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This has always been Dawkins (and most atheists) position. In the scientific process it's about what you can PROVE, not what you can disprove. Most "atheists" like Dawkins beleive that there is a 99.9999999% chance there is no god. A virtual certainty. But because the word "god" is nebulous and has so many different defintions, most of which are ridiculously stupid, then there is a remote possiblity that there is a higher being out there.
But it's the same if you ask me "Do unicorns exist?" I would tell you "no, of course not". I believe with absolute certainty that unicorns do not exist. However, I have not searched every animal on the face of the earth either. As a scientist I have to concede "sure, it's POSSIBLE" that there are unicorns, but it's highly unlikely.
Science seldom gives you "yes" or "no" answers. It's mostly "probable" and "not probable".
This is not a revelation. Dawkins has always been of this mindset.
This isn't news and I certainly wouldn't expect a conversion.
The reporter is a bit misleading. Dawkins has already stated, I believe in the God Delusion, that he is an agnostic. He defined a scale from 1 to 7, where 1 is absolute certainty in the existence of God and 7 is absolute certainty in the non-existence of God, and put himself at a 6.8.
Most self-identified atheists hold a similar view point. We acknowledge that, for at least some definitions of god, the existence of a deity cannot be proven or disproven. We can however take the balance of the evidence and be convinced that a god does not exist, even in the absence of absolute proof.
To sum up: Dawkins has not changed his mind or back pedaled, he is in no danger of converting, and the journalist responsible for the article was more interested in making a splash than covering his subject accurately.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but this really is a non-story.
This is no different than Bill Maher's story about Jesus descending during halftime at the Super Bowl, in which he'd say, "Oh. Look at that. There he is. I was wrong. Praise the Lord!"
He's still an atheist, but unlike believers who are so very sure of their deities, he's open to the possibility, however infinitesimal it is, that he is wrong.
I think he is as much an Agnostic to your god as those of the Ancient Egyptians.
I don't know if he understands that Agnosticism is the condition of all thinking things
But he did say that calling himself Agnostic to the Christian Demiurge would be the same
as calling himself Agnostic about magical tea-pots orbiting our solar system.
Can be expect a death bed conversion from the Pope of Atheism?
If so you can rest assured that it would not be a conversion to the silly "personal" god of Christianity, Islam or of any other revealed religion. At most, he might come to consider himself a Deist, Pantheist etc but that is really not too far removed from agnostic atheism anyway.
BTW Christians are just as strong in atheism toward 99.99999% of the "false" gods they don't believe in. Actually even stronger since they are ABSOLUTELY 100% sure that those gods don't exist.
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