The Atheist Blogger

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.

I got some negative feedback after I jokingly filled in the atheist thirteen meme as if written by a fundamentalist Christian. People said I was taking the easy way out, and that it wouldn’t have cost me anything to ask a fundie to do the thing for me. I took the criticism, responding only that I had once been a Christian and so I knew what it was like to believe etc. However, I’ve recently been reading the blog “Debunking Atheists” for amusement, and decided to ask the main contributor “Dan” if he would answer the meme for me. I modified a few questions to better suit a theist answering them.

Here is his response.

Q1. How would you define “atheism”? A branch or another name of the religion, Secular Humanism.

Q2. Was your upbringing religious? If so, what tradition? I was raised in an atheist’s/atheistic home.

Q3. How would you describe “Intelligent Design”, using only one word? “vague”, I prefer ‘Biblical Creation’

Q4. What scientific [endeavor] really excites you? Discovery of any kind, without the subjectivity of scientists that are atheists.

Q5. If you could change one thing about the “atheist community”, what would it be and why? Their belief of no God. Why, because of the end result on Judgment Day.

Q6. If your child came up to you and said “I’m joining the clergy”, what would be your first response? I would ask to be more specific. A bishop or minister? If his soul couldn’t live without anything else then he would have my blessings. If he means priesthood in the RCC (Roman Catholic), I would ask why he would want to be a part of the largest pedophilia group/society in the world. I would ask why does he wants to help people into hell. I would rather him be an atheist.

Q7. What’s your favorite theistic argument? Anything Jesus said, like the sermon on the mount. He is the pro!

Q8. What’s your most “controversial” viewpoint? That a building or Church isn’t necessary for Salvation and/or denominations are man made.

Q9. Of the “Four Horsemen” (Dawkins, Dennett, Hitchens and Harris) who is your favorite, and why? Dawkins, putting his foot in his mouth in Expelled. The Movie was hilarious. Why, because Dick makes me laugh.

Q10. If you could convince just one atheistic person to abandon their beliefs, who would it be? My Dad

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With the recent investigation by DisComforting Ignorance finding out that the pineapple is the theists worst nightmare, it seems the theist blogosphere has been shaken ever so slightly. A comment posted on one of my articles reads:

To prove what a perfect a design the coconut was and to be tongue and cheek I wrote. Pacific islanders recognize different stages of growth, assigning to them different names. When the nut is young, it is without the white endosperm (”meat”), but filled with “water” and is used for drinking. When older the endosperm is soft and rubbery, a stage preferred by some. When still older, the husk is still green, but the shell is now brown. At this stage the water tastes like sparkling water, though I don’t know if this is from dissolved gases. Finally when mature and the husk brown, the endosperm is usually ground off on a serrated blade and added to other dishes or rendered for oil.

The comment was left by a man named Dan who runs a blog called “Debunking Atheists” which I suggest as many of you go over and read because his posts are the standard compilation of nonsense and bad science, as well as the traditional references to atheists being immoral, evil, and baby-eaters. In short, I laughed my ass off.

So let’s have a go at debunking “Debunking Atheists” shall we? In fact, let’s do it line by line.

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Ray Comfort was feeling particularly lazy today, and so instead of making up a new branches of science or claiming he looks like Einstein, he just wrote a title and said “bugger it” to the actual article. The title is a quote, so it’s not even his own work. I think that’s a little too lazy.

Anyway, to make Ray look more of an idiot, I’ll write an article for him. The quote was from Plato, and simply said:

No one ever dies an atheist

This is an obvious attempt to provoke the old “there are no atheists in foxholes” argument, something that has been thoroughly debunked by the number of atheists in the military. Such a preposterous quote as the one above can be debunked quite easily though.

Seeing as the last thoughts going though a dying person’s head are their own, and nobody else can even imagine what they are thinking, this argument is already pretty weak. Even if an atheist says “I believe in God” at the end of his/her life, that doesn’t mean they truly believe it. Since the person is completely dead after their “last thought”, there is no way for them to verify their final belief, so not only is Plato’s argument weak, it is both scientifically and factually invalid.

Perhaps the most humorous thing about this argument is that it is easily reversible, and because of the above properties, nobody can argue against me when I claim:

No one ever dies a theist

Go on, prove that every single person who has ever died has not converted to atheism at the last possible chance. What’s that? You can’t? Don’t use pathetic arguments then.

Here endeth the lesson.

Many theists argue that atheism has caused only death and destruction, whilst their respective religions preach only peace and love. So what does the evidence look like? The Teapot Atheist did a load of research and counting and has reported his results.

His findings don’t bear well for theism, even with his extremely generous methodology in its favour:

Where deaths from theism are concerned, I have normally low-balled the estimates as a favor because the differential is so staggering and theism needs all the bones it can have tossed in its direction. For atheism, I go with the highest possible estimates.

To add insult to injury, The Teapot Atheist included in the atheism section, deaths caused by Pol Pots regime even though there is no evidence that he was an atheist (his regime was harshly anti-religious though), as well as Stalin, who has recently been considered a deist / closet-theist by historians.

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