum, that depends on whether they are “carrying the umbrella” or not, and if not, they’re atheists [probably because they’re agnostics]: see my old blog on this issue: Atheist or Agnostic?)

An atheist is not merely someone who has doubts about the existence of God, or who doesn’t know what to think about the subject. Rather, an atheist positively asserts that God does not exist.

-Do you agree with this definitin of atheist? Perhaps I’m unclear on the definition (and certainly many people define it differently, which I find silly, IMO). I thought atheism was “a lack of belief in a higher power(s)”. I didn’t think atheism included anything with regard to knowing or not knowing, doubts about god’s existence, or uncertain thoughts.

Other than that, I enjoyed much of what I read prior to that section and will finish reading the rest later tonight.

Brad, thanks. I included a “best of” list of links from my old blog’s archives in my Inaugural Post here. You might want to check that out. Those typically link to yet others, and so on. Good way to start exploring, starting with what I hope is the best.