Accepting/Rejecting "Atheism" as a label.

[Confused Ape]

Your wikipedia link and quote is not a definition of atheism it is about theistic probability. If Richard Dawkins and/or Jack Smart write a world-class dictionary and define atheism that way, then you can reasonably cite them for definitions. It may be worth pointing out however that the very well educated Oxford Professor, Richard Dawkins, describes himself as an agnostic - so I don't think he is at all confused about the English language.

You're going to get different answers depending on whether the atheist concerned is going by the dictionary definition, the scale of theistic probability or how some philosopher defines atheism.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atheism#Imp...._explicit

As for Richard Dawkins describing himself as an agnostic, he doesn't regard himself as one because of the definition of atheism that he goes by. The way he sees it, he's a De facto atheist. It's a long article so it will make life easier to use your browser search function to find John Bingham. This will take you to where RD starts arguing that he's not an agnostic.

EDIT: Forgot to give the link.

http://old.richarddawkins.net/articles/6...-in-polish