2.De-facto Theist: I cannot know for certain but I strongly believe in God and I live my life on the assumption that he is there.
3.Weak Theist: I am very uncertain, but I am inclined to believe in God.
4.Pure Agnostic: I don’t know about God’s existence or non-existence, so am undecided.
5.Weak Atheist: I do not know whether God exists but I’m inclined to be skeptical.
6.De-facto Atheist: I cannot know for certain but I think God is very improbable and I live my life under the assumption that he is not there.
7.Strong Atheist: I am 100% sure that there is no God.
In stating where on the scale he sits, Dawkins says “I count myself in category 6, but leaning towards 7. I am agnostic only to the extent that I am agnostic about fairies at the bottom of the garden.” In other words, Dawkins is fairly unequivocally an atheist with not much room for change.
Alas, despite its popularity, Dawkins' 1-7 scale is so philosophically naïve it is all-but meaningless as an exercise. The main thing wrong with it is that as an indicator of strength of belief the model is entirely empty, because the strength of belief is inextricably linked to the quality of mental acuity put into that belief. In other words, anyone can tell you where his strength of belief sits on a made up scale of 1-7, but it is only worth taking seriously if he has a competent understanding of the subject and a good philosophical brain with which to reason.
Suppose someone calls themselves a 6 on Dawkins' scale, and when you ask them why they don't believe in God, they tell you that it's because they once asked Him to reveal Himself by writing 'God' in the sky with stars, and because He didn't, then that is grounds to not believe in Him. Obviously a relatively smart mind would simply object that that's a terrible reason to not believe God exists - in which case, calling your self a 6 on the scale means absolutely nothing to anyone with half a brain.
Theology and philosophy and probability theory are broad and complex subjects, and unless you are competent at all three, any high rating you give yourself on the atheistic part of the Dawkins scale is like calling yourself an excellent literary writer just because you happen to know a lot of words in the dictionary. Dawkins' attempt to construct a scalar model of belief and treat it as a unique metric for philosophical returns is about as narrow-minded and parochial as it gets. What the Dawkins model does is treat people as though they all see religious belief in the same way and with the same ability, and it treats the ‘God’ concept as though it is homogenous in thought structure, when it’s about the least homogenous concept around.
And if it still isn't clear why, then to show the absurdity of making a faux homogenous model, let me alter the concept to something Dawkins will understand; let’s replace the word ‘God’ with ‘evolution’, and ask a bunch of people in the Bible-belt in America where they stand on the 1-7 scale. If the polls are anything to go by, no doubt many fundies in America will say they are a 6 to 7 when it comes to evolution. That is to say, they are as sceptical about the fact of evolution as Richard Dawkins is about God. What do you think Richard Dawkins would say to them when they told him that they were a 6 or 7 when it comes to evolution? He would make the same criticism of them that I have made of him. He’d say with full justification that their comprehension of evolution is so bereft that their gradation is rendered inadequate by such a defective and inept understanding of the object of study.
When the signs are reversed, that is precisely what is wrong with Dawkins’ own gradation. And by the way, it does not matter that evolution is amenable to scientific study and God is not, because we are only talking about how well the subjects are understood, not the empirical tractability or the final conclusions. Dawkins states that he thinks God does not exist - but his strawman caricatures are so clumsy that most Christians do not believe in the god (small g) that Dawkins denies. This is the principal point of this message, one which makes a good rule of thumb for future reference with another Knight-ism I like to employ;
The God one accepts or denies is only likely to be as intellectually tenable as the intellectual tenability of the person holding those ideas.
JK
