The Atheist Blogger

Ray Comfort tried very hard to show that atheists are unreasonable but inadvertently highlighted the same method Creationists use to try and disprove Evolution. Ray claimed that atheists simply do not like the idea of Hell and therefore do not believe in it. He then goes on to say that we use this kind of logic on God as well. We (apparently) don’t like the idea of God and so choose not to believe in it.

You could carry this further if you didn’t like gravity, history, the wind or love. Those things can’t be seen, and therefore wouldn’t exist if you didn’t believe in them either. Anything that you don’t like will not exist if you just say that you don’t believe in it.

Before I continue it should be stated quite clearly that the reason atheists do not believe in God or Hell has nothing to do with not liking either. In fact, my disbelief in Hell came as a direct consequence of my disbelief in God. I do not believe in God for multiple reasons, none of which are simply because I “don’t like the idea”.

Secondly, whilst Ray is quite correct that gravity, history, wind, and love cannot be seen (although given his past allusions about sight I have no idea how he came to this correct conclusion), he fails to mention that such things can be observed and tested based on their interactions with the rest of the universe. History is the one exception because it is simply the human expression for what has happened in the past, but this can too be observed by its affect on the present.

What is really striking is Ray’s last sentence. Anything that you don’t like will not exist if you just say that you don’t believe in it. Ray reckons this is exactly how atheists live their life. I wasn’t too concerned with his ridiculous argument though. I was more wrapped up in the obvious irony of such a statement.

As a Creationist, Ray Comfort subscribes to the same idiotic idea that he is trying to oppose above. Namely, that they do not like Evolution (it goes against the Bible) so they say they don’t believe it in, and they reckon that is a good enough argument to refute it. They don’t look at the evidence, and simply use the same arguments over and over, even though they have been refuted so many times by science.

The subject of existence, belief, and reality can be summed up very easily.

Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away. ~ Philip K. Dick

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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.

This month’s book club discussion will take place tomorrow (Sunday 27th July) at Midnight UTC+1. For people who want to figure out what time that is where you live, use the handy world clock. UTC+1 corresponds to the current time of London on the site, so simply work out the differences with your nearest city.

As always, use our guide to the IRC server to get connected to the chat, and I hope to see some of you there!

Recent debunkings of Creationist flaws leads me to ponder how many people believe in Evolution and what relation these results have with belief in gods. Thus I have constructed the following poll. It only covers atheism / theism and unless I have complaints it will stay that way. If you are a deist I would say to go with the theist grouping since deism is a vague subset of theism. Likewise with agnosticism, if you are an agnostic atheist put yourself in the atheist groupings, and agnostic theists go in the theist group. Very simple!

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It would be interesting to see what the results turn out to be. Obviously I have some predictions about atheist / Evolution but there may be some people who doubt it. Likewise I suspect the majority of theists believe in Evolution, but then it is usually Creationists who come to this blog so perhaps not.

I should also point out that I’ve added the Poll widget to the sidebar so the latest poll is always shown at the side nomatter which page you are browsing.

This is a general response to the “Debunking Atheists” blog post entitled “Evolution is a fraud!“. As with all posts made by Creationists, it contains a gross misunderstanding of basic Evolutionary theory, and whilst I’m no Evolutionary Biologist, I know the basics enough to correct Dan on it.

From the article:

1. It’s not science. You cannot observe, test and repeat the ever-changing ideas that are little more than wild speculation.

WRONG. It certainly is science, and it has been observed^[1] and is being experimented on^[2] as we speak. In fact, Richard Lenskis experiment^[3] has frozen instances of E-coli every 500 generations, meaning he can replay the Evolution of past generations to see if the same things happen. If anything, the “ever-changing ideas” prove it is a science. since science is always updated with new evidence coming in. Evolutionary theory has changed much since the days of Darwin, but the core observation that species have evolved has remained and is unchallenged (successfully) to this day. If you really think ever-changing ideas cannot be science, then the theory of gravity is not a science, neither is our understanding of particle physics, or any chemistry subject. We can never really know everything about any subject since the infinite variations we could test under are just too many.

2. It devalues real science. Chemistry, physics and biology don’t have the same problems of legitimacy because they are real sciences, not philosophical wannabes trying to appear legit.

WRONG. Firstly it should be pointed out that Evolution is a part of biology, so you are contradicting yourself by saying that biology is a real science and Evolution is not. As I have explained in the previous paragraph, Evolution is a real science and if you actually looked for the evidence you would find it. There are no so-called “problems of legitimacy” in Evolution. Everything we can explain has been explained, and if something comes along that isn’t compatible with current Evolutionary theory, the reason will be found and the theory changed to fit the evidence. Likewise, if evidence is found that contradicts Evolution and can be proved, Evolution would be finished. Unfortunately, this would leave us stuck because we would have to explain all the evidence we currently have for Evolution and change / variation using another theory. No current alternatives have even come close.

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