The Atheist Blogger

Nick from the forums brought up a few interesting questions about the influence of majority opinion when it comes to religion.

Christianity is so mainstream, at least here in America. Ask someone what religion they are, and they will most likely say that they are of the Christian faith.

My question is if someone knew of the religion but knew that no one practiced it, would they still become a Christian?

Do people really believe so strongly in these things or do they just THINK that they do because the majority of the population believes the same?

Is it like a school or club where everyone just wishes to fit in, or are there really honest beliefs in a God and “The Messiah” despite proven sciences supporting something else?

I am willing to bet many Christians would respond to these questions saying “Yes I would still be a Christian.” What if it were shunned upon to be a Christian? Would you still believe in what you do?

Here in America, I think it is somewhat brave to be an Atheist, at least an open one. It is very frowned upon here, mainly because of huge misunderstanding. When you tell someone that you are an Atheist (at least a Christian, which makes up most all of the population) they immediate hold somewhat of a resentment against you, which is unfortunate for me if it ever is a topic for employment.

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On 30th May 2008 at 23:00 GMT we will hold the first book club discussion of the chosen book this month: “Why Darwin Matters: The Case Against Intelligent Design“.

There are quite a few sites for working out your timezone compared to GMT, but I have found an easy and accurate one: http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/converter.html

The discussion will take place on MSGPlus, in the temporary channel #atheist-book-club. If you already know how to use IRC, you will need to enter the following details into your IRC client:

Server: irc.msgplus.net

Port: 6667

Channel: #atheist-book-club

If you have never used IRC before, I have set up a Java Applet on the forums. It requires you to have Java installed on your computer (most people do) and for JavaScript to be enabled in your web browser.

You can either register / log into the forums or join the chat as a guest. It’s open to all.

http://atheistblogger.com/forums/chat.php

After the discussion, I will create a forum thread so that other people who couldn’t make the IRC chat can voice their opinions of the book. Speaking of which, I’d better get it finished!

Atheist blogger Kieran Bennett was asked the question “Why are you atheist and not agnostic?” and replies in essay format. He argues that whilst I am correct in saying that agnosticism has nothing to do with gods, I am wrong in thinking that “gnostic atheism” is irrational, and it is in fact the agnostic atheists who are the irrational ones.

I find this a bit incredulous, but I think his argument stems from the semantics of the word “god”. Kieran says that every god that exists today can ben traced back through history to it’s human origin, and we can also explain why such gods have so much power over people (fear, comfort, etc). However, I do not think that any of these gods are gods that the agnostic atheist would claim are unknowable.

In essence, the agnostic atheist is as certain as the gnostic atheist about most gods humanity has ever come up with. What we are really agnostic about is a god that humanity has not just dreamt up, the god of deism. Ok, so perhaps this god was dreamt up by a human, but it very different from it’s brothers and sisters. The god of deism is an attempt at explaining the reasons for the origins of the universe. Instead of an all-powerful being, we have a semi-powerful being, able to create but not to interfere, thus letting science do all the explaining of existence and the universe.

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The first book club discussion gets ever closer, and hopefully we will have an IRC server up and running to handle the live chat. However, if this is not the case we will use a temporary channel over at freenode. Either way, I will tell you how to get connected and into the discussion when I know more details.

I’ve set the date of the discussion as 30th May, and now we run into the problem of timing. I know that we have people reading the book who live in America, UK, and Australia, so I figure the best course of action to get everyone a say is to have early afternoon on the 30th for Americans, late evening on the 30th for the UK, and mid-morning on the 31st for Australians.

If I propose the time of 23:00 GMT on the 30th, this roughly equates to:

09:00 Australia ACT (31st)

16:00 US (Arizona)

18:00 US (Central)

19:00 US (Eastern)

Obviously this is open to debate, so please voice your opinions on whether these times are good, or suggest an alternative way of doing it.

It might be a good idea if I start a mailing list for these sorts of things, so if you want to get information on the book club and updates via a mailing list, please send me your email.

What’s the best way to support the theory of Evolution? Make a 2 hour Creationist propaganda film packed with every lie every told about the theory. You may think you have heard all the idiotic arguments that try to undermine Evolution, but I bet there are still some in this documentary that have eluded you.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2783773121996810582

The movie is quite old so you may have seen if before, or seen parts of it (the Peanut Butter bit on YouTube), and if you haven’t yet seen Expelled, this movie is probably just as funny.