Re:A Manual for Creating Atheists: A Critical Review (2014)
by lotsofpulp on Tuesday February 02, 2021 @10:42AM
(#26002259)
I think the word believe is unnecessarily complicating this. As I stated above in another comment, assumption is a better word to use than believe, so substituting that gives:
“I do not assume that there is a person in Argentina called Smergold Abrahamson, as that is a ridiculous name. But I am not going to claim with certainty that they do not exist”.
Which is more concisely re-written as:
“I assume there is a very low probability of the existence of a person in Argentina called Smergold Abrahamson”.
Which going back to the original comment, I see the difference now:
“I do not assume that there is a person in Argentina called Smergold Abrahamson, as that is a ridiculous name. But I am not going to claim with certainty that they do not exist”.
Which is more concisely re-written as:
“I assume there is a very low probability of the existence of a person in Argentina called Smergold Abrahamson”.
Which going back to the original comment, I see the difference now:
“not believing (assuming) in a higher power”
is different than
“claiming (assuming) no higher power exists”