The Atheist Blogger

Sorry for the late announcement, but I’ll have to postpone the online discussion of Carl Sagan’s book “The Demon Haunted World” until Tuesday 2nd September. That gives everyone an extra 3 days with the book in case they need to finish the final chapter!

I need to get up early tomorrow as I am attending my dad’s wedding, and so I won’t be online to oversee the book club meeting tonight. I’ll be back in action on the 2nd, and if I get access to a computer before then I will update everyone with information. Hopefully I’ll be able to set up a vote for October’s book on the 1st.

Carnival of Evolution is a new blog carnival that describes itself thusly^[1]:

Do you care about the science behind evolution? Do you marvel at the tiny molecular machines spewing out coded messages to the microscopic inhabitants of your own bodied world? Do you grow irate at the ignorance pushers, the peddlers of relatively impotent gods, and the disintegration of science education in the modern world? Do you like to stay abreast of current topics and scientific findings in the study of the organismal existences surrounding us or those long gone?

If so, this is the blog carnival for you.

Their tagline is awesome: “3.7 billion years of molecular changes culminating in the emergence of matter inspecting its own origins and existence”

Of course like all new blog carnivals they need to be advertised, and people need to start submitting posts. At the moment it seems like the carnival is stationary (on the single blog), but that may change in the future, who knows.

The 1st carnival consisted of 10 incredible and fascinating insights into Evolutionary biology, and one article in which a man who knows next to nothing about Evolution compared to the other guys writes about how Ray Comfort is a moron. *cough*

But seriously, thanks for the include. I am certain that my article would stand out and cause people to want to write much better articles. The more of these carnivals there are, the better people will understand evolution, even if they take tiny steps at a time.

It has often been wondered if Ray Comfort is simply ignorant of science, willfully ignorant of science, or simply lying for Jesus. We now have an answer; he is part of the third group.

For anyone who took Biology at high school, you will know that the Taxonomic rank is the way scientists organise the tree of Life. It has many models, both simple and complex. For the purposes of this article, we will discuss the most common and simple version:

Domain -> Kingdom -> Phylum -> Class -> Order -> Family -> Genus -> Species

Using this method of classification, we can show where humans come on the tree:

Eukarya (Domain) -> Animalia (Kingdom) -> Chordata (Phylum) -> Mammalia (Class) -> Primates (Order) -> Hominidae (Family) -> Homo (Genus) -> H. sapiens (Species)

Ray Comfort however, has a different idea of how this all works. It is great because his classification is so much easier to understand!

Wolves, coyotes and German shepherds are of the same species (the canine family or “kind”), but they can’t breed with cats or tigers (which are the felidae family or “kind”).

So that classification would probably go something like this:

GOD -> “Family Species Kind” hybrid

At least we have a reason why Ray Comfort doesn’t understand Evolution. When you redefine basic tenets of Biology so that the theory of Evolution collapses, of course you will think that it doesn’t work! Using Ray Comfort’s methodology I will now debunk a couple of “popular” scientific notions.

1. 1/0 now equals 9,999,999 since I reckon the whole concept of “Infinity” is so flawed we just need to use a really big number to represent it.
2. Think we can’t travel faster than the speed of light? Think again! Now that I’ve redefined the speed of light to approximately 30kph (in a vacuum), I’m pretty sure we can beat it! Welcome to the new world of interstellar travel!!!
3. The boiling point of water will now be set to 50 degrees so it takes half the time to boil an egg!

They may sound crazy ideas, but this is exactly what Ray is doing when it comes to the theory of Evolution. You can redefine as many things as you like and eventually an idea will sound impossible, but it doesn’t make it false. Evolution is supported by evidence and the evidence doesn’t suddenly change. It will always remain. As new and different evidence comes into play, the theory might change, but the fact of evolution will not.

I help run a general atheist forum which has recently been increasing in activity. The topic of Evolution comes up now and then, and the creationists always bring up all the misconceptions again and again. Sometimes you wish you had an hour or so to write an massively long response to them, citing all their mistakes, providing lots of evidence, and backing it all up with research. This rarely happens since it takes far too much effort for simple online forums, and often people are left simply pointing out simple mistakes and telling the creationists to “go do some proper research”.

When it does happen however, it completely blows everyone away.

The member, solidsquid, a self proclaimed “Dioist“, wrote an epic post complete with images, research, links, and references. It must have taken ages to put together, and I applaud him for his efforts. The question is, will any creationists actually read it?

A few weeks ago I debunked a Christian’s view of Evolution and started a poll to see what percentage of readers believed Evolution. I predicted that the vast majority of atheists would believe in Evolution, although some might not for various reasons. I also predicted that the majority of theists would believe in Evolution, although not quite as much as atheists.

The results pretty much matched my expectations.

• A total of 203 people have voted so far; 182 were atheists, 21 were theists.
• 94.6% of those people (192) believe in Evolution.
• 97.8% of atheists believe in Evolution.
• 66.7% (13) of theists also believe in Evolution.

It is good to see a healthy number of theists believing in (and presumably understanding) Evolution, but what I’d really like to research more is the number of atheists who do not believe. If you are such an atheist, please leave a comment outlining what you believe, or why you don’t believe Evolution.

Matt posted a comment on the poll

I actually don’t like to say I believe in evolution. I accept it.

I agree with Matt, saying “I believe” often seems to imply that it isn’t a fact and could be wrong. However every knowledge implies a belief, and likewise, everything we “accept” implies that we believe it as well. You cannot accept gravity without already believing that it exists, and the same goes for Evolution. I doubt the results of the poll would have differed anyway.