The Atheist Blogger

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.

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.

From a comment:

Arrogant Atheists,

Nothing can only create Nothing. Before the universe began, something must have always existed. And it is called Energy. Energy is eternal. The first law of thermodynamics confirms that.

The law states: “Energy cannot be created or destroyed”. No beginning or uncreated and no end. That’s the definition of “ETERNAL”. You also can’t claim that this energy always existed in the known universe because science has proven that the universe didn’t always exist. Stephen Hawking once said: “The universe and time didn’t always exist”.

This energy source that was present BEFORE the universe began had to have power beyond anything we can even begin to imagine, considering it had to transfer it’s energy unto the trillions of stars and billions of galaxies. A separate ETERNAL energy source that exists OUTSIDE of the universe had to have supplied or transferred it’s energy unto the universe (because we know the universe didn’t always exist) It is not unreasonable to assume this ENORMOUS energy was the creator GOD. Listen atheists, we reasonably have to options to determine what WAS this powerful always existing energy. It could be a dumb, unconscious and vague energy source. (However this seems extremely illogical considering that we can observe complexity, order, and design throughout the universe.) The most logical answer would be that an intelligent mind constructed the universe, or a GOD. It’s as simple as that.

If you can’t agree with this logic then you’re stubborn, unreasonable, and don’t want to believe in the possible existence of GOD.”

When I sit down to write an article, I do research. Unless my article is written from a purely philosophical angle, I usually look up and check the facts. I also do research when writing responses to comments such as this one, but the writer of this comment, “Costiliani”, had not done research at all. In fact, he (I’m assumed male just for ease) had lifted the entire comment out of a video he had come across on YouTube. This one to be precise. So it seems that my response to Costilani will also be to the maker of the video as well (who knows, they could even be the same person).

In the video, the supposed source of the Hawking comment is made (http://hawking.org.uk/lectures/bot.html). However, not once in the entire lecture did he say the words “The universe and time didn’t always exist”. I know for a fact that Hawking believes the universe winked into existence all by itself at some point, but the creator of the video seems to mix up meanings. Indeed, his quote is a paradox. The only reason why we use the word “always” is because we have time. It’s a word that means “all the time” very literally.

I have no problem with Hawking believing that universe didn’t exist at some point. It’s a good a theory as any when it comes to the beginning of the universe. Whether you go with the singularity beginning or Hawking’s version, we know nothing about either event. The real problem with the use of Hawking is that it is a blatant appeal to authority. Hawking is not omnipotent, and has in fact been wrong on several occasions. The man is fallible; he makes mistakes.

I also love how you make a massive assumption by saying that it was both an eternal and external energy source that powered the universe. The last time I checked, “multiverse theory” was still at the purely hypothetical stage. Since we reckon the universe is a closed system (at least theoretically), energy transfers are impossible both ways. So the simplest explanation is either that the universe “always” existed in some form, and with the Big Bang grew to the point is it now, or the universe itself is eternal, expanding and collapsing every 30 billion years or so (see Big Crunch).

You then claim that it isn’t unreasonable to assume that this energy was God. I say it is. It’s unreasonable to assume anything unless you have valid evidence for it. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to suggest an idea or hypothesis that it was “God”, but at the same time I don’t think it’s very likely either. Of course, you use the standard arguments that the universe is complex, ordered, and designed, which are all blatantly untrue. Sure, the universe is kinda complex, but not enough so that a bunch of evolved apes that only really started using science in the last 500 years (if that) can’t understand it. Sure, the universe is kinda ordered, as long as you conveniently forget about the increasingly entropy making the universe more “disordered” on the particle level. Sure, the universe is designed, if you ignore that most of it empty space, most planets don’t support life, and even the ones that do support it don’t do a very good job. Add to that the sheer amount of objects that serve no purpose (black holes spring to mind) and the design theory fails completely.

So I don’t disagree with your “logic” because I don’t want to accept the possibility of God. I accept that possibility already (agnostic atheist remember?). Then again, since you lifted your entire comment out of a video I bet you didn’t bother to read the rest of the site. I disagree with your logic because it assumes too many things, and it doesn’t answer the assumptions with rational logical arguments. Where you could have natural explanations, you have the supernatural, and you think this is the best possible explanation.

That, and I HATE arguments that use CAPITAL LETTERS in order to EMPHASIZE words.

A couple of days ago, DisComforting Ignorance started a 7 part debunk of the Living Waters “Atheist Test“. The test is a rather silly way of converting atheists into theists. It uses quite a few irrational arguments, including the “buildings have a builder” argument, and of course the standard “banana argument“. It was this banana argument that DisComforting Ignorance addressed in the first part.

The article did the standard debunk of the banana, and added what he supposed was the “theists nightmare”

The coconut — the theist’s nightmare.

Although the meat and water is pleasing to our taste buds, note that the coconut:

1. Is not shaped for human hand
2. When it has ripened, it doesn’t detach for a few months, at which point the coconut water has become bitter. If you want coconut water, you have to get it while it’s still unripened.
3. When it detaches, it falls from tall palms, injuring people.
4. Has no tab for removal of wrapper
5. Has no perforation on wrapper.
6. You have to whack it many times about its circumference with a tool.
7. It is not shaped for human mouth
8. Has no point at top for ease of entry
9. Removing the meat from the shell is a laborious process, even with a tool.
10. Is not curved towards the face to make eating process easy

I posted a comment saying that the coconut does fit nicely in the human hand, and that atheist author Nick Gisburne had already suggested the Pineapple as the theists nightmare. The full video is below:

Read more…

A question asked and answered by members of a new Facebook group, aimed at being the opposite of the countless groups like “I bet I can find 1,000,000 Christians”. This group wants to find at least a quarter of a million non-believers on Facebook and unite them in one place.

Currently the group has just over 950 members, and needs people to join up and help them reach their goal. Since there are over 70 million registered users on Facebook, finding 250,000 atheists amongst them should be an easy feat.

If you want to learn more about the group and the guy helping to run it, visit his blog.

In other news, my exams are over. Prepare for a load of updating and information concerning the book club discussion in the next few days!