The Atheist Blogger

Well quite a few people contacted me saying the book club would be a good idea, and so I’ve been busy organising things, and making sure everything can work. I’ve set up a new section of the forums so people can add submissions and discuss whether they would be a good idea to read.

All we need now is some actual book titles!

The updated idea is that anyone can register at the forums, and submit a title for the book club. Then, people can either agree or disagree with the title. If someone has read the book before, they might want to give their opinion on it and either recommend it or say it’s not worth reading. Likewise, if people find that they can’t get access to the book (perhaps it is only published in one country) then they can make their voice heard. The book club is a global group, and we are not going to review books that some people can’t access. Already we have had to “reject” a book that can only be found in Australia.

Rejection isn’t the end for a submission though. The book in question “The Purple Economy: Supernatural Charities, Tax and the State” sounds like an interesting read, and the only reason it’s not going to be in the May 1st vote is because of it’s availability. If you can get hold of it and read it yourself then that’s great. Perhaps you could write a review of it for us anyway!

We are aiming to get the IRC channel (chatroom) up and running on the 1st so people can drop in and talk. I’ll post details on how you can access IRC on the day, but for the non-technical people out there, I will install a Java applet on the site so you can connect easily.

For now though, we have 2 books submitted, and I’d like to have a couple more by the end of the week. Registration is free, and you have no obligation to participate in any book club reading. Everyone will be welcome in the live discussion, so if you haven’t read the book you will get a chance to hear some short reviews of it and you may be prompted to read it yourself.

Popular atheist biology professor turned blogger PZ Myers has written a response to a question put to him in an email:

How did life evolve from one (I suspect) chromosome to… 64 in horses, or whatever organism you want to pick. How is it possible for a sexually reproducing population of organisms to change chromosome numbers over time?

Firstly: there would have to be some benefit to the replication probability of the organisms which carry the chromosomes. I don’t see how this would work. How is having more chromosomes of any extra benefit to an organism’s replicative success? Yes, perhaps if those chromosomes were full of useful information… but the chances of that happening are non existent and fly in the face of ’small adaptations over time’.

Secondly, the extra chromosomes need to come from somewhere. I’m not sure about this, but I believe chromosome number are not determined by genes, are they? There isn’t a set of genes which determines the number of chromosomes an organism has. So the number is fixed, determined by the sexually reproducing parents. Which leads me to believe that if the number does change, and by chance the organism is still alive and capable of sexual reproduction, that the number will start swinging back and forward, by 1 or 2, every generation, and never stabilising. The chances of this happening are also very very slim.

It’s an important question, and a lot of people (myself included) have wondered about it. I’ve often searched for a answer online but found nothing, so I’m glad PZ has swooped in with an easy to understand (albeit lengthy and descriptive) answer.

If you thought you knew a lot about Evolution, prepare to be amazed…

Basics: How can chromosome numbers change?

From My Confined Space

I attended a lecture a few months back (before I started this blog) entitled “Enemy in the Mirror: Richard Dawkins, the New Atheists and their Crusade against Fundamentalism”. It was nothing special, and the “lecturer” didn’t actually talk about anything to do with the subject. She just went on a random rant about how everyone should respect the church etc.

However, after the lecture there were a lot of questions asked from the audience, a large majority of whom were openly atheist. One such question was from a theist (towards the atheists) who complained that we argue all the time about religion and yet send our children to catholic schools and CofE schools with no problems. The parents in the audience said they do this because the results from those schools are better than those at non-religious schools, and they wanted the best for their kids.

I’ve got no problem with people doing that, they want their kids to do well. However I personally do not trust education systems that rely on religion to get students. The only reason that these students are getting better marks is because of the high levels of discipline those schools have, and the only thing large amounts of discipline does is inhibit creativity. You are taught what to think and how to think, and completely ignore the principles that freethinking was founded on.

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Ever wonder if Christians and the like would act more rationally if they realised the ultimate truth…that God is an atheist. How did I deduct this?

Assumption 1

There is a God who created the entire universe.

Definition 1

An atheist is someone with “the absence of belief in deities”.

Assumption 2

Going by the beliefs of the major religions in the world, there is only one God.

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