Posted by: Zach | August 6, 2007

On Being 99.9% Certain

I’ve read several posts over the last few days dealing with atheism, and exactly what percentage of certainty someone has to have about the non-existence of God before they can call themselves an atheist. Here, and here. The thinking seems to be that you can only call yourself an atheist if you are 100% sure that there are no Gods, which is irrational because no human being could have that kind of certainty on the issue. Whereas the authors give the high ground to the “agnostics” who are only 99.99999% certain that there are no Gods. That tiny, minuscule sliver of doubt makes them morally superior.

The problem is, I rarely hear atheists talk about having 100% certainty. Most atheists simply don’t believe in any Gods. But I have heard atheists talk about being 99.9999% certain, just like these “agnostics.” So is the real problem that the term atheist seems to imply dogmatic certitude for the majority of people? That’s the impression I got from the discussion here. where the person in question prefers to call herself a doubter, because of the calcified and corrosive attitudes of some who call themselves atheists.

I’m all for coming up with more specific labels, telling people what I personally stand for, rather than what I do not believe in. I wish the God question wasn’t so important in our culture that I feel obliged to have an informed opinion on something that I do not believe in. That’s all well and good. My question is: Where the heck are these numbers coming from? I have certainly heard atheists and agnostics talk about their percentage of certainty before, I think I may have done it myself, but I think it is obvious that these numbers are being pulled out of the air. There is nothing grounding them to anything observable, they are tied to the intensity of our feelings. You can’t get much more pseudoscientific than slapping numbers on feelings.

So let me state for the record that I am not 100, 99.9, 99.999999, or any other percentage sure that there are no Gods. I’m simply not convinced that any exist. I think it is disingenuous, and misleading to stick numbers on my lack of belief. So from now on I won’t be applying percentages to my religious beliefs, or pushing the equally misleading idea that agnostics must be 50-50 on the existence of Gods, or else they would be atheists. There are plenty of things we can have meaningful discussions about, but made up percentages is not one of them.

Posted in atheism

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Responses

There are some very closed minded atheists. If you browse atheist forums you might pick some of them up. They simple think they know for sure that there is no God (christian) the same way that we think we know for sure that we are living human beings (as opposed to a computer simulation) when we actually might not be.

If atheism/theism is not 100% certainty, where does the line draw between agnosticism? 40-60%? 10-90%?

By: James on August 6, 2007
at 2:59 pm

People think they sound more intelligent if they attach numbers to things, even if the numbers are meaningless.

All certainty is contextual. Implied in any non-dogmatic statement “I am sure of X,” there has to be the footnote, “but if you give me really solid evidence to the contrary, I’ll take it into consideration. But it’s nonsense to put a numeric probability on that evidence when you can’t even imagine what it would be. If you have unresolved doubts, that’s a different matter.

Among other things, it leads to an infinite regress. Are you really certain that you’re 99.99% certain, or are you just 99.99% certain of that? Then you can only be 99.99% certain of that in turn; and when you multiply out all the probabilities, the limit reaches zero!

“I’m certain but open to evidence” is a completely different statement from “I’m x% certain.”

By: Gary McGath on August 6, 2007
at 4:11 pm

James, I certainly agree that there are close minded atheists, and it doesn’t take very long on some forums to find some very stupid atheists also. My particular point in this post isn’t to criticize people for their close mindedness, which I do think is worth criticizing, but simply to point out that attaching a number to how certain you are about something is essentially meaningless.

If I said I was 95% certain there was no God, and another person said they were 99.9% certain there was no God, there would be no way to actually compare those numbers because they are subjective and arbitrary. If you asked me if by 95% that I meant that there was a 95% probability that God doesn’t exist, I would have to say no. There is no way to calculate the probability on something like that. Any probability you attach is meaningless. I think when people attach those numbers to their beliefs, as opposed to proposed realities, it muddies the waters as to what they actually mean.

I do not think there is a % line between atheists and agnostics. I think that agnostics who tend to doubt the existence of a God but do not claim to actually know can be called agnostic atheists, and those agnostics who tend towards belief but do not claim to know can be called agnostic theists. But I don’t think there is a need for an unmodified “agnostic” label except perhaps for those who honestly have absolutely no opinion on the matter, which is very few people, I would think.

Let me put it this way, I’m not completely certain that the theory of evolution in it’s current state is the final word on the creation of species. There is a lot I do not know about it, and there is always room for changes to the theory. But I would not go around calling myself agnostic towards the creationism/evolution debate, because I do think evolution is the most reasonable, fact-based theory we have, and that creationism is a non-falsifiable religious belief, even though I do not have absolute certainty on the matter.

By: Everyday Atheist on August 6, 2007
at 6:40 pm

There was a Slate article back in February that touched on the growing popularity of attaching percentages to certainty. (The focus was on Global Warming numbers, but GW is merely incidental to my referring to it here.) This is a tactic to give the ostensible appearance of being more scientific.

I, myself, have stated a positive disbelief in certain gods as they are explained by a literal reading of their holy books. I believe in the non-existence of such gods for the same reason I disbelieve in married bachelors. I find the traits of these gods self-refuting. In general, however, I have no real way of knowing whether there exists some kind of god who chooses to remain obscure.

I wish the God question wasn’t so important in our culture that I feel obliged to have an informed opinion on something that I do not believe in.

I agree…98.4% ;). I was handed a short story (hardcover book) not two days ago which incorporated every paper-thin apologetic to “prove” that Christianity is different from other religions. It was mildly entertaining up until the barrage of indoctrination, starting at the middle and continuing through the end.
I just kept thinking to myself, “It’s just this kind of MISinformation that forces me to be informed about religion in order to shield myself.” Had I not already known that most of the arguments were pure bunk, I would’ve found it quite convincing since it basically laid out all the reasons I used to have for being a Christian.

By: Polly on August 6, 2007
at 7:08 pm

Hey EA, thanks for linking to my post.

Personally I don’t think Hecht’s point (the author I quoted in my blog post) was about the mathematical degree of certitude one must have to be an atheist vs. a doubter. I think she was referring more to the inability of some people to consider any views other than their own as being based on valid questions or observations of the world. It’s not about the relative certainty of one’s belief, it’s about attitude of openness or lack therefor with which one approaches alternative possibilities. To be a true doubter means you can’t just doubt other people’s beliefs. You have to be occasionally willing to doubt your own as well.

(And of course it’s perfectly possible to doubt one’s own beliefs w/out necessarily giving up those beliefs or embracing someone else’s. Doubt and belief are always - or should be - provisional.)

Peace,

-Mike

By: Mike C on August 6, 2007
at 9:22 pm

The difference, I think, is when it changes from ‘I don’t know and I can’t know’ to ‘It’s ~practically~ impossible for a god to exist’.

By: Matt on August 6, 2007
at 9:34 pm

The way I see it, you’re an atheist if you act like there are no gods. If you are confident enough that the existence of god(s) is unproven, then you will base your reasoning and actions in relevant situations on this confidence. It’s obviously tricky to tell *why* someone does something just by watching, so asking is often the only way to determine their stance.

By: AttemptingReason on August 7, 2007
at 12:44 am

This is so ridiculous - how does one quantify belief? This seems like just a way to trip up atheists and undermine our beliefs. Of course Christians (or other “believers” ;) can always say, well, we’re 100% sure of god’s existence. Well sure its easy for them, they have nothing to prove since everything is based on faith. I like the post by AttemptingReason about acting “like there are no gods”. Really all we can possibly attempt to quantify are our actions. And I would dare say that a lot of Christians certainly act at times like there will be judgment day.

By: mysterybea on August 7, 2007
at 5:41 am

Like others, I think the numbers are largely irrelevant. I would also point out that the reason the 99.999999999% number is used by atheists is because we’re being asked to believe something that cannot possibly be proven false. If there is an omniscient god then he could have guided evolution however he saw fit and he could arrange all the other tests we try to do so that the results mirror what we’d expect from chance.

If the god figure weren’t omnipotent we could be more than 99.whatever percent sure it didn’t exist but I strongly suspect that there would be a lot fewer people who did so. If god is not supposed to be omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent but merely a more powerful and longer lived natural creature then he would be a hell of a lot more credible—perhaps on par with life on other planets.

I think the best standard to use in applying these labels—if indeed, we need to use labels at all—is the standard of reasonable doubt. If you have a moral certainty that there is no god you are an atheist. If you have a moral certainty that there is, you are a theist. If you have no moral certainty in either direction, you’re an agnostic.

Moral certainty is not absolute certainty. It merely means that whatever doubts you have about the question are not reasonable ones. They are small technical doubts that are only present because absolute knowledge is pretty close to impossible.

By: Rasputin on August 7, 2007
at 6:11 pm

I’m an atheists because I don’t believe in god. Whether or not he/she/it exists, I have no need for a god in my life.

It bothers me when agnostics are like…I can’t be an atheist, I’m not sure there is no god. No one is!

By: Intergalactic Hussy on August 7, 2007
at 9:47 pm

“I, myself, have stated a positive disbelief in certain gods as they are explained by a literal reading of their holy books. I believe in the non-existence of such gods for the same reason I disbelieve in married bachelors. I find the traits of these gods self-refuting. In general, however, I have no real way of knowing whether there exists some kind of god who chooses to remain obscure.”

This about sums up my feelings, I call myself an atheist because I have no belief in any gods, but I can’t prove that *some* kind of god doesn’t exist, so I could be called an agnostic atheist because I don’t believe that I know or can know that for sure.

By: evolvedAndygal on August 7, 2007
at 10:56 pm

I don’t much give a damn about how other atheists think. They can think what they want.
This one does not believe in
any god(s). It really doesn’t matter because no one will ever go to heaven/hell and return to tell us about it anyway. So much for percentages.

By: Aspentroll on August 7, 2007
at 11:13 pm

I think using percentages is more like using a rule of thumb. You’re simply giving someone the idea of how far on a scale you are to atheism, and how far away from a belief in gods you are. Dawkins uses in TGD a scale of 7. He says he’s a 6, but I’ve heard him actually say elsewhere that he’s closer to a 6.8 or 6.9. The point is that the belief in god is not an either/or proposition, where some theist will then argue that there is a 50% chance of god’s existence, which, when put that way, doesn’t sound so overwhelming.

I said in a recent post that it’s closer to a 99/1 chance. And to clarify that even more, I think those odds are for a deist type god. The personal god of the bible, in my opinion, is 100% not there.

By: Spanish Inquisitor on August 8, 2007
at 7:45 pm

Hi there, and thanks for this post. Now, we cannot be 100% certain that there is no God, be we can say with 100% certainty that we do not currently have evidence to suggest that there is a God. Equally, although we cannot be 100% certain that there are no pink elephants with wings, we can say with certainty that there is no evidence that such elephants exist.

The number of things that we cannot be sure do not exist is limited only by our imaginations. Almost anything (which isn’t logically inconsistent, like a square circle for example) could exist, and we can never KNOW that it does not exist. We can, however, know that we have no reason to suppose that it does exist.

Finally, we are gradually learning (through science) about how the universe came to exist, and exhibit complexity. It is, however, a hard task. Yet we simply have no chance when it comes to trying to explain how a God could exist, or could have come into existence. We cannot experience a God in any verifiable way, nor can we possibly make suppositions about how he could have come into being.

James.

By: James Buckley on August 9, 2007
at 3:57 pm

I would characterize myself as a de-facto atheist meaning that for all practical purposes I believe no gods exist. This sums things up well. Agnostic is just used as justification by the theists to indicate the 50/50 thing mentioned above so I tend to avoid the term.

By: Eric on September 26, 2007
at 12:52 am

Harken back to elementary school. Remember the kid who lied that they could swing all the way over the swing set?

Nobody believed him. Even at that age, we as humans have the logical fortitude to withstand such claims despite the fact that swinging over the swing set is well within the realm of physical possibility.

Unfortunately, some of us have the reason, or simply the patience to engage it, ground out of us by the trials of life and the easy button offered by theistic alternatives to reality.

Those of us who resisted its siren call are atheists. To me the term “agnostic” is disingenuous, like those non-believers themselves don’t know they don’t believe. Atheist is just the opposite of theism. If you aren’t religious, you’re an atheist.

Of that you can be 100% certain. =)

By: Katie Molnar on October 8, 2007
at 10:16 pm

Errata:

Atheism is just the opposite of theism. *

If you aren’t a theist, you’re an atheist. **

Typing too fast is the number one cause of marital problems. [citation needed]

By: Katie Molnar on October 8, 2007
at 10:18 pm

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