[SeekAndFind]

RE: He has mentioned his position on the scale of disbelief many times. This is not news.

Dawkins said in the above article that he prefers to call himself an agnostic rather than an atheist.

Does the above comment tell us that he ALWAYS WAS an agnostic?

[James C. Bennett]

Watch the video in your article's link, he that 'scale of disbelief' thing quite clearly.

He says he's always said that on the scale of 1-7 where 7 is Atheism, he places himself on a 6.9.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/9102740/Richard-Dawkins-I-cant-be-sure-God-does-not-exist.html

This article and many posts above shamelessly sought to gain popularity by twisting his words, just as that commenter in my earlier reply to you predicted.

John Bingham, Religious Affairs Editor

What a joke the Telegraph article author is, really. Mother Teresa in her letters:

"Where is my faith? Even deep down ... there is nothing but emptiness and darkness ... If there be God—please forgive me. When I try to raise my thoughts to Heaven, there is such convicting emptiness that those very thoughts return like sharp knives and hurt my very soul ... How painful is this unknown pain—I have no Faith. Repulsed, empty, no faith, no love, no zeal, ... What do I labor for? If there be no God, there can be no soul. If there be no soul then, Jesus, You also are not true."

From Wiki (with citations provided at the end of the article):"Analyzing her deeds and achievements, John Paul II asked: "Where did Mother Teresa find the strength and perseverance to place herself completely at the service of others? She found it in prayer and in the silent contemplation of Jesus Christ, his Holy Face, his Sacred Heart." Privately, Mother Teresa experienced doubts and struggles over her religious beliefs which lasted nearly fifty years until the end of her life, during which "she felt no presence of God whatsoever", "neither in her heart or in the eucharist" as put by her postulator Rev. Brian Kolodiejchuk."

Christopher Hitchens wrote: "So, which is the more striking: that the faithful should bravely confront the fact that one of their heroines all but lost her own faith, or that the Church should have gone on deploying, as an icon of favorable publicity, a confused old lady who it knew had for all practical purposes ceased to believe?"

The premise of this article would be akin to claiming Mother Teresa an Atheist for her doubts, or at least an Agnostic, although Richard Dawkins hasn't changed anything regarding his position as dramatically as Mother Teresa did.