The Atheist Blogger

I really had hoped to write something interesting for the 100th post on this blog (yay for the first milestone!), but this just appeared in my feed reader and I had to post it.

If you don’t know who Ray Comfort is, he is the guy behind the infamous banana argument / atheist’s nightmare:

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I’ve read a few of the current “Atheist Thirteen” meme posts that are going around, and that got me thinking. What would a fundamentalist Christian say if they had to answer the questions? Probably something like this:

Q1. How would you define “atheism”?

Satanism, devil-worship, false, Godless, infidels, idiotic, Hell-bound, unethical, evil…there are many words I could use. Atheists are evil wicked people with no morals who deserve Hell more than any murderer or rapist!

Q2. Was your upbringing religious? If so, what tradition?

Naturally. I was born a Baptist Christian and still follow our Lord Jesus Christ today. As a child I attended church every Sunday, and as I grew older I was born again and began to participate in church events, regularly attending services mid-week and at the weekends.

Q3. How would you describe “Intelligent Design”, using only one word?

Truth

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It seems that the Creationist organisation Discovery Institute is attacking Richard Dawkins over his involvement in the Louisiana “academic freedom bill” which allows teachers to discuss theories that oppose Evolution. Simply put, it is allowing Intelligent Design into the classrooms.

The Discovery Institute reported that Barbara Forrest, leader of LA Coalition for Science has written an article on the Richard Dawkins website, pleading people to contact the Louisiana Governor and stop this bill being passed. The Institute rather snobbishly remarked:

Newsflash for Richard, we’re not a British colony anymore.

Well pointed out, but of course they forget that Richard Dawkins runs The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science, a charity registered in both the UK and the USA. They also seemed to overlook the fact that his website isn’t tied to any specific country and as such has a large majority of American visitors. Forgetting as well that the article in question wasn’t even written by Dawkins but by a citizen of the United States, and their accusation that Richard Dawkins is somehow trying to “dictate education policy” to the U.S falls completely apart.

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Matt’s Notepad has a great article in which he debunks some of the most well known Creationist / ID arguments concerning Evolution.

The arguments can be found here: http://mattcbr.wordpress.com/2008/04/25/repeated-ignorant-creationistid-arguments-a-solution/

Some similar arguments that debunk Creationism have been written by Talk Origins, and Richard Dawkins has a list of “Debate Points” that cover Evolution, atheism, and faith that you might find interesting.

I attended a lecture a few months back (before I started this blog) entitled “Enemy in the Mirror: Richard Dawkins, the New Atheists and their Crusade against Fundamentalism”. It was nothing special, and the “lecturer” didn’t actually talk about anything to do with the subject. She just went on a random rant about how everyone should respect the church etc.

However, after the lecture there were a lot of questions asked from the audience, a large majority of whom were openly atheist. One such question was from a theist (towards the atheists) who complained that we argue all the time about religion and yet send our children to catholic schools and CofE schools with no problems. The parents in the audience said they do this because the results from those schools are better than those at non-religious schools, and they wanted the best for their kids.

I’ve got no problem with people doing that, they want their kids to do well. However I personally do not trust education systems that rely on religion to get students. The only reason that these students are getting better marks is because of the high levels of discipline those schools have, and the only thing large amounts of discipline does is inhibit creativity. You are taught what to think and how to think, and completely ignore the principles that freethinking was founded on.

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