An erudite atheist friend said recently that every atheist he knew personally, as many as a couple of hundred, and (he contended) all of the Big Name atheists:
“..have said, explicitly, that to the limited extent I outlined above (‘there may, against all the evidence so far, be a god’) they are agnostic. There is zero conflict in this position if you claim to be an evidence-based rational thinker (which most, but not all, atheists will claim).”
It was an interesting claim.
Now, while I would love to test that statement against all of the Big Name Atheists, I thought I would try it for one, possibly the biggest name, Richard Dawkins. At best, he is conflicted. While he has been frequently quoted as saying “There probably is no God,” thus sounding intellectually honest, on at least one occasion in public he has said ““You are utterly wasting your time – all of you who are indignant at being attacked about your god – because there is no god.”
That doesn’t sound like the kind of intellectual honesty to which my friend alludes: it sounds like a statement of absolute faith, or at best a vacillation between two positions, one agnostic and quite acceptable in polite company, and one anti-theist, and steeped in faith.
The atheist might retort that God does not exist because his existence has not been proven. My response to that atheist is simple: we all have our standards of proof. God has met mine, he just hasn’t met yours yet.
Related articles
- Study finds six types of atheism (wtvr.com)
- Study: World of atheism diverse, nonbelievers can’t be lumped together (timesfreepress.com)
- Pope: “It’s okay to be an Atheist” (hebrewhutong.wordpress.com)
- Richard Dawkins: ‘Jesus Would Have Been an Atheist if He Had Known What We Know Today’ (theblaze.com)
- Atheists: Who Are They? (musicalhumanist.wordpress.com)
Hebrew Hutong 
It’s pretty easy for Dawkins: “Probably” for him means something like “99.99999%” likely. It’s not a 50:50 chance. Would it be honest now to always act like the chance for god is really something you should take into consideration? For him, that minimal chance is only the benefit of doubt, the small fact that god is not falsifiable, thus not disprovable. So it’s actually more honest to act and talk like there is no god – because I also don’t act and talk like I will win the lottery tomorrow (even if I started playing): The chance might be there, but not nearly great enough to somehow take it into consideration for my future plans.