The Atheist Blogger

An article I wrote for our student newspaper.

If there is one question I get asked more than any other, it would be “Why don’t you believe in God?”. Rather than going down the popular route of trying to work out which God the inquirer is talking about, I like to respond with reasons I don’t believe in any gods. To be an atheist, you don’t just have to disbelieve the existence of one god; you have to disbelieve in all of them.

By far the most persuasive reason I disbelieve in gods is the sheer lack of evidence for them in the first place. A theist might argue that all of existence is evidence enough for god, but the problem with this conclusion is that it does not explain the god. In fact, it makes things even more confusing, because it invokes a “supreme” being that in most religions is all-knowing and all-powerful. Such a being is so infinitely complex that the only way you can possibly explain its own existence is by claiming it was “always there”. Not only does this argument rely on speculation and blind faith, but you can easily turn it around and argue that the universe - in some form - was always there. Indeed, the same line of argument is used with Intelligent Design, and the same problem is reached; you simply cannot explain or give evidence for the “designer”. All things considered, it is far easier for me to believe that there was some perfectly natural cause for the universe than to suppose an infinitely complex being.

Another problem I find with the whole “god” idea is the contradictory nature of religion. It’s not just that there are several hundred religions all claiming to be the truth, or that all of them contradict each other in some way, but that each religion is internally inconsistent. Evangelicals like to claim that the Bible is supported by science, but it is simply not. The Bible has stayed roughly the same for generations; science has not. When a new scientific discovery threatens the “infallibility” of the Bible, one of two things can occur; either believers change the way they interpret passages so that the inconsistency is effectively removed, or they reject the entire scientific idea. Not all believers choose to do the same thing of course. This whole process of constantly updating religious texts to comply with science begs the ultimate question: If a god did exist, and these texts are supposedly its word, why was it so wrong in the first place? Have we really risen to such a high level that we are out-thinking an all-knowing god?

Finally, I see no logical reason for life to exist after death; a concept most religions like to advertise. Science tells us we really are just a bunch of atoms, and that even our consciousness can be explained with natural processes. I have no problem with that; I find it quite a humble view. In retrospect, I think our self-awareness is the cause of our fear, and subsequent fixation with death. Problems arise when one attempts to imagine what it is like not to think; it’s impossible to do by the very nature of thinking. So which is it? Was an afterlife created for us so we can live on, or did we create an afterlife to cope with our fears of death?

The Atheist Jew has tagged me yet again in another meme. This one is pretty interesting, and came at a good time, since I have either been too busy or unable to think of articles to write recently. However, when my course involves playing around with Lego robots; getting them to solve mazes and stand up on two wheels, and Cryptography (code breaking) you can hardly blame me.

Onto the meme!

Can You Remember The Day That You Officially Became An Atheist?

This question has two answers. The day I “officially” became an atheist would be the day I first put down “no religion” on a government form (Data protection act in 1999). That’s the first time my non-religion was acknowledged by the state, however I think this question is more aimed at the time I first realized I was an atheist.

That was probably around the age of 9. I had been thinking about the question for a while, thats all I can remember about the how. I don’t remember exactly what I was thinking about, but it probably involved trying to combine the Bible with science (it doesn’t work). I was very scientific from a young age, and I frequently read children’s encyclopedias instead of “bedtime stories”. Learning about how we see colours differently in dark light is much more interesting than any story that begins “once upon a time”.

I also remember that the day my realization occurred was a Sunday. This is deeply ironic because the only reason I remember the actual day was that it occurred in a Church service. If it had happened on a Tuesday, I would never have remembered. Such is the power of religion at ingraining things into the mind I guess.

During the church service, the priest probably got up and said something about the Bible and how the Earth was created, or some other complete nonsense. I started thinking about this, and how there are so many flaws in the whole “God” idea. Much like comedian Ricky Gervais, 10 minutes later, I was an atheist. Of course, being such a young boy, I was slightly nervous about these new feelings I had, so I turned to my mother and said “I don’t think I believe in God”. She told me it wasn’t the kind of thing I should be saying in church, and that she would talk about it later.

She never did, and my atheism has only gotten stronger since that day.

Do you remember the day you officially became an agnostic?

Not really, probably because I’d never really heard of the term until much later in life. I guess I’d been an agnostic since the day I got interested in science. If there is anything science has taught me, it is that there are things so complex in the universe we may never fully understand them. The best way to gain knowledge is by continually testing and challenging ideas, and looking where the evidence points.

How about the last time you spoke or prayed to God with actual thought that someone was listening?

Sometime before that Sunday services all those years ago probably. Not that I haven’t had a few “crises of non-faith” since then of course, where I have prayed simply out of fear. I didn’t think anyone was there, it was more of a test to see if anyone was there. Of course, after several experiments, the scientific method held true, and I stopped my pointless praying.

Did anger towards God or religion help cause you to be an atheist or agnostic?

No, the Bible did that quite effectively.

Here is a good one: Were you agnostic towards ghosts, even after you became an atheist?

Yeah, I’ve only very recently become a proper “skeptic” towards a load of things. I’m still a recovering conspiracy theorist to be perfectly honest, and the truth is, there are only so many times you can look at 9/11 footage and say “Why is there no wreckage?” or “Those were bombs exploding in the towers” before you realize you are talking absolute crap and the people who put these bizarre theories together know nothing about proper science.

Of course, I still like to humour these things.

Do you want to be wrong?

Of course I do! I say this to Christians all the time but they never take it in. I would honestly love nothing more than to live forever in some form of paradise, but if I have to adopt a flawed belief system to do it, I refuse. I fail to see why a God who supposedly gave us the ability to reason, would want us to abandon that reason in order to pass some sick test and get into Heaven…

Now my turn to tag people:

Amiable Atheist

Db0

Chicken Girl

Moiz Khan

and Splendid Elles

I get email all the time through my contact form, but I rarely get actual physical mail. The rare exceptions are when people send me their books to read. Today though, I received a letter:

A letter from afar

The “AAA” stands for “Atheist & Agnostic Alliance”, and that is my address, which I released in my post “Edging Further Away From The Closet“. The post mark says “LONG BEACH CA 908″, and there are two “USA FIRST-CLASS FOREVER” stamps on it.

What was inside was even stranger. No contact information or anything to hint to a sender; just two pages of 18 bullet points:

1. Day and night was created on day 1 - impossible since the sun was not created until the fourth day.
2. The first woman was created twice: first time on the sixth day (in God’s image) and sometime after the seventh day using one of Adam’s ribs.
3. Since Adam came into existence on the sixth day, how could he or anyone know what happen on the prior five days, and in what sequence, and how long it took?
4. Since Adam and Eve did not die after eating the forbidden fruit, God is a proven liar. If God should speaking to you, be skeptical.
5. The flood story does not make any sense for many reasons. One is that the amount of water would have to be four to five times that which presently exists on earth. Another is that the floods would have destroyed all ice and glaciers, since ice/snow will float on water. From ice core samples (using a tree ring type dating), ice has existed intact in Greenland and Antarctica for over 110,000 years - not the 4000 years B.C estimated from the Bible. Another reason is that water of a depth of five or so miles would have killed off all vegetation so that the released animal would have nothing to east except each other.
   Since the flood story is so obviously fiction, this implies that all stories (Genesis) earlier than the flood are also myths.
6. The anti-abortionists are fond of quoting “Thy shall not kill”. However, with the flood, God committed mass murder by drowning everyone except for eight Jews. The religious do not seem have a problem with these horrendous murders.
7. If the population started with eight Jews after the flood,how did the world create the large variations such as Eskimos, Australian Aborigines, Navajos, African Pygmies (under 5 foot), Tutsi (often 7 foot), etc. unless by evolution.
8. Matthew and Luke listed absolutely totally different genealogy for Joseph starting with King David. One or both must be in error.
9. After birth, Matthew says that the family went southwest to Egypt. However, Luke says the family went north to Nazareth; one or both is lying.
10. Three Magi (eastern so called wise men) went to Jesus’ birthplace. They got lost and first went to Jerusalem. Although the distance between Jerusalem and Bethlehem is only about five miles, they went to the head ruler, Herod, to ask for directions. All they really had to do was ask anyone in town. In addition, the needed a star to show the way, for five miles, barf. Any star will be about the same size as our sun, roughly a million miles in diameter, as well as very hot. Changing the star position from east to south of something that size is ridiculous. Also, something of that size could not pinpoint the manger. Placing a star close to earth would have incinerated earth.
11. Luke misstates the year of Jesus’ birth as being in the reign of Herod. Herod died in 4 B.C, whereas Jesus is believe to have been born in 4 A.D.
12. John says that Jesus was crucified the day before the Passover meal, whereas Mark says that Jesus was crucified the day after the Passover meal.
13. The Bible says absolutely nothing about abortion. The following is taken from one of Sam Harris’ books. It is estimated that 50% of all human conceptions end in spontaneous abortion, usually without the woman even realizing she is pregnant. In fact, 20% of all recognized pregnancies end in miscarriages. If God exist, he is the most prolific abortionist of all.
14. The religious believe in “Intelligent Design” and are opposed to evolution. However, “Intelligent Design” would more accurately be described as “Deeply Flawed Design”. Human variations include cancer, blue babies, cleft lips, Down’s syndrome, appendicitis, allergies and allergic reactions, color blindness, seizures, polio, leprosy, leukemia, insanity, autism, etc, etc. Why would a perfectionist God take credit for these? Various individual groups of people are resistant to malaria, smallpox (which wiped out many American tribes), and tolerant of dairy products. The protection usually occurred because some of their ancestors survived these conditions, which is basic evolution. We are probably are very fortunate that there are flaws. with the millions* of animal species that have occurred over millions of years, we are one of them. [*Perhaps up to 100 million or more.] This brings up a question. It has been estimayed that 99% of the species are extince. If God is so intelligent, why the destruction of so many species?
15. The Jews were slaves to the Egyptians and Babylonians for hundreds of years. Many of the Bible stories are taken/plagiarized from the myths of these two people and surrounding communities.
16. If God ever existed, then God must have been around just prior to the “Big Bang”, some 13 billions years ago. Since the conditions immediate after the explosion were gaseous, then God was surely destroyed. Why be concern about a dead God?
17. Why would a God create dinosaurs and then kill them all off? Not a very bright move.
18. The Bible allows slavery, multiple wives, murder (of unbelievers) and the father to sell his daughters into prostitution.

Not entirely sure what to make of this. Some of the points are good, others are quite petty, and some are just plain silly (16???). So thanks for your efforts random stranger. If you feel like revealing your identity then please do, and in future if you want something posted on the blog, you could try contacting me online and save the postage costs (especially if it is just a few pages).

Not that I mind getting mail that is :D

Having an atheist group on campus is great fun, as long as you can remember what your group is called. Last September I created the first such group Royal Holloway had seen, the “Atheist Union”. Later that year we changed the name to “Atheist & Agnostic Alliance” because some people refused to join otherwise, and it looked more open that way.

Then, this summer a guy created the “Royal Holloway Humanist Alliance” which I quickly got in contact and met up with. At the meeting we decided that two secular groups on campus was plain silly, and so we created the “Royal Holloway Secular Students” group, which is an umbrella group for both the Atheist & Agnostic Alliance and the Humanist Alliance.

Enough is enough, we have a group name now…hopefully one that will stick. We are planning fortnightly debates on secular issues, such as Abortion (next week), Faith Schools, Evolution vs Creationism, and Shia Law.

Should be fun…

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