The Atheist Blogger

It’s been 7 years, and I still cannot believe they canceled Firefly. Every now and then I stumble upon a great clip from the show (of which there are an incredible number given the short run it had) and it makes me angry that this show isn’t picked up again. God is Pretend recently included a great clip of River Tam (my favourite character by far) “fixing” the Bible:

Book: What are we up to, sweetheart?

River: Fixing your Bible.

Book: I, um… What?

[Pan over to River, who works on a book with pens, brushes, and loose pages.]

River: Bible’s broken. Contradictions, false logistics… doesn’t make sense.

Book: No, no. You -- you can’t…

River: So we’ll integrate non-progressional evolution theory with God’s creation of Eden. Eleven inherent metaphoric parallels already there. Eleven. Important number. Prime number. One goes into the house of eleven eleven times, but always comes out one. Noah’s ark is a problem.

Book: Really?

River: We’ll have to call it “early quantum state phenomenon”. Only way to fit 5,000 species of mammals on the same boat.

. . .

Book: River, you don’t… fix the Bible.

River: It’s broken. It doesn’t make sense.

Book: It’s not about… making sense. It’s about believing in something. And letting that belief be real enough to change your life. It’s about faith. You don’t fix faith, River. It fixes you.

Oh River, you taught us so much; like how “the human body can be drained of blood in 8.6 seconds given adequate vacuuming systems“. If you haven’t watched Firefly, then go watch it on Hulu, or buy the DVD. If you simply don’t have the time, then the Wikiquotes article should give you a few laughs.

An Icon of Freedom of Speech

It’s no wonder so many websites attack atheism, and why an increasing number of newspapers seems to be doing the same thing; we’re probably one of the easiest targets out there. We’re a minority group in most countries in the world, but not only that, we are actively challenging the view of the majority group. In comparative terms, we’re like the British National Party (BNP) in the UK elections. The BNP are a fascist, right-wing, white supremacist political movement which has gathered together the last surviving members of Britain’s racists. They are a small minority, yet they are often one of the loudest; campaigning against every single other party, blaming them for the current state of the government. Unlike other targets that one could attack such as those of a certain race or sex, we don’t have any anti-discrimination laws to protect us, and for very good reasons, we have campaigned against such laws (the ones that would protect us) under the banner of freedom of speech. We don’t want our governments saying that people cannot write hateful things about us, because the whole point about the atheism debate is that there can be a debate.

Freedom of speech is often attacked by the religious, who claim that atheists use it to blaspheme and campaign against their beliefs, even though they are fine when they do the same to us. The point of freedom of speech is that anyone can say anything about politics, religion, art, etc and have their view protected so that others can hear it. The people who agree will state their approval, and the people who disagree or find it offensive in any way can have their say as well, and their response will likewise be protected.

It is this freedom of speech that I execute when I respond to the newspaper articles which lie and misrepresent us. I don’t want the articles to be censored, but I want my right to a fair response. The execution of this right was most recently seen when a Op-Ed piece, penned by Charlotte Allen was published in the LA Times (and then republished yesterday in the Guardian) and spread around the blogosphere. I doubt very many atheists would have wanted Allen’s piece obliterated from the newspaper (shame on you if you did), but the sheer amount of responses it generated from both sides of the debate show the level of disagreement. If you want to read a thorough, well-written objection to Allen’s article, then head over to Shane Croucher’s blog.

I’m sure Allen will put this response down to “whining” as she did in the article and won’t even realize the hypocrisy of her writing, which one could argue is a lot of whining about atheists. I’m sure she’ll continue to criticize us for using freedom of speech to attack religion or belief in god, whilst at the same time using the very same freedom of speech to attack our views. Hers is the one-sided argument; she wants nothing but her views to be made, and she will ignore all objections or file them under the title of “whining”. We’ve seen this kind of behaviour before in so many forms, and if one thing holds true in each of those cases, it is that in the long run, people like Charlotte Allen always lose out eventually.

Opinions will be heard, debate will be had. Long live freedom of speech.

Ray Comfort’s latest stroll into the land of irrational thought has produced yet another blog post that attempts to link the theory of evolution with Adolf Hitler. It’s common knowledge that Hitler was a creationist, at most believing in some form of “micro-evolution”. Hitler never mentioned Darwin in any of his books, and the mentions of “evolution” that Ray gives us are almost all references to social evolution. Hitler can be accurately described as a social Darwinist, a political theory that has no relation to Darwin or to the biological theory of evolution that is studied today ^[1][2]. With this in mind, after reading through the 5 or so quotes in the post, the rational thinker is left with the resounding question “Ok, so what?”.

Let’s leave the fact that Hitler was a creationist, that his politics were not based on science but on racism and white supremacy. Instead, I want to examine the “so what?” that often gets ignored, yet is actually very important in analyzing Comfort’s argument. We shall begin by assuming that Ray Comfort is completely correct; that Hitler was a believer in the theory of evolution. We shall also assume that Hitler was so devoted to the theory, he decided to use it through social Darwinism in order to justify genocide. What does this tell us about the theory of evolution? Nothing. A theory is not defined by how people use it, but by what it tells us. The theory of evolution says nothing of “higher species” or that organisms must systematically wipe out all those who are “inferior”. In fact, the theory of evolution gives us no help in pinpointing which species are “more evolved” than others, or even what that would entail.

For instance, human beings are considered to be more evolved because of our consciousness, yet some bacteria have genomes hundreds of times larger than our own. So how do we calculate inferiority when we have two opposing lines of measurement, one based on evolved attributes, the other based on number of mutations. I don’t think one could make a good argument for either, especially given the further problem of how to compare attributes (is consciousness a better attribute than metabolizing citrate for example?). This all points to the conclusion that most would agree on; that science tells us about the universe in which we live by describing and explaining it, but it does not tell us what to do with this knowledge.

Science told us how to make the nuclear bomb, but science did not tell us to drop these bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima. If science was responsible for these actions, then you could easily justify Newton as responsible for the deaths of everyone killed by projectiles. The reason creationists like Comfort do not extend their argument to include men like Newton is that they accept the theory of gravity (and yes, it is just a theory Ray). By holding Darwin and his theory as responsible for the actions of men he never knew, yet not doing the same for other scientists like Newton, Nobel, Einstein, etc reveals Ray’s dishonesty and unwillingness to discuss evolution on an intellectual level. Instead, he prefers to launch a thinkly veiled ad-hominem attack in the hopes that people will focus on the supposed “link” and not the attack itself. This may have worked well for him in the past, but not today, and not on this blog.

Over a year ago I wrote about how my “atheist union” posters were ripped down and vandalized by unknown religious students, but whilst I was annoyed and angry at the attacks, they simply do not scale in comparison with the actual death threats that some students have received. The Leeds University Atheist Society runs an annual “rationalist week” to promote freethinking, atheism, skepticism, etc. During the event, a member of the society was threatened by a suspected Muslim student. The death threat took place outside the main festival tent, and was a face to face encounter.

The society has received death threats before from a Muslim student group, and nobody has been harmed. The victim this time has decided not to go to the police, possibly because the last threats were not followed through. It seems like the Muslim society is using the scare tactics that religions have used for thousands of years, and such tactics tend not to work on the rationally minded. Nevertheless, this is completely unacceptable behaviour, and a sure sign that the Muslim groups are participating in a campaign to destroy freedom of speech.

Further evidence of this can be seen in the attempts made by the Southampton Atheist Society to hold a debate on freedom of speech that contained a viewing of the “controversial” movie Fitna. It took two months to organize after the Muslim society continually objected to it, and the debate was finally held under the condition that police were there, and every student was searched by security. What exactly are Muslims afraid of? That we will expose their religion for the fraud it is? If so, they needn’t be afraid; we’ve known that ever since it was formed. If Islam was really the most truthful religion, then what harm can some atheists do? Why not come along to the debate and refute the claims made by the atheists? My guess is that the atheist’s claims are completely accurate, and the Muslim is simply too indoctrinated to accept anything other than what the Qur’an tells them.

Chloë Clifford-Frith of the AHS (National Federation of Atheist, Humanist, and Secular Student Groups) noted that there were an increasing number of examples of prejudice against atheists.

Leeds have experienced death threats, vandalism, theft and SU discrimination in the past. Warwick Atheists were also stripped of their ‘Best New Society’ award and prize money in 2008 after a complaint that a poster for one of their talks was offensive. The award, but not the prize money was returned some months later. Some societies have experienced problems with their SUs refusing to ratify their existence. Again, this is symptomatic of a wider suspicion of people who profess to be atheists – as if there is something threatening about not believing in a god or gods. Even Prof Richard Dawkins, when attempting to set up the charitable educational foundation ‘The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science’, had his forms returned to him with the suspicious question: ‘Please explain how “science” has benefited humanity’!

We shall have to see what lies ahead for my student group when we try to hold events this year. I’ve already emailed the Muslim society asking for a debate, but I doubt they will respond to my request.

Well this is quite an amusing story, so I thought I’d share it with you. Earlier this month, I received a message on Facebook from a girl named Jennie.

I just have to thank you. In ways you may never understand, you helped me to become a Christian.

I used to be very much like yourself. Then, two weeks ago, as a result of reading your blog, I became one of those people you hate. Thank you so much. You are probably at least a little offended by this, but I felt I needed to let you know.

Obviously I was a little confused (and concerned) about her predicament. Confused because she seemed to think I hated Christians, and concerned because she had become one. I asked her to explain, and we sent a few messages to each other. She said I came across as very angry in some of my posts; I said I was only angry at justifiable things (like parents murdering children, or newspapers lying about students). She even prophesied this blog post, saying, “I’m sure you’ll be making fun of me on your blog eventually”. Of course such a prophecy was self-fulfilling, because her final response to me, where she finally explained how I was responsible for her Christianity, was just too funny not to post.

There are way too many things that led to my becoming a Christian, now that I look back. But this is how you contributed to that:

One day, while reading your blog, I just found myself wondering how anybody could spend so much time fighting against something they don’t believe exists. You have so much stuff on there and thinking that the purpose of 99% of it, is to inspire people to be against religion just seemed pointless. Not necessarily *inspire* but that’s the best word I could find for it. I started wondering what the point was. Why waste so much time and energy on criticizing religion? If there really is no God (the backbone of religion) then there would be no need to fight religion so hard. I don’t believe in unicorns, but I don’t create entire blogs dedicated to debunking the belief in them. I just think its silly to believe in them, so I ignore those who do. You, and many other atheists, however, find something in religion that makes you want to fight against it. Many atheists claims its a silly myth, but then why fight silly beliefs so hard? That got me thinking that there was something more to it than a silly myth.

You say that you’re only angry at justifiable things, but around the time I started wondering all this stuff, I saw a bunch of pictures you had of you throwing snowballs at signs about Jesus or something like that. That really confused me. There seemed to be no point whatsoever in that. Again, if its just a silly myth, why don’t you just ignore it? But you seemed unable to ignore it.

I mean, I understand if its just about the violence that religion causes, especially if you think of it as pointless because its all just a silly myth. But if you think about it, there’s just as much violence caused by anti-religious people. So why not just advocate against violence?

So I started digging. Christianity was the only religion that answered both questions. It gives the answer for why you can’t seem to ignore religion, even though you think of it as a silly myth. Also, I found the difference between religious violence and anti-religious violence. Violence in Christianity isn’t condoned by God or the Bible. The people who are using violence for religious reasons are doing it for the wrong reasons. However, without religion, it really doesn’t matter whether you’re killing people or not. It’s actually logical to kill people.

There’s much more to this whole thing, but I really couldn’t explain it all to you. I hope this makes a little sense, but if it doesn’t, please respect my beliefs and views. That’s another thing I had trouble with when it came to atheism: most atheists are incredibly intolerant and rude. But, seeing as how you kept pressing for an answer, I’d hope that you wouldn’t mock the answer I gave you; even if it doesn’t make sense to you.

One simply stares in disbelief how any atheist could actually ask questions like these given the amount of answers that have been repeated by the “New Atheist” movement in the last 10 years or so. Jennie finds my blog (and all other atheist blogs) pointless, since we are arguing against something we don’t even believe in. Like her, I don’t believe in unicorns, and I’m not going to create a blog about my disbelief in unicorns, because 99.9999% of the rest of the population shares my beliefs. There is no point preaching to the crowd. However, if suddenly the majority (or heck, even a large minority) started believing in unicorns, I’m sure there would be blogs talking about the reasons unicorns don’t exist. The point of a blog is both to spread a message, and challenge a viewpoint. Political blogs will challenge the opposition parties, Christian blogs will challenge other religions and atheism, and atheist blogs challenge religion (or just theism, but that’s not important). Jennie’s point is self-refuting if you simply change the word “atheism” to any particular belief, be it religious or political. There are Christian blogs that write reams about evolution, and they do this even though they don’t believe in it. Jennie wants to live in a dream world, where nobody talks about other people’s opinions, and debate doesn’t exist. Such places are anti-democracy, and are terrible places to live.

The second point I want to make about why atheists blog so much against religion is that we do have a belief; we believe that religions are dangerous. It’s a justified belief, because we have the evidence to prove it. Religion is the only reason Madeline Neumann is dead, the only reason why it took so long for Daniel Hauser to get cancer treatment. In Jennie’s dream world, we would not criticize the dangerous actions of the parents, and the children would die. Being nice only gets you so far; at some point you have to start disagreeing with people for society to make the progress it has.

Jennie seems to think that pictures of me throwing snowballs at Jesus posters is disrespectful, and she’s right; it is. I don’t care though, because fundamentalist baptist churches like the one in the picture are constantly disrespectful of everyone who doesn’t share their views. They blame homosexuals for everything under the sun, and use lies and manipulation to convert people. How exactly have they earned my respect? The other reason I took the picture was that I found it funny (as did my friends who I were with), and I thought some people online might have found it funny as well. It’s only a poster. I wasn’t attacking some poor pastor, I was attacking an idea, showing that nothing can be held sacred. To make you feel better, I did pelt quite a number of snowballs at my atheist friends that day (more so than I did at Jesus), so hopefully you feel like my actions were balanced.

Jennie asks “why not just advocate against violence?” instead of against religion that causes violence. I think people should attack the causes of violence, because the fundamentalists seem to think that anything goes if it is done for the will of god. They preach against violence too, but then they attack abortion centers. It is clear that reasoning with these people against violence isn’t going to work; they don’t believe their actions are immoral. If a group of atheists bomb a church, I will decry such an act, and do whatever I can to help the victims. I can advocate against violence and still advocate against religion; I see them as two different issues.

Jennie closes her argument for Christianity with a rather bizarre statement that it is “logical to kill people”. She doesn’t give any explanation of the logic used to deduce such a statement, but I think it probably goes along the lines of “How can you be good without God? You can’t. Therefore God.” Such arguments are of course ridiculous; morality doesn’t come from scripture (thank goodness) but from a combination of instinct and the society we live in. We don’t kill other people because it is harmful to the society in the grand scheme of things. Over time this has developed into the feeling of immorality we have today. There are many instances in the Bible where God orders the massacre of millions of people, so have humans actually outgrown the childish nature of God? I certainly like to think so.

Well, hopefully you haven’t found me too “intolerant” or “rude” Jennie. Hopefully you’ll read my response with an open mind, understand the errors in your judgement, and realise your argument simply makes no good points worthy of your conversion; it was based on misunderstanding and long-refuted claims. Well, one can hope.