{"id":2879,"date":"2016-05-21T07:01:02","date_gmt":"2016-05-21T14:01:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/?p=2879"},"modified":"2016-05-21T07:01:02","modified_gmt":"2016-05-21T14:01:02","slug":"no-god-or-probably-no-god","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/?p=2879","title":{"rendered":"No god or probably no god?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Question from Mark:<\/strong><br \/>\nClaiming that there is no god is a universal negative. So, my question is, do most atheists flat-out claim that there is definitely no god, or is it more often than not an &#8220;it&#8217;s not probable&#8221; argument?<br \/>\n<br \/>\n<strong>Answer by <a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/smartlx\">SmartLX<\/a>:<\/strong><br \/>\nNo, not most atheists.  Some atheists, sure, but not the majority and not the most prominent atheists, and not me.  Even Richard Dawkins, when he created a scale of 1 to 7 from total belief to total disbelief, rated himself a 6.9 to leave room for some possibility.<br \/>\n<br \/>\nCertainty in the absence of gods is called gnostic atheism.  Gnosis is a knowledge of the spiritual, so gnostic atheism is just knowing that there&#8217;s nothing there.  The obvious question for a gnostic atheist, as you imply, is how can one know such a thing?  For me there&#8217;s no good answer to this, though that doesn&#8217;t imply by itself that positive belief in a god is justified.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Question from Mark: Claiming that there is no god is a universal negative. So, my question is, do most atheists flat-out claim that there is definitely no god, or is it more often than not an &#8220;it&#8217;s not probable&#8221; argument? Answer by SmartLX: No, not most atheists. Some atheists, sure, but not the majority and &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/?p=2879\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;No god or probably no god?&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[563,6],"tags":[26,23],"class_list":["post-2879","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-atheism-2","category-text","tag-atheism","tag-definitions"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pB6tr-Kr","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2879","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2879"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2879\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2880,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2879\/revisions\/2880"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2879"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2879"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}