This is a linkpost for https://atheistkit.wordpress.com/2016/12/20/on-truth-on-god-and-on-faith/
Impossible overstates it. It is sufficiently difficult as to not be worth using it, making things more difficult than they have to be. This, again, relates to clarity. If there are people who need unclarity, that's a strategic concern, not one of understanding things as they are.
In the case of God, I think "God does not exist" is sufficiently obvious. People aren't going to stop expecting the universe to behave consistently because they realized "God does not exist" is probably true. As such, they have effectively distinguished God from the laws of the universe.
I could imagine other cases where the effect you describe is stronger, though. It's an interesting point.
And, of course, again I recognize the non-epistemic part of this decision. If we're pursuing clarity, we should avoid these ambiguous and loaded terms and use others. If it's a question of strategy, we might not WANT that complete clarity, sure.
I'm thinking this might be the majority of our perceived disagreement. If so, I want to emphasize again that my strict lines are only talking about epistemics, about clarity. I recognize that there may be strategic reasons to avoid that clarity.
In other words, I'm not saying "say God when we don't mean God" BAD, "not so say" GOOD.
I'm saying "say God when we don't mean God" UNCLEAR, "not so say" CLEAR.
We probably mostly agree about the practical part of this, although I suspect that due to lack of experience, you underestimate the practical costs of verbal atheism for many people. This at least is suggested by your previous reference to "coddling" people.
I do not think we agree on the epistemic issue yet, since you seem to be saying that there are no epistemic costs to atheism. It may or may not be possible to resolve this disagreement, depending on an issue I will discuss shortly.
But first, when I spoke of an epistemic cost, I did not mean ad...