The Atheist Blogger

Make of this what you will, whether it is just my over-analytical mind working overtime, or evidence of secularization in action.

The UK is thought of as a very secular place, which historically is quite odd, as unlike America there are no direct laws that separate church and state. Also, the country has always been quite religious, although this was disrupted massively when King Henry VIII created the Church of England. Nevertheless, in recent years there have been polls showing the increase in atheism, and a poll last year which revealed 42% of a 2,200 person survey thought that “religion caused more harm than good”.

What I noticed the other day was on a more personal scale. I was visiting hospital, and as usual had to confirm my details on the system. They did a few updates, change of address, phone number etc. Then they got to the question of religion.

In a non-secular country the question one would pose is “What is your religion?”. In a secular one you would expect a more neutral approach, perhaps “Do you have a religion?”. However the receptionist asked neither of these questions.

In fact she took the latter and added two words, which to me made a massive difference. The question she posed was:

Do you have a religion at all?

It may not seem like much, but these two simple words impose a certain level of doubt or expectancy on a question. It’s the type of question you ask when you don’t expect the answer to be positive, but you ask anyway in the hope that it will be. In this scenario, the receptionist phrased the question as if she didn’t expect me to be religious at all.

Of course, my answer was the usual “No, I’m an atheist” since I am not concerned with what people think of my particular beliefs, especially those concerning the non-existence of gods. As far as I can make out, this event proves either:

1) Secularization is on the increase, and more people are aware of the separation of church and state, but moreover the general lack of interest and support religion gets in the modern world.

2) Students are considered to be apathetic about absolutely everything and she really didn’t expect me to go into details about any of my personal beliefs.

I hope hypothesis 1 is correct though, because if you believe for one second that students are “apathetic” about anything you have never been to a modern student rally. If anything, students are more fundamental about their beliefs than anyone. We have no money, no possessions, so our beliefs and what we stand for are all we really have to work with.

My apologies. This article seems to have turned into a defense of student activism, which really does prove that my mind is simply too overactive for it to stay on one subject for very long. I’d better cut off now, before I start talking about something I find more interesting than religion, and that’s coming from a guy who finds assembly language and logic gates “interesting”.

As I said at the start, make of it what you will…

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Popular atheist biology professor turned blogger PZ Myers has written a response to a question put to him in an email:

How did life evolve from one (I suspect) chromosome to… 64 in horses, or whatever organism you want to pick. How is it possible for a sexually reproducing population of organisms to change chromosome numbers over time?

Firstly: there would have to be some benefit to the replication probability of the organisms which carry the chromosomes. I don’t see how this would work. How is having more chromosomes of any extra benefit to an organism’s replicative success? Yes, perhaps if those chromosomes were full of useful information… but the chances of that happening are non existent and fly in the face of ’small adaptations over time’.

Secondly, the extra chromosomes need to come from somewhere. I’m not sure about this, but I believe chromosome number are not determined by genes, are they? There isn’t a set of genes which determines the number of chromosomes an organism has. So the number is fixed, determined by the sexually reproducing parents. Which leads me to believe that if the number does change, and by chance the organism is still alive and capable of sexual reproduction, that the number will start swinging back and forward, by 1 or 2, every generation, and never stabilising. The chances of this happening are also very very slim.

It’s an important question, and a lot of people (myself included) have wondered about it. I’ve often searched for a answer online but found nothing, so I’m glad PZ has swooped in with an easy to understand (albeit lengthy and descriptive) answer.

If you thought you knew a lot about Evolution, prepare to be amazed…

Basics: How can chromosome numbers change?