The Atheist Blogger

Back in secondary school (high school for you yanks), I had a friend called Tom. He was clever, funny, witty; the kind of friend you like talking to and having around. Tom was also a very smart guy, passed all his exams with flying colours, and is now attending Cambridge University reading Law.

On facebook recently, I noticed an addition to his information:

I am an evangelical (also called “heavy duty”) Christian! Christianity in a (sizeable) nutshell:

1) God created the world and it was very good. Humans were made in God’s own image to rule over the world and enjoy it. We are especially loved by God and therefore distinct from the animals. God’s relationship to us is one of a loving (but holy) Father.

2) The first humans (Adam and Eve) chose out of their free will to disobey God. As a result, they put distance between themselves and God and came under the so-called law of sin. Every human since has been born sinful, unable to avoid what their conscience tells them is wrong or to do what they know is right.

3) Each of us has inherited a sinful nature and we are all guilty of wrongdoing, even if we try to be and seem to be “pretty good” people by our own human standards.

4) Because of point 3, we are in very serious trouble. God’s standard is perfection - being “pretty good” will not do. The price for sin has to be paid in full and unfortunately for us, that means physical death followed by eternal spiritual death.

5) However (this is the good bit), a solution has been provided! The Son of God took on human flesh in the person of Jesus Christ and met God’s standard where we were unable to, living a sinless life despite temptations. Having lived without sinning, alone among humans, he died a death which he did not deserve when he was executed on the cross.

6) Because Jesus had not deserved death himself, he died as a substitute for all of us, taking God’s judgments against sin upon himself. As he was the infinite Son of God, his sufferings and death on the cross were fully adequate to pay the price for every human sin.

7) Having paid the price for sin, Jesus rose from the dead in a glorified body which can never die again. He is at work in the lives of Christians now as a “best friend,” and his glorified resurrection body is the pattern of the body which will be given to all those God raises to eternal life.

8) Because of Jesus’ death and resurrection, we can be reconciled to God, enjoying a relationship with Him in this life and eternal life in the world to come. To do this, we must accept Jesus by faith as our lord and saviour. Faith is not something in the mind, but rather the same thing that happens when you sit down on a chair and trust it to hold you up rather than collapse. A rickety chair may let you down, but the one who trusts in Jesus will never be put to shame.

9) If you want a relationship with God followed by eternal life, call on the name of the resurrected Jesus Christ and ask him to come into your life. This may take a long time to happen - very rarely do people ever become Christians as an instantaneous event.

10) Anything more, ask me :)

It makes me sad to see such intelligence so corrupted by religion, especially when he responded to my inquiries with this BS.

The notion of seven short 24-hour days of creation is, in my opinion, a *spiritual* misunderstanding of Genesis 1. There is, however, no evidence for evolution.

I think the notion of believing there is no evidence for evolution is an *ignorant* misunderstanding of science.

Ray Comfort has another hilarious post containing 10 questions atheists apparently cannot answer. Here to disprove him yet again, I give some possible answers.

1. What was in the beginning?

If we assume there is a beginning to reality (not just the universe) then it is probably some form of singularity or something else. We’re not entirely sure, but these are good predictions based on the evidence. Of course, we know so little about time that it is possible there was no beginning.

2. How will life on earth end?

Given that life consists of every organism, it would be very unlikely for any natural event to wipe out every example of life on the planet. Single-celled organisms will probably last until the Sun dies.

3. What happens after death?

Our bodies decompose like everything else that dies. Seeing as death happens when electrical activity in the brain ceases, and it is those electrical signals that power our consciousness, there is no evidence to suggest we can think after this event, let alone have an “afterlife”.

4. What is the purpose of existence?

There is no purpose other than the one you give yourself. There is no grand plan for any of us. We have to make our life choices ourselves, and do what we want to do in life.

5. Why there is order in all of creation?

Give me an example and I might be able to comment on it. However chaos theory pretty much destroys all arguments for order. Nothing in the universe is deterministic, and everything tends to chaos.

6. Why there is morality in every civilization?

Because morality is the active conscious extension of basic instinct. Any social animal has a form of morality. Ours has advanced because of our high cognitive abilities.

7. Why does every civilization believe in a Creator?

They don’t. Just look at Sweden.

8. Why does every sane person have a conscience, even when it is not dictated by society?

Emotions and reactions of people are very easy to read in the same species. A person who has had no human contact will still understand basic emotional concepts merely because they will have, at some point, had the same feelings. Case note: We all smile, laugh, cry, etc. There is variation in all these emotions, but not enough that you cannot tell them apart.

9. How did nothing create everything?

It didn’t. You are the only person who has claimed this. Atheists do not believe this. We have mentioned it before but you never listen.

10. Which came first–the chicken or the egg?

The egg. Although the mother looked very similar to a chicken of course. You’ll probably claim something like the “Chickaroo” existed though.

I’ve not talked about my family much on this blog, but I have mentioned a few things which I’ll clarify now:

My father is a recently remarried atheist (I found that out when he asked if he could borrow my copy of “The God Delusion”).

My sister calls herself an agnostic, but she cares little about religion so apatheist would probably be the correct term.

My mother is a Christian. My mother is now apparently an atheist as well.

I went home for the weekend to fix some computer stuff / set up internet for my mother’s boyfriend, and earlier today we went out for lunch. Over lunch, my mother started talking about her job (she works at Salisbury Cathedral) and how one of her clergy friends was going on a course with his wife where they are kept in separate rooms, not allowed to talk, and have to constantly study the Bible…for 7 days.

My mother expressed her horror with this situation, and commented how she could not “keep quiet for 7 minutes, let alone 7 days”. I then decided the press the religious issue, and said I could probably keep quiet for 7 days, but I wouldn’t be able to if I were reading the Bible. I’d be constantly saying “that’s just wrong” and crossing out stuff.

I then mentioned that the Bible was possibly the worst book ever written, what with it being sexist, illogical, and plain stupid. My mother questioned me, asking how it was sexist, and I reminded her of the Garden of Eden story; how it was a woman who was responsible for sin, and how Lot tried to give up his daughters for rape in Sodom. To my surprise, my mother had not heard of the Lot story, and hadn’t even heard of Leviticus (often used by Christians to incite hatred against homosexuals).

She then told me how the Bible was rather ridiculous, full of stories that made no sense, with people who lived to be 1000 years old. Then, out of the blue, “I don’t believe in God anyway”.

The conversation went a little like this for a few minutes:

Me: “You’re an atheist?”

Mother: “No.”

Me: “You just said you didn’t believe in God, that makes you an atheist.”

Mother: “I don’t like to use that word, I think religion is a good thing.”

Me: “Yeah, but atheists aren’t all anti-religious.”

I think she still feels a kind of spirituality in a way, some kind of force that people can tap into. A few years before her mother died, she tried some form of faith healing, and it worked wonders for my grandmother. She could walk without feeling any pain, and lived like that until she died. My mother used this as evidence that there was still some kind of force out there that we don’t understand. I pointed out that we tried the faith healer on me (I was 12 or so at the time) and nothing happened. The key difference? My gran was very religious, I was not. The “power” of prayer is not anything magical or mysterious, but simply mind over matter. In my gran’s case, her faith gave her the ability to put her mind over the pain.

I did the same thing a few years back, when I was going through a period of minor depression that slowly escalated to the point where I wanted to kill myself. Instead, I got over it by literally willing myself out, and I am a better person for it. I’m the general “happy go lucky” guy that doesn’t give a damn what people think of me. Of course, I love it when people like me (who doesn’t), but if a person expresses dislike, it is their problem, not mine.

So I guess my mother is the “Bill Maher” type of atheist. That makes my whole immediate family a lovely bunch of heathens; I’m so proud!

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

Today’s article was written by Luis Dias, a blog subscriber.

Christians and other religious people often use the moral argument not only as evidence of a deity, but also as a philosophical weapon against atheism, and the argument, though never made explicit, implicitly goes as follows:

• God is the Creator of Morals
• Atheists deny existence of God, therefore
• The atheists’ utopia is an amoral society

They obviously cite Stalin and Pol Pot’s example to strengthen this idiocy. Further more, they say, without a divine reference, an infinite guardian of values of right and wrong, atheists are left dumbfounded and such a godless society eventually recedes to the stone age, and this is where they even bring the 2nd law of thermodynamics and equate it to the theology of the original sin (!)

Apart from the implicit circular reasoning of it which could be teleported to any kind of silly argument, like for instance:

• God is the Creator of milk
• Atheists deny the existence of God, therefore
• There’s nothing stopping “milk” of degenerating to a poison. (remember the 2nd law!!)
• Milk isn’t poison, therefore God exists, QED.

It’s a very popular fallacy. I’ll generalize it to make the mistake even clearer:

• God is the sole structure of all things
• Atheists deny the existence of God
• Absent the sole structure, the cosmos collapses instantly

This would only be true if, and only if, there wouldn’t be any other structure lying around unknown or just plainly ignored by theists that make sure that things don’t fall apart, but rather, thrive and evolve. In fact, there is nothing but hearsay to prove that God is indeed such structure.

In the fairy tale world, morals would exist apart from humans, eternally defined by God, and humans would only discover (not invent) a few bits about it from now and then because of God’s good will. Of course, there is no evidence whatsoever to the existence of these morals outside of human existence. It’s only perfectly reasonable to affirm that morals are man’s made, just like potatoes, lemons and cows are. The key word to all this is of course Evolution. There’s a reason why Dawkins is constantly evoking Darwin’s work as the most extraordinary idea ever made, and that’s because it works on almost every process that has time to generate new iterations and death to kill the bad ones. This is true in life’s evolution, it’s true on the artificial selection of the animals and vegetables that were evolved to fit our own tastes and biological needs, but it is also true in the ideas that mankind evolved.

Morality is among these ideas. The only ingredients you’ll ever need to generate morals are:

• A somewhat intelligent species
• Time
• Death

Natural Selection does the rest. It probably begins when people realize other people’s death and suffering and are able to understand that it isn’t exactly the kind of thing they desire for themselves. If they see a murder or a theft, they are able to think “what if it was against me?”, and the Golden Rule begins to generate and evolve by itself. People don’t kill because they recognize other’s as equals to them and don’t like the idea of being killed. Same as theft, treating others well, lying, etc. A society that foster these ideas thrives, the ones who don’t end up collapsing on their own.

Usually, people admire how well the world is aligned according to our needs, but the real reason isn’t obvious, due to our limited lifespan, which is that We live upon the shoulders of our ancestors’ hard work and struggle to build the structures of our world, and upon the failures of those seeking destruction, greed, and malice.

Natural Selection isn’t perfect and it won’t always choose the best option. It will choose what survives. No wonder then that irrational beliefs are just as common as the Golden Rule. One common trait is to define a certain “characteristic” of the perpetrator and generalize that people who share these characteristics are certainly just as bad, as in “The murderer killed because he was black, let’s get rid of blacks”. We can all recognize this racism, “This society suffers in the hands of the Jews”, or more subtle examples, as in “That for a nation which has attained maturity, morality is essentially dependent on the religious sanction, and that when this is rejected, morality will soon decay.”, from the Catholic Encyclopedia. The underlying message is clear, either you people bow down to God or you are eventually bound to become manic psychopaths.

Fortunately though, there is another idea that tries to really discern what’s better and what’s worse faster than Natural Selection or Religion will ever do. It’s called Reason. It dispenses with all the fairy tales and all the myths of our history. It fuels itself out of reality, to observe what is going on, to measure it, to hypothesize, test and conclude. It fuels itself from debate, battle of ideas, and a passion to discover the truth, humility and patience.

As a bonus, I leave you with other very interesting lines from the Catholic Encyclopedia, which I am sure will provoke a healthy discussion ;).

• “We may see this wherever the great revolt from Christianity, which began in the eighteenth century, and which is so potent a factor today, has spread. It is naturally in France, where the revolt began, that the movement has attained its fullest development. There its effects are not disputed. The birth-rate has shrunk until the population, were it not for the immigration of Flemings and Italians, would be a diminishing quantity; Christian family life is disappearing; the number of divorces and of suicides multiplies annually; while one of the most ominous of all symptoms is the alarming increase of juvenile crime.”
• “Without God, an absolute duty is inconceivable, because there is nobody to impose obligation. I cannot oblige myself, because I cannot be my own superior; still less can I oblige the whole human race, and yet I feel myself obliged to many things, and cannot but feel myself absolutely obliged as man, and hence cannot but regard all those who share human nature with me as obliged likewise.”
• “Thus the Greeks of classical times were in moral questions influenced rather by non-religious conceptions such as that of aidos (natural shame) than by fear of the gods; while one great religious system, namely Buddhism, explicitly taught the entire independence of the moral code from any belief in God. To these arguments we reply, first: that the savages of today are not primitives, but degenerates. It is the merest superstition to suppose that these degraded races can enlighten us as to what were the beliefs of man in his primitive state. It is among civilized races, where man has developed normally, that we must seek for knowledge as to what is natural to man.”
• “that for a nation which has attained maturity, morality is essentially dependent on the religious sanction, and that when this is rejected, morality will soon decay.”
• “We may see this wherever the great revolt from Christianity, which began in the eighteenth century, and which is so potent a factor today, has spread. It is naturally in France, where the revolt began, that the movement has attained its fullest development. There its effects are not disputed. The birth-rate has shrunk until the population, were it not for the immigration of Flemings and Italians, would be a diminishing quantity; Christian family life is disappearing; the number of divorces and of suicides multiplies annually; while one of the most ominous of all symptoms is the alarming increase of juvenile crime.”
• “Without God, an absolute duty is inconceivable, because there is nobody to impose obligation. I cannot oblige myself, because I cannot be my own superior; still less can I oblige the whole human race, and yet I feel myself obliged to many things, and cannot but feel myself absolutely obliged as man, and hence cannot but regard all those who share human nature with me as obliged likewise.”