The Atheist Blogger

If people have noticed, I haven’t been posting on the blog for about a week and a half. I’ve been extremely busy with coursework deadlines and general other university related stuff that I haven’t had the time to post. Ok well I maybe had the time, but not the drive. I’ve also been preparing for my trip to Georgia (state not country) which I leave for today. Luckily, this time I get to take my laptop along since it hasn’t exploded like the last one. I have a few blog posts in the burner, including some updates to the Ray Comfort series (which admittedly isn’t “almost daily” due to my absence and Ray’s trip to NZ). I also have an interview with Darrin Rasberry, the now-agnostic who wrote the foreword to Ray’s latest book.

One thing that I have been doing with my spare time is using Twitter because it allows me to blog 140 characters at a time, which isn’t much, and therefore doesn’t take much time to do. If you aren’t using the service, I highly recommend it. If you are, please follow me! Another thing I’ve been doing whilst not posting is reading the multitude of comments that have appeared on my post about religious child abuse in the form of Deborah Drapper. The 127 (currently) comments on that post are a very interesting read, and there is a lot of debate going on, something which I am thankful I have Intense Debate installed to handle.

So now I have to go check everything is packed before leaving for Heathrow Terminal 5 (which luckily is a 15 minute drive from here). I hear the new terminal actually works now, and they don’t lose bags anymore. My flight leaves at 15:00 and according to British Airways I’ll be in sunny Georgia at around 19:10, just in time for dinner! I’ll be posting on Twitter as much as I can at the airport, since I won’t have anything better to do. No idea if I’ll be able to respond though.

As I previously mentioned, I’ve been invited to a discussion of the book “The Dawkins Letters” by David Robertson. At the time this blog post appears on the site, we will have just started recording. The plan was to do one show focusing on 3-4 of the “atheist myths” presented in the book, but we have since decided to record two shows and discuss more issues. I’m not entirely sure when the shows will be broadcast now, but as soon as I know the details I will of course inform everyone.

The first show will cover the topics of atheist rationality and tolerance, the “inherent” evil of religion, and religious child abuse. It might be prudent to note here that David’s book is very well written and I agree with a lot of his points he makes against Dawkins’ arguments. I think the whole tolerance issue comes down to the difference of opinion that both theists and atheists have. I don’t think a general rule can be made that separates theists from atheists in terms of tolerance; it all depends on your outlook. I agree though that there isn’t an “inherent” evil in religion, but rather I would consider some aspects of religion evil, and the way people twist and use religion as ammunition of hate is one of them. The issue of religious child abuse seems to have been entirely lost in David’s book, as he seems to think that simply labelling a child as a “Christian child” is what Dawkins (and atheists) would refer to as child abuse. What I believe, and what I suspect Dawkins also meant, is that not explaining different worldviews and beliefs to a child and simply telling them “this is how it is” would count as child abuse. It is what I saw when watching a recent BBC documentary.

The second show will cover godless morality, the immoral Bible, and the cruel Old Testament God. This is where I will probably concede some ground, as I haven’t got the 25 years of Biblical study that David claims in his book. I can handle morality fine; I think there are perfectly naturalistic explanations for it and the fact that morality changes over time is evidence that there is no “absolute” moral code that people live by. This would lead me onto the morality of the Bible, which as David explains, must be read in historical context. In this sense, he destroys his argument for Biblical morality, as he has to concede that interpretation of the Bible changes over time, and what was considered moral back when we burnt “witches” would not be considered moral now, even though the words are still there. The issue of the cruel Old Testament God is also down to interpretation. I interpret the Genesis story as cruel, seeing that God supposedly created our curiosity and then sees fit to punish us for it, as well as seemingly setting up the whole thing to fail (as Ricki Gervais says “Either don’t have the snake or the tree…it’s an accident waiting to happen!”). David says he finds incredible beauty and compassion in the Old Testament though, and I’ll have to ask him a few questions to get his view.

The shows are all about discussion rather than debate, and I will try to keep everything as light and friendly as possible, because I respect the book David has written, and I think his opinions need some careful consideration. David is obviously a very intelligent man, and I hope that we can both go away from the discussion a bit more educated in each other’s philosophy and outlook.

Finally, thanks to everyone who has wished me well on Twitter and on the blog. Your comments are most appreciated.

If you still don’t think that religious parents who inflict their religion on their children isn’t tantamount to child abuse, watch this BBC documentary and have a rethink. Deborah Drapper is a 13 year old fundamentalist Christian, who lives in a reclusive environment with her family. She spouts off bad arguments from the likes of Ray Comfort when trying to convert people (she even uses his “atheist test” tracts) and she falls to sleep each night listening to Kent Hovind spreading constant lies about science.

If you think you can handle that, as well as her emotional and sickening breakdown at the end (Jesus *sniff* he…*sniff* he died for MY sins! *bursts into tears*) then watch it. The documentary only goes to show how dangerous these religions can be. They have turned a perfectly ordinary and probably very intelligent girl into a person who is ignorant of the ways of science and spreads the “loving” message that we are all pathetic and deserve Hell to 5 year old children through puppet shows.

Absolutely disgusting. Here is her blog, which I am going to read and comment on as much as I feel like. Someone needs to save this girl from Ray Comfort and the other people who lie for Jesus.

So Ray Comfort is off to his home country of New Zealand in order to participate in a debate about Evolution. I don’t see how a person who has repeatedly shown to not understand the theory can even think about participating in a debate about it, but Ray has drawn up a great debate plan:

1. An atheist is someone who believes nothing created everything. If he denies that and believes that “something” created everything, he’s not an atheist.

Ok, so the subject is Evolution, the scientific theory. It’s a debate concerning one of the fundamentals of biology, but why not throw in philosophy as well? Given that evolutionary biologists are often religious, I do not see how Evolution can been seen as a purely “atheistic” idea. On the subject of the whole “atheists believe nothing created everything”, the so-called “Ray Comfort Fallacy”, please read my previous blog post.

2. Man can’t create a grain of sand from nothing. How intellectually dishonest is it then to say that there was no Intelligent Designer?

Still not even close to the area of evolutionary biology. True, man cannot create a grain of sand from nothing, but why does this mean that some unknown “Intelligent Designer” has this ability? Humans are very intelligent designers, and yet we have limits as to what we can do in this universe. How do our failures imply that there exist beings that can do these things? It’s not intellectually dishonest to say that there is no evidence for an Intelligent Designer, simply because there isn’t any evidence, and we never will. A natural explanation will be found for everything, because to imply some kind of supernatural being is no explanation at all. Even if we can’t explain things naturally, there is no saying we won’t be able to at some point, and it certainly doesn’t make the supernatural any more viable.

3. Where did females come from (in every species)?

Finally, 3 stops down on the debate train and we get to biology. We also see Ray Comfort’s dishonesty out in the open, because he knows the answer to this question already. It has been explained to him at great length by P.Z. Myers after a few blogs post went back and forth between Ray’s blog and Pharyngula. After Ray challenged P.Z. to explain the origins of sex, P.Z. did so, and did so with gusto. I don’t think you could ask for a better summation of the evolution of species and sex, so I won’t even try to write one.

4. Which came first? The blood, the heart or the blood vessels?

Ray needs to learn how to use Google, because the results for a simple search will reveal far more than you could ever want. Panda’s Thumb has a great article about it.

5. There are variations within species, but no species to species transitional forms in the fossil record.

Nope, there are no transitional forms in the fossil record. I repeat, there are no transitional forms in the fossil record. Every time this argument comes up I still find it hard to believe it’s still being used.

6. God made Archaeopteryx with teeth and a tail. It’s a bird, not a dinosaur. He made many weird animals. There’s a huge mouse with a pocket in its front that hops all over Australia, horses with stripes, weird desert animals with humps on their backs . . . and He made some birds with teeth.

Calling Archaeopteryx a “bird with teeth” is a gross understatement. The fact that the creature has more in common with small dinosaurs than birds isn’t just confined to teeth, but the claws, tail, toes, and other skeletal features. Archaeopteryx is a bird, but it is also a dinosaur, and it is clearly a transitional form that shares elements of both, showing how dinosaurs first started evolving into birds.

7. Paleontologists have a huge incentive to twist the truth, just a little. If they can find a bone with a lump on it, theorize that it was a limb or a feather, give it an impressive name, say it is 73 million years old, and suddenly he has his picture on the cover of National Geographic magazine, has a book deal and lectures for life. The human propensity to gullibility is evidenced by evolution’s many believers. Malcolm Muggeridge: “I myself am convinced that the theory of evolution . . . will be one of the great jokes in the history books in the future.” Evolutionists have done to science, what hypocrites have done to religion. We have men who call themselves scientists, when they should have instead got a job with Disney as imagineers.

Ray presents this view but doesn’t go into detail with specific examples of paleontologists doing this. Double blind dating is done on fossils to ensure the result isn’t skewed, so I don’t know where Ray gets the idea that numbers are simply placed on fossils at random. The theory predicts we should find these fossils, and when we do find them, they should rightly be presented to scientific enquiry. Evolutionary biologists have advanced science beyond the realms thought possible, and we now know so much more about our origins. In return, we have used this knowledge to forge a better future for our race. Where religion kills and feeds a misleading doctrine, science shows us the true light, and we are much better for it.

It has long been said that atheists make up 0.2% of the prison population in the US, even though 10% of the entire US population is atheist. This sounds all very well and good for atheists, as it shows how you can be moral without God (or that atheists are better at evading the law enforcement officers). I haven’t used the argument much in the past since I live in the UK, but I have recently questioned the veracity of this claim.

As far as I can tell, the claim was first espoused by Rod Swift, who wrote it on this website. He claims that he contacted research analyst Denise Golumbaski, who works at the Federal Bureau of Prisons, and was sent the following information:

Dear Mr. Swift:


The Federal Bureau of Prisons does have statistics on religious affiliations of inmates.
The following are total number of inmates per religion category:

Response              Number      %
----------------------------  --------
Catholic               29267   39.164%
Protestant             26162   35.008%
Muslim                  5435    7.273%
American Indian         2408    3.222%
Nation                  1734    2.320%
Rasta                   1485    1.987%
Jewish                  1325    1.773%
Church of Christ        1303    1.744%
Pentecostal             1093    1.463%
Moorish                 1066    1.426%
Buddhist                 882    1.180%
Jehovah Witness          665    0.890%
Adventist                621    0.831%
Orthodox                 375    0.502%
Mormon                   298    0.399%
Scientology              190    0.254%
Atheist                  156    0.209%
Hindu                    119    0.159%
Santeria                 117    0.157%
Sikh                      14    0.019%
Bahai                      9    0.012%
Krishna                    7    0.009%
----------------------------  --------
Total Known Responses  74731  100.001% (rounding to 3 digits does this)

This immediately raises concerns, as the information contained in this email isn’t backed up by any raw data, nor is it presented via an official website. The fact that Denise Golumbaski apparently works for the government is of no importance, as it is an argument from authority. Yes, you would expect her not to make up statistics, but we cannot verify the details through this email. Interestingly, this unauthorised and unverified information turns up on many many atheist websites, as well as in the book “The God Hypothesis” by Victor Stenger (paperback page 210, #2 in the Notes section).

So I continued to search. An interesting article was written at a theistic website that brings up the same points I have raised, and also offers “updated” statistics that merge people who did not answer with the “atheists” row. This erroneous data handling brings the percentage of atheists in prison up to just under 20%. Neither article actually links to statistics provided by a government website, and I have yet to find a government website that presents any information; this was after a good hour using Google.

What I did find was details from the UK’s home office, outlining the statistics of March 2000 in English and Welsh prisons, which said that 32% of inmates answered “no religion”. A year later in April the national census was answered by 92% of the UK population, and found that only 15.5% of people had “no religion”. The question about religion was optional and was answered by 92.7% of those asked, so if the remaining 7.3% were atheists who simply didn’t put a religion down, we can estimate that the number of atheists in the UK at the time was between 15.5% and 22.8% of the population.

What I think this shows is that the issue of religion and prisons is far more complex than the 0.2% statistic makes out. Correlation doesn’t mean causation, so a high number of atheists in prison doesn’t necessarily mean atheism is the root cause of their lawbreaking. The number of Christians that are also in prison should be a clear indicator of that. Although I cannot speak for the US, which probably has more factors such as prison conversions and the distrust of atheists (causing some atheists to answer “Christian” on surveys), I think what is clear is that the statistics in the US are dubious at best. A healthy dose of skepticism calls to question the source of the data, and whether it is actually accurate.

My conclusion of the whole thing is simply to not use the argument until some proper facts are shown that show a massive discrepancy between religion and prison population. Then, and only then will such an argument be justified, although I still think we can make better arguments about the source of our morality. Perhaps atheists are underrepresented in American prisons, but why then are they overrepresented in the UK prisons? Perhaps us British atheists are simply terribly bad at avoiding the police. We may never know, but I’d certainly like to see more investigations into religious beliefs before and after incrimination, as it may lead to some interesting results.