The Atheist Blogger

Just over one week ago, a fellow atheist friend named Dan and I were in the student bar, drinking vodka-laced beverages and reading long pages of notes. In less than an hour, we would be debating two members of the Christian Union; a fundamentalist student society that believes the Bible is accurate, it just needs to read the correct way. The debate was entitled “Is God a Delusion?” , and team atheism had sorted out our lines of attack; Dan would be handling the fine-tuned universe fallacy, as well as the vicious nature of nature itself. I would be talking about the Theory of Evolution, illusions in nature, and our predisposition for seeing patterns that aren’t really there. We had conquered the writing of the speeches, we had even conquered the timing, getting everything into a 5 minute presentation each. The final thing we had to conquer were our nerves, hence the copious amounts of vodka.

This was the first time either of us had done something like this, and it didn’t help that only one other atheist had so far turned up to support us. Luckily, as the debate was about to start, 6 of our secular student group turned up to sit in the front row, which gave us that boost of morale to get us into the spirit. First up was a Christian who was reading Physics, so I expected him to go on about how the universe was such a wonderful place, fine-tuned to perfection. What I didn’t expect was for him to waffle for 4 of his 5 minutes, trying to explain what he considered “God” to be. As the chair banged her gavel to signify 1 minute remaining, my first opponent stumbled and quickly said something about how the presence of evil was proof of God. Whatever he said, I didn’t understand it at all, and I think my stomach gave a huge sigh of relief.

I was up next, and I managed to get my speech within the time limit, covering all the points I wanted to raise. The full transcript of both mine and Dan’s speeches are included below the fold on this blog post if you want to read them in full. Next up was the second Christian, who rejected a few of my reasons for why people believe in the supernatural, saying he didn’t believe for those reasons. This of course is a fallacy, as it can only be true on a personal level, and there are many people who believe in the supernatural for precisely the reasons I stated. His speech concerned Jesus and the power of prayer (which when I last checked was powerless). Not suprisingly, he criticised the scientific “prayer tests” and held them as an inaccurate way to determine whether prayer works (probably because the results determined prayer didn’t). Dan concluded the speeches with an attack of the fine-tuned universe view, quoting David Attenborough on his recent criticism of Christians, and pointed to the destructive force of nature as evidence against a loving caring God.

So then the floor was open to questions, and boy did we get them. I had to explain why Protazoa were still around “even though we evolved from them” as an American girl put, and how fish could develop arms when a mutation is required to create useless stumps first (clue: fish already have stumps…they are called fins). I also explained a rudimentry version of how we think the eye evolved, although on most of these questions I encouraged people to not take what I was saying without question, but to read up on it themselves (the last part of my speech was an appeal for people to start thinking freely). Luckily, my atheist friends asked the Christians a few questions about their beliefs, including a nice one about whether the discovery of multiple universes with different “tuning” would alter their belief in God.

An interesting couple of questions came from some Islamic students, one of whom asked me if I would mind if he came at me with a knife and killed me. I was expecting at least one question like this, and luckily I have a great response to it:

Let me get this straight. You are asking an atheist, someone who doesn’t believe in gods, the afterlife, or any kind of supernatural events, whether he would mind giving up what he believes is his only life? Of course I would mind! I happen to like life, and I’m not suddenly going to throw it all away because it is the one shot I have.

The same group of muslims asked us how we explained the revealed knowledge in the Koran, like the fact that salty water is separate from fresh water, and the Earth is shaped like an Ostrich egg. I didn’t correct his Earth shape hypothesis, because I wanted to attack the root of this question. I aked him plainly if he would read to me the passages of the Koran that said those things. He told me he didn’t have them on him, and so I told him I was sorry, but I couldn’t answer his question. I mentioned that these “revealed truths” are often simply very complex interpretations that are often extracted after the facts are known to science. The same logic can be applied to the Christian claim that the Bible talks about atoms, when all it says is “so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear” (Hebrews 11:3).

All in all, I guess the theists reckon they won, and the atheists reckon we won. The debate was concluded and no vote was held (we agreed it would be good to just let people leave with their own opinions). A girl did come up and thank us for talking about what we believed, and that she would look into certain things more, and that’s always a good thing. Dan and I decided that we rather like debating, so we’re going to do some more in the future, and perhaps organise an “Ask an atheist” evening in March. Another friend wants to debate with me against the Islamic society, so I’m trying to get in touch with them. Stay tuned for more!

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I’ve spoken about my Christian friend David a few times on this blog, and I’m getting a chance to see his dad preach on Monday at a Christian Union meeting, so I thought I might talk about him and his beliefs a bit more. Out of respect for his privacy, I’m only referring to him by his first name (as is my policy on these things).

When I met David last year, we talked a lot about religion / Christianity / atheism. He came across to me as a very moderate Christian, the kind that never angers and always smiles (i.e. the most annoying kind). There is being nice, and then there is being so nice you constantly come across as an arrogant condescending moron.

When losing an argument about faith or religion, he would always *without fail* resort to his favourite catchphrase:

I tried to be an atheist…I really tried…

As if he thought this argument was actually worth anything. It is of course, a logical fallacy in many ways. Firstly there is no correlation between failing to do something and the accuracy of what you were trying to attempt. I could say “I tried to be a Christian” or “I tried to be a banana”, but my failure to be either of those doesn’t reflect on their actual veracity as subjects. It only reflects on my personal failure, and as we can easily demonstrate, there are people who have succeeded at being Christians, and there are plenty of bananas in the world (although atheists wish that weren’t so true).

Secondly, it doesn’t prove anything other than the inevitability of failure. Since it’s pretty easy to establish that you cannot change your beliefs on will (despite what some people claim), “trying” to be an atheist just by pure will isn’t going to work. Atheism is more of a realisation than anything; it involves reading the arguments and realising that you agree with them. So saying that you tried to be an atheist but always came back to Christianity is as much an argument as saying “I tried to be bald but my hair kept growing back”. If it’s an inevitable event, you won’t be able to change the outcome.

I guess in the baldness metaphor, you could liken becoming an atheist to older people losing their hair, or if you damaged the hair follicles beyond all hope of repair. What I’m trying to say is, that if you really want to take the view that you can “try” to believe / disbelieve in something, it will only work if the conditions are correct. A Christian can no more try to be an atheist and succeed than an atheist can try to be a Christian and succeed. There have to be certain conditions present first (doubt for the Christian, delusion for the atheist).

Another popular argument David uses is “Where did logic come from?” which implies that logic can’t exist without a creator. The obvious problem with this is that logic doesn’t exist…at least not in any material way. It’s a human concept; a way of viewing reality through the human mind. Animals do not have a concept of logic, they merely appear to live by it because everything that exists go through our logic filter before being processed by our brain. Everything we see has a logical reason for happening, otherwise we classify it as a delusion.

Asking “Where did logic come from” is the same as asking “Where did our minds come from?”, and the answer is the same: They evolved. Daniel Dennett has written on the evolution of our conscious minds (many times), and I highly recommend his book, Freedom Evolves, which deals with the concept of free will.

Needless to say, I think Monday’s CU meeting should be a blast. Hopefully I’ll get to meet the man who convinced an extremely intelligent son to follow a delusional fantasy.

This is going to be the last (I promise!) in my current “series” of conversations with the deluded muslim “Abu”. I have a total of 19 emails from him, the vast majority of which I have responded to. He has however been increasingly rude even though I ask him not to be, and his general level of ignorance has become too much for me to bear, considering I have been spending and hour or more each day replying to each one.

I’ve had enough of him constantly repeating his arguments even though I’ve already explained to him how they don’t work, so I’ve cut off my contact with him. I have no desire to repeat myself, especially as neither side is going to conceed a point. For the last time then, Abu:

Islam is not a religion but a way of life which emcompasses all the prophets and the scriptures (which since have been manipulated and changed).

A way of life that encompasses the teachings of Jesus, Moses, Buddha, the billion or so Hindu gods, the FSM, Michael Travesser?, Joseph Smith, (I could go on). Forget that all these prophets and religions contradict each other, but Abu claims that all these religions were manipulated and changed, and that Islam is the only one true religion…now where have I heard that before?

Even if there are no alternative theories to human evolution from apes there are alternative OPINIONS by opposing scientists. This in itself proves that the theory is not factual and if full of hypothesis still left to be resolved.

As I mentioned before, this is equivalent to someone saying they don’t like rain so it can’t be factual. Opinion has nothing to do with scientific accuracy; if people have evidence that contradicts Evolution, they can submit it (in fact they are encouraged). So far, all evidence that has been submitted has turned out to be wrong in light of investigation.

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I’m split on how to react to this story. A woman last January was spotted “driving on the wrong side of the road and through red lights at speeds of up to 70mph”.

Unfortunately, her car veered off the road and onto the pavement, killing a mother and her daughter. At the scene, the driver told investigators:

Somebody had their foot on my foot and their hand on my hand – it wasn’t me driving, it was Satan

The work of the devil?

Today she got cleared of causing death by dangerous driving.

However, she only got off the charge by entering a plea of insanity, and the jury decided to accept the plea within 15 minutes.

This whole event raises questions about how to handle religious nutcases like this woman. Should we really play along with their “insanity” when two women are dead? On the other hand, at least the courts recognised that claiming the devil did it is pretty stupid.

Hopefully she’ll be locked up for a long time in a mental institution. It’s one thing to suffer the delusion of God, but blaming your insanity on Satan and killing two innocent people is just too far.