The Atheist Blogger

Shhh! I haven’t got much time, and I need to tell the world before THEY find me and delete this. The world needs to know the TRUTH, and THEY will stop at nothing to stop me!

Atheists claim to not believe in gods, but this is a lie. Deep down they really know there is a God, but they don’t like what this means and so they lie about what they believe. So remember, the next time you meet an atheist, despite them claiming that they have no belief in gods, they secretly know that He exists!

…or so some people like to claim, like David if he is reading this. David is an acquaintance of mine; we do the same course; we talk about computing often. David is a nice chap. David is also a Christian who is on a mission to convert my soul to Jesus. He is a member of Royal Holloway’s unofficial Christian Union, which I attend for the fun and cakes.

Tonight I went along, wearing a t-shirt that says “Thank God I’m an Atheist”. It’s meant to be ironic, an atheist thanking “God”, but the joke is lost on some people. Some people have said I am “stupid” for wearing it because it is contradictory. Some people have no sense of humour.

Whether or not David understood the t-shirt or not isn’t the issue, it never came up. What is the issue is his insistence that whilst I say I do not believe in God, I really know he exists “deep down”. To him, this is a good argument. To me, this is an insult. It is not only implying I am a liar, but also that I am stupid. Only a stupid person would choose not to believe (and thereby end up with a one-way ticket to Hell) if they knew that God existed.

So no David, I do not “know” God exists deep down. I do not know if God exists at all, and I think the existence of God is somewhat unknowable, at least for myself. Since I do not know if God exists or not, and I have seen no reason to believe one does, I also do not believe in gods. This brings me quickly to the second point I wanted to outline:

Agnostic atheists do exist.

Trust me, they do. Just ask the vast majority of atheist readers of my blog, and I’m sure they will be happy to tell you. That said, I’m glad you actually understood the definition of agnosticism. You were quite right in saying it states that “God is unknowable”. Where you get confused is where this links in with atheism. I could go on about how knowledge and belief cover different things, but I suspect there are far better sites out there that handle it much better than I could.

So no David, despite what you might think, I am not an agnostic instead of an atheist, I am both.

I do hope you take my advice, go to Google, and search for “Agnostic Atheism”. In fact, if you are reading this (and I hope you are), here is a link. The first three results (Wikipedia, All About Philosophy, and About.com) all have material you should read on the subject, and hopefully the next time you wish to talk about atheism/religion, you’ll have the decency to respect my views as I respect yours.

See you in class tomorrow,

Adrian

A lot has been happening with my student group at Royal Holloway, the Atheist & Agnostic Alliance since we started our leaflet campaign. Although we were only able to hand out roughly half of the flyers due to bad weather (a sign from God perhaps?), a few new members have joined our ranks.

Among the first to contact me was a guy named Dan who demonstrated the remarkably small world we live in by revealing that we are actually next door neighbours. Since then he has made an admirable effort to help hand out flyers, which usually ended up with us in the student bar having a drink.

One of our members from last year, Jack Lenox, put me in contact with another student who was trying to form a Humanist Alliance at Royal Holloway, unaware that the AAA was actually around. He got a lot of facebook support, and we have decided to join forces under an umbrella group. The new group, which will probably be called something like “Royal Holloway Secular Students” is going to include the sub-groups of Humanism and the AAA, since the Humanism group already has a number of theist members. Group meetings will take place at the same time, with us talking about broader secular subjects at the start, and then turning over to the “militant atheist wing” (us) at the end.

I have also penned my first column for “The Atheist Column” in the student newspaper The Founder, which should come out within the next week or so. I decided to respond to a few people who had questioned me over the usage of the term “Bright” on the flyers.

Are the “Brights” worth it?

During freshers’ week, members of the Atheist & Agnostic Alliance handed out flyers that explained the term “Bright” as a positive word for someone who lives without supernatural or spiritual notions. Founded in America in 2003, the Brights movement sought to replace the label of “godless” with something that wasn’t anti-, or non- anything, much in the same way that the term “gay” is now used to describe homosexuals.

In the harsh religious environment of America, where to be an atheist means both social and political discrimination, this idea holds some weight. In the UK though, the vast majority of people would call themselves secular, seeing religion as something that shouldn’t interfere with politics. Indeed, where in the USA an atheist would never get to high levels of public office (without lying about their beliefs), the current leader of the Liberal Democrats, Nick Clegg, does not believe in God. So should the term “Bright” still be used?

I think instead of using the Brights as a platform for change, we should use the organisation purely to group people of similar worldviews together. The Brights have meetings all over the UK, open to people who subscribe to different labels, whether it be atheism, agnosticism, humanism, scepticism, and many more. As for trying to enforce the meaning of the word, I think efforts should instead be focused on changing the public perceptions of the original terms. “Bright” is a great word for describing people who hold no supernatural worldview, but it doesn’t cover individual positions on belief in gods. Both atheists and secularists can be Brights, but whilst an atheist does not believe in gods, a secularist might.

What was clear though, from a number of people I spoke to during freshers’ week, is that the term “Bright” is very vague in who it encompasses. Some Brights will argue that it is a strictly non-believing organisation, whilst others will insist that as long as you do not use the supernatural to make decisions, you are welcome. In fact the only people who I think do not belong in the Brights group are those who actively participate in faith healing, psychic readings, or active prayer and other similar activities.

The Atheist & Agnostic Alliance’s relationship with the Brights is really one of “business only”. They were kind enough to make good looking flyers at low cost, and they are a great source of speakers for the “godless” events we are planning this year. Other than that, the groups should keep separate.

If all goes well, this should be an interesting year for Royal Holloway. Watch out for the infidel invasion!

Bill Maher is a great guy, both with his comedy and with his views on religion. He is a problem for most atheists out there though, because of his views on atheism. Maher always states he is an “agnostic”, and I have no problem with him claiming that. I don’t exactly agree with his definition of that either, but I don’t think it’s going to change anytime soon.

When anything comes up about atheism, Bill Maher reacts in the same way, by claiming that atheists are people who “are certain there is no God”. This portrays atheists in a negative light, because there are very few people who actually would agree with this definition. An atheist is not someone who makes a statement about God’s non-existence, but one who makes a statement about their disbelief/lack of belief/non-belief in God.

The Atheist Jew wrote a great article on this subject, which provoked me into writing my opinions here. The Atheist Jew argues

I have a feeling he is just trying to appeal to the masses by not labeling himself as an atheist. A term that causes many a theist to flinch. By labeling himself as agnostic, he is just trying to be accepted.

It is evident in everything he says beyond avoiding the atheism label, that he is an atheist.

An atheist doesn’t have to say “there is no God, or no afterlife.” Most of us say or thin that “there is no evidence for God or an afterlife, so why even consider something that has no evidence to back it up?”

As an agnostic atheist myself, I’m not against agnosticism at all, and I think Bill Maher is doing a great job making people question the “unquestionable” beliefs of religion. However, he should realise that agnosticism and atheism are not views on the same thing. Following a view of “I don’t know” is fine, but if the question is “Do you believe in God?” and you do not, then you are an atheist.

It is a shame that in a world where information is free and open to everyone, Bill Maher hasn’t read the article on atheism from Wikipedia, or even browsed an online dictionary to find out the general views on such words. On The Atheist Jew’s blog, I made a comment in which I proposed my idea:

Send Bill Maher and open letter from a few atheist bloggers.

The way I see it, there are a load of atheist bloggers who have been publicizing the movie because of it’s stance on religion. We are giving it the thumbs up, and we are doing it for free, because we think it is the right thing to do. However I suspect that quite a few of these bloggers would feel offended for the same reasons I have gone over here, simply because Bill Maher is painting his most loyal supporters with a negative image.

In the letter, I propose we thank Bill Maher for all he has done to expose religion for the ridiculous beliefs it is comprised of, and argue our case, including the standard definitions you find in most dictionaries, perhaps suggest a few articles from Wikipedia and About.com, and ask him to stop putting atheists down.

If this were a fundamentalist preacher saying these things, we would all have a rant about how misunderstood people are on the concept of atheism, but when it is one of our own (a self-hating atheist perhaps?) the issue suddenly disappears. Perhaps people have too much respect for Bill Maher to do anything, but when it is someone who we can guarantee has an open mind (unlike the fundamentalist preacher) I think we should act on it.

What do you all think?

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A recent few posts of mine have sparked a mini-debate between Skepdude and I, which has moved from the comments section of this site, to a post I made, and finally across to his response. Whilst reading our two opposing arguments I think it is clear to the casual observer that we are caught in a semantic argument. I doubt we disagree on the actual ideas both are presenting, merely the definitions lying at the heart of them. Indeed, Skepdude has acknowledged the possibility of God on numerous occasions, making him (by the definitions I go with) an agnostic atheist. Other points I fear we have both simply misunderstood one another on, something that is easily done in such online discussions. I will simply dissect his post and reply accordingly, trying to clear up as many things as I can, starting off with the minor problem of gender.

I am not sure if it should be she, it is not clear from the blog, so I’ll refer to the author as a he from this point on. My apologies if this turns out to be incorrect!

I am indeed a he. My name is at the bottom of every article and next to my comments: “Adrian Hayter”, but I understand the confusion. Adrienne is the female version of my name, and my long hair in the comment avatars doesn’t help matters.

As you can clearly see from his first paragraph he defined an atheist as someone who says :”I do not believe in God”. Yes he did follow that by saying that this is a generalization, and that “some” atheist say that they “know” or are “certain” there is no god.  But that’s where he stopped. I did not accuse him of defining atheism as a belief. What I did do is to challenge his definition of an atheist and the choice of words he used in that definition. He uses a very extreme definition of atheism.

Well I would hardly call the definition “do not believe in God” a “very extreme” definition of atheism. In fact, it seems to be the one that most dictionaries I have looked in go with:

1. disbelief in the existence of a supreme being or beings. (Dictionary.com)
2. Disbelief in or denial of the existence of God or gods. (American Heritage)
3. The disbelief or denial of the existence of a God, or supreme intelligent Being. (Websters)

Indeed, some atheists do say they “know” or are “certain” there is no god. When I wrote the standard definition (disbelief), I did not want to ignore those who take this definition further by saying they either know or are certain.

Richard Dawkins in his “God Delusion” talks about 7 levels (if my memory serves me right)  of belief/disbelief and level 6 and 7 are occupied by atheists, with level 7 being the kind who “believes” or “knows” that there is no God. Not even RD who is an ardent atheist sees himself as belonging to category #7, because that category is jsut as dogmatic as the ardent, dogmatic Sky Daddy worshipers. The way the “Atheist Blogger” defined atheism in his entry suggest that atheist are of the category 7 kind. That is what I am challenging. I am not that sort of atheist. Richard Dawkins is not. Anyone with a little bit of integrity cannot accept to be labeled as such.

My point is simple. Accepting that the probability of God existing is really really, infinitesimaly small is by leaps and bounds not the same as saying that you know, or are certain, or believe he does not exist.

I do not see how my definition of atheists as people who say they do not believe in Gods means that I meant they believe there are no gods, or even that they know there are no Gods. Not believing in something doesn’t mean you believe in the opposite. I made that mistake in the past and have since rectified it in discussions. I am not a 7 either. I do not believe in Gods, and I would never say “I believe there are no gods” or “I know there are no gods”.

As for his last point, that accepting the probability of God existing not being the same as saying you know, or are certain, I am in total agreement. That was the entire point I made about agnostic atheism. If you are a 7, you claim to “know” that God does not exist, making you a form of gnostic atheist, “gnostic” used as the opposite of “agnostic”, not the Christian spirituality group. Gnosticism in this case is the view that you can know god.

Yes, as I said, my stance on god’s non-existence is of a statistical nature. Yes, I can’t claim to know that God does not exist, which is another way of saying that I don’t have the “knowledge” that god does not exist, specifically because non-existence is not a provable hypothesis. What does the fact that statistics itself is knowledge have to do with my lack of knowledge about gods non existence? That is a non sequitur.  Just beacuse statistics is considered knowledge, and just becasue I reach a conclusion based on statistics, it does not follow that my conclusion itself can be considered knowledge.  I can have perfect statistics but wrong premises, or an incomplete set of premises and my answer would be wrong, thus not knowledge, even though my statistics were impecable. I really do not see how he has addressed my point that I can’t claim to have knowledge of god’s nonexistence based on his answer.

My point on the statistics was that you claimed your statistical analysis was not based on belief or knowledge, but statistics is in itself that analysis of knowledge. In this case, you analyzed the knowledge you had, which included the fact that there is no verifiable evidence for God, and used this to produce a statistical probability.

Knowledge is a branch of belief? That doesn’t make any sense regardless how you define belief. Just what in god’s name does that even mean? How is knowledge a branch of belief? In what sense? I think the Atheist Blogger needs to elaborate on that point as he’s close to committing atheistic heresy.

Elaborate I will. In philosophy, Moore’s paradox explains the relation between knowledge and belief. Moore stated that to say “It is raining outside but I don’t believe it to be true” is a paradox. You cannot possibly know something and not believe it. In Epistemology, to know P is to believe P is true. In other words, knowledge implies belief. Perhaps I could have related this a tad better in my original article.

I find it hard to believe that such things are being writen by someone who claims to be an atheist. This is the sort of apologetic goal post moving tactics you’d expect from religious people who are too embarrased by their religion’s earthly claims and hide behind a God who is out of reach, can never be touched by reason, logic or science. In other words the old definition of God does not stand up to logical scrutiny, so let’s make up a new god which is impervious to reason. This is exactly what Carl Sagan was talking about when he gave the example of the invisible dragon, who breathes heatless fires and leaves no imprints on the flour on the floor. This attitude is pointless, useless and it leads nowhere. We can postulate anything, claim that it is out of the reach of reason, and bam we have ourselves something to be agnostic about. I’m sorry that just makes me giggle.

I agree, the attitude is ultimately pointless, useless, and leads nowhere. The purpose of agnosticism isn’t to lead anywhere though, but to confirm the possibility of a God. It isn’t agnostics that are moving the posts though, but the theists who claim such things. They are the ones who claim God to be outside our observable universe, on another plane of existence, or whatever else they have claimed about it. The agnostics are the ones who simply say, given the nature of such a being, it is impossible to prove or disprove it. You are quite correct, we could come up with something, put it outside reason, and be agnostic about it. The reason we do not do so is because there aren’t a massive number of people claiming something else like this. Another reason why God gets special treatment is because theists are claiming that it created everything, and on some occasions has a direct effect on what happens when we die. These are all things that affect people if they are true, and people are more likely to think about certain ideas if they have supposed affects on them than say, a giant iguana who lives between universes and doesn’t do anything.

Secondly, I don’t think Dawkins would be caught dead using the word “agnostic” to describe himself, but that is my opinion based on what I’ve heard him say and his writings and I may be shown wrong on that.

Possibly because in his book he uses the definition of “agnostic” as someone who “doesn’t know” if they believe in god or not. His scale of 1-7 puts agnosticism in position 4, which agnosic atheists such as myself disagree with. If you used the original definition (and current one used by dictionaries) the Dawkins would be an agnostic atheist. This is clearly evident by his rating of 6.9 on his scale. If a 7 is someone who says you can know there is no god, anything below would be someone who says you cannot know (until you reach the other end of the scale, with 1 being someone who claims you can know there is a God). Dawkins doesn’t seek to disprove God, because he understands this is impossible, but he still strongly disbelieves the notion that one exists. The question of belief in the existence of god and the actual existence of god are different questions. People often make the mistake of using agnosticism purely in terms of belief, when it should be in terms of the truth value of the claim.

Ok, so there goes an ad populum fallacy. The term makes sense to a lot of people huh? First of all, for all those people it makes sense to, we can probably find just as many that it does not, as such that argument holds no water. Secondly, it does not matter how many people it makes sense to, I can still criticize it. How can you claim that agnosticism is a stance which says “we can’t know” and atheism is a stance which says ” I know” and still use the two words together? That my friend is the definition of contradiction, an oxymoron. You can’t know while at the same time saying that you don’t know. Just explain to me how, based on your two definitions, this makes any sense at all? On the flip side how can anyone be an agnostic theist? So this person knows there is a God because he’s a theist, but at the same time he know’s he can’t really know if there is a God? Something’s gotta give, and it seems simple logic is what is giving here.

Firstly I wasn’t trying to prove any point about the definitions other than they mean something to some people, therefore there is reason to discuss them. I never implied that because a lot of people agree with them that they are therefore true. You simply said that the terms didn’t make sense to you, which is irrelevant. Not understanding something is no grounds to dismiss it.

I never said atheism is a stance that says “I know”, I said atheism is a stance that says “I disbelieve”. The stance that some atheists take is “I know”, which is a form of gnostic atheism: Disbelieving something and knowing it to be true or reckoning it can be proven.

Someone can be an agnostic theist by the simple fact that theism is a belief in god, not a position on “knowledge” of god. There are people who claim to know that god exists, or that god can be proven, making them gnostic theists, and people who claim to believe in god yet think the proof is impossible to obtain. Indeed something had to give, and it was your misunderstanding of the definitions of theism/atheism.

And why do you say that knowledge is different to belief when at the very beginning you said that knowledge is a branch of belief? Can you please explain that contradiction to me? If knowledge is in fact, as you claim, belief with facts than if anything belief is a subset of knowledge not the other way around.

The mere fact there is a branch surely explains there is a difference? What would be the purpose of the branch otherwise? H. sapiens branched off from an ancestor on the evolutionary tree, but we would hardly call them the same would we? In philosophy, the relation of knowledge and belief is clear.

“You cannot know something if you do not first believe it to be true.” You’ve gotta be kidding me right? So this is how you think the process of acquiring knowledge works? We first start with something we believe to be true and then find the facts to add on top of our belief to turn it into knowledge? You have it completely backwards my friend. Knowledge and facts lead to belief (trust not faith) that something is infact true, not the other way around. It seems you’re not talking about knowledge of the scientific kind when you use that word. Maybe we are having a semantics battle over here.

Indeed as you have probably deduced by now, I am talking about it in a purely philosophical sense. I would have thought that clear from the start when we were talking about things such as atheism, agnosticism, etc, but I apologize if that wasn’t made clear.

I think perhaps the entire discussion is a semantics battle.

The world was created by God is not a philosophical question, it is a scientific one. God performs miracles, raises the dead, walks on water are not philosophical issues but empirical ones. God’s existence is not a philosophical issue, it is an empirical issue unless you strip him of everything that’s ever been attributed to him, which seems to me that’s what you’re doing.

I always thought of science as the study of the natural world, so a supernatural god being wouldn’t even come close to being something to do with science. Philosophy on the other hand, is the study of problems to do with things like existence, knowledge, beauty, etc. The existence of God is a philosophical question.

Are you agnostic about ghosts? Are you agnostic about talking to the dead? Are you agnostic about UFOs? It seems to me the answers to those questions should be yes, yes, and yes. We just can’t know!

Again, as the answers should technically be yes, most people do not consider them important enough to acknowledge. In fact, UFO’s exist, we just don’t know what they are. Even if you meant aliens, I would not be agnostic about them either. The universe is only finitely sized, and if the aliens live within it, we can know about them.

I’ve just noticed the three links automatically generated below your post which explain agnostic atheism rather well, so I encourage you to read them, as well as anyone else interested in them^[1][2][3].

I’m not sure what you want to in terms of this “debate”. I don’t think continually hopping between blogs is going to be good for anyone, and I think it is clear that we are simply running round each other with different dictionaries and interpretations. I tend to go with the definition Thomas Huxley came up with, you tend to go with the definition that has been hijacked and pushes agnosticism into the question of belief.

Yes, technically we could be agnostic about absolutely everything, but as you rightly pointed out this is intellectual suicide. The only reason we are agnostic about god is because of the status that has been thrust upon it, and the fact that if such a being existed it would have an impact. Agnosticism is useful in this case because it can unite theists with atheists over the issue. Instead of arguing over the existence of god, they can agree that such a being is unprovable and lay the issue to rest. Creationists and biblical literalists are the people who claim that god can be known through the Bible, or through reasoning, and they are the people who make the constant mistakes and illogical arguments.

I have received a lot of support for my original idea of having some kind of website which people could put their name down in support of original definitions, but I think given the amount of opposition who simply refused or could not understand the terms, I will have to abandon the project. I think the best way to argue agnostic atheism is to get people to simply look up the word as I did. Hopefully they will be surprised at how wrong the public interpretation was all these years.

On Monday 22nd September, several thousand new students will arrive at Royal Holloway, University of London, in order to register and join societies. The godless members of our student organisation “Atheist & Agnostic Alliance” will be there too, handing out flyers in order to grab as many new members as we can. Statistics says roughly 30% of students are non-religious, so I’m hoping we can get quite a few.

As part of our affiliation with the UK Brights, we have 1,500 flyers that present a “friendly” message, as well as something that isn’t “in your face”.

Atheist & Agnostic Alliance Flyer

UK Brights are also helping us organise an awareness week later in the year. I’ll be taking my camera along to registration and get some pictures of the group in action. No idea how many flyers we will hand out on the first day, or how many will end of torn up in bins on campus. Hopefully a few people will stop to chat, either in support or to try and convert us from our heathen ways.

Edit (in response to a complaint): http://the-brights.net, http://brights.meetup.com