Quote:
Originally Posted by kirant
I'd never heard of that scale. Off to Google I go.
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It's just an arbitrary scale, no knowledge is certain so everything is always a level of confidence in a conclusion.. On a scale of 1 to 7 I'm 6.99999999 confident that gravity will work tomorrow, but there's always a chance...
Lemme see if I can find it...
Quote:
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Originally Posted by The God Delusion Page 50
Let us, then, take the idea of a spectrum of probabilities seriously, and place human judgements about the existence of God along it, between two extremes of opposite certainty. The spectrum is continuous, but it can be represented by the following seven milestones along the way.
1 Strong theist. 100 per cent probability of God. In the words of C. G. Jung, 'I do not believe, I know.'
2 Very high probability but short of 100 per cent. De facto theist. 'I cannot know for certain, but I strongly believe in God and live my life on the assumption that he is there.'
3 Higher than 50 per cent but not very high. Technically agnostic but leaning towards theism. 'I am very uncertain, but I am inclined to believe in God.'
4 Exactly 50 per cent. Completely impartial agnostic. 'God's existence and non-existence are exactly equiprobable.'
5 Lower than 50 per cent but not very low. Technically agnostic but leaning towards atheism. 'I don't know whether God exists but I'm inclined to be sceptical.'
6 Very low probability, but short of zero. De facto atheist. 'I cannot know for certain but I think God is very improbable, and I live my life on the assumption that he is not there.'
7 Strong atheist. 'I know there is no God, with the same conviction as Jung "knows" there is one.'
I'd be surprised to meet many people in category 7, but I include it for symmetry with category 1, which is well populated. It is in the nature of faith that one is capable, like Jung, of holding a belief without adequate reason to do so (Jung also believed that particular books on his shelf spontaneously exploded with a loud bang).
Atheists do not have faith; and reason alone could not propel one to total conviction that anything definitely does not exist. Hence category 7 is in practice rather emptier than its opposite number, category 1, which has many devoted inhabitants. I count myself in category 6, but leaning towards 7 - 1 am agnostic only to the extent that I am agnostic about fairies at the bottom of the garden.
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And that people might change their position depending on the definition of god is self evident since often the definitions of god can be mutually exclusive.