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:As for "not believe that" and "believe that not", the first is a negative claim about existence and the second a positive one about non-existence. "Not believe that" is often used to mean "believe that not" in English, but when they are contrasted like this there is a definite difference. Someone who is a pure agnostic does not believe that god exists but does not believe that god does not exist; for him/her the two propositions are equally likely and s/he does not believe either. My dog does not believe that and does not believe that not. "Not believe that" would be a 4, 5, 6, 7 or possibly 3 on Dawkins' spectrum of probability (which is very useful for making these distinctions) whilst "believe that not" would only be a 6 or 7. And knowing is different from believing here; someone who knows is a 7 and probably believes that there is a logical impossibility in the idea of god. I would put myself between 6 and 6.5; I believe that the probability of the statement "god does not exist" is significantly greater that 50%: I ''believe'' the statement in the common English sense of the word "believe". Since I do not believe that the probability of the statement being true is 100%, I do not claim to ''know'' (for me the word "know" implies certainty, for some it does not).
:: Believing and knowing don't necessarily involve "claims". I'm pressing this because it looks like "not believe"/"non credere" sometimes tend to be taken to mean "negare". "Credere" is an epistemic attitude, whilst "negare" is a speech act: one may deny X and at the same time know (and hence also believe) that non-X. When re-writing the praefatio, I expressly tried to avoid using the verb "credere" in order to pave the way for a more inclusive presentation which would contain a characterisation of those varieties of atheism as well the supporters of which have other reasons for dissing religious beliefs than metaphysical or epistemological. Another reason was that, by using speech act verbs such as "negare" and "docere", I was trying to avoid giving the impression that atheism is just another system of belief. But insofar as I understand Dawkins (without having read his ''Delusion'' book, I'm sorry to say), he proposes to construe a continuum of certainty-of-belief. While its preference-theoretic logic is clear enough, I feel this is not exactly how my mind works. BTW, knowing implies certainty for me as well; those for who it does not, may be misusing the concept of knowing. --[[Usor:Neander|Neander]] 23:12, 25 Aprilis 2008 (UTC)
:I am not sure whether I am making the differences here clear. Well, problems with the meanings of words are quite commonplace in philosophy at the best of times, what with different people disagreeing about the different nuances in different words even when they both speak the same language natively. Perhaps a conversation between an Englishman and a Finn about epistemology as it relates to an article in Latin about atheism is bound to suffer a few mistranslations ;-) [[Usor:LeighvsOptimvsMaximvs|Leigh]] <sup>[[Disputatio Usoris:LeighvsOptimvsMaximvs|(disp)]]</sup> 10:32, 25 Aprilis 2008 (UTC)
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