The Atheist Blogger

Freethoughtpedia is meant to be an encyclopedia for free-thought related things, such as atheism. Their article on atheism however, is filled with misconceptions and wrong definitions.

They firstly define atheism as a “lack of belief in a deity” when the universally accepted definition is that of “disbelief in gods” (note the singular vs plural). They use this definition to make the following case:

Likewise a Christian may be a strong atheist towards the Hindu gods.

This is a massive error in a definition. It is true that Christians are strong disbelievers in the Hindu gods, but that does not make them atheists. You cannot be both a Christian and an atheist because Christians are theists, and the two are incompatible. Atheism rejects all gods, not specific ones.

The next misconception is the one that being agnostic means you are “not sure” about the existence of gods. However, they take it to the max with this paragraph.

Furthermore, agnosticism is a type of atheism. Mainstream media and many people will rarely make note of this because many choose to use the term agnostic to describe their lack of belief due to the negative connotations the media associates with the term atheist, but technically agnostics are atheists: You cannot believe in something you are not sure exists!

Agnosticism is not a type of atheism. It does not cover disbelief in the existence of gods, it covers whether or not the existence of gods can be known. For instance, if I were to claim that outside reality there existed a fairy cake, you would have to be agnostic about it. There is no way currently that we can see what is outside reality (or if indeed there is an outside), so you cannot either prove or disprove my statement. The same applies to God. Since God is supposedly unseen and unobservable, we cannot detect it, and so one must remain agnostic about it to be rational.

The second thing that should be noted about this paragraph is that you can believe in something if you aren’t sure it exists. Knowledge implies belief, not the other way around. Knowledge is often considered a subset of belief, mainly because it is the result of rational justified belief. To have knowledge you must first believe it to be true, otherwise it just wouldn’t work. However, you can believe in something without having knowledge of it. This is precisely how science works. If scientists simply gave up believing in their theories because they hadn’t got enough evidence to prove them, then we wouldn’t get anywhere.

Technology works on the same premise. People look at a current system / product and say “I believe I could do better than that”. They then go away, start thinking about how to approach the design / implementation, and eventually come up with a better system / product.

There are some that claim you can be an “agnostic theist“, implying someone believes in gods but recognizes that the knowledge of gods’ existence may or will never be known. While this is technically true, we are unaware of any practical use of such a term, as the generic definition of [deist] seems to fit that bill.

They manage to get a correct definition of agnosticism into their argument against agnostic theism which seems a bit bizarre, not to mention contradictory. There are plenty of people who are agnostic theists, and an argument from ignorance isn’t going to work for an encyclopedia. As for the definition of a deist, it is simply a person who believes that there is a god (or gods) but they have no control over the universe. They simply created it and for whatever reason do not (or cannot) control anything in it. These people are not theists, and whether they are agnostic or gnostic about their beliefs depends on whether they think the evidence for such a god is available.

I think the idea of a freethoughtpedia is great. As long as sources are cited and proper definitions are used. Free-thought means you do not subscribe to any doctrines. Dictionaries do not count as doctrines, neither do any form of research paper. Use them. At the moment, freethoughtpedia looks more like conservapedia than wikipedia, and everyone knows which of those is the more reliable…

Carnival of Evolution is a new blog carnival that describes itself thusly^[1]:

Do you care about the science behind evolution? Do you marvel at the tiny molecular machines spewing out coded messages to the microscopic inhabitants of your own bodied world? Do you grow irate at the ignorance pushers, the peddlers of relatively impotent gods, and the disintegration of science education in the modern world? Do you like to stay abreast of current topics and scientific findings in the study of the organismal existences surrounding us or those long gone?

If so, this is the blog carnival for you.

Their tagline is awesome: “3.7 billion years of molecular changes culminating in the emergence of matter inspecting its own origins and existence”

Of course like all new blog carnivals they need to be advertised, and people need to start submitting posts. At the moment it seems like the carnival is stationary (on the single blog), but that may change in the future, who knows.

The 1st carnival consisted of 10 incredible and fascinating insights into Evolutionary biology, and one article in which a man who knows next to nothing about Evolution compared to the other guys writes about how Ray Comfort is a moron. *cough*

But seriously, thanks for the include. I am certain that my article would stand out and cause people to want to write much better articles. The more of these carnivals there are, the better people will understand evolution, even if they take tiny steps at a time.

I’ve been involved in a few discussions recently over the subject of blasphemy. Not the “I don’t believe in gods” blasphemy, but the kind that people use when they are upset, angry, of even happy. I’ll give a few examples:

• “Thank God!” (usually said when happy and something has gone your way, or when you are relieved)
• “For God’s sake!” (usually said when upset/angry/frustrated)
• “Jesus Christ!” (usually said when angry)
• “Goddammit!” (usually said when angry)
• “God Bless You!” or “Bless You!” (usually said after someone sneezes)

I’m pretty sure I have said all of these at some point during my life, even as an atheist. I do try to cut down on them or substitute in more “atheistic” swears instead. The reason being that I don’t want to go around saying I am an atheist and then start swearing as if I believe in God.

I haven’t got perfect swears yet, but here are my atheist versions of the above.

• “Thank goodness!” or “Thank fuck!” (I see nothing wrong with thanking human goodness, even if it is just a vague concept. Same goes for thanking our method of reproduction/recreation)
• “For fucks sake” or “For FSM’s sake” (the latter I use mainly online since getting it into normal conversation is a bit tricky, what with the amount of syllables and the fact that nobody I seem to say it to knows what an “FSM” is.
• “Jeez” (Not the best alternative swear available I admit)
• “Darn it!” (Darning is a sowing technique, so you get double points for saying it in a situation where you have just poked a needle through your finger)
• As for the last one, I am properly confused. The whole history around the “God Bless You” statement apparently derives from people thinking that sneezing was fatal and that anyone sneezing would die. These days, even though we know that sneezing isn’t fatal, we still have to say something or it appears that we are being impolite. This presents a few problems. Changing it to “Bless You” gets rid of the God element, but the whole immaterial concept of blessing is still in play. It seems obvious that this should too be removed. Unfortunately this leads to some bizarre conversations.

Person: *Aaaaachoooo*

Me: You!

Person: Eh? Me?

Me: Have a nice day! *walks off*

Person: ???

So what do other atheists think of the whole blasphemy thing? What atheist alternatives does everyone else have? Do you use them all the time or do you occasionally slip back into God-mode? Is there a practical response to sneezing that doesn’t relate to superstition?

This week has been filled with problems, with the server going down from the Digg Effect, and an atheist forums I help run almost driven to extinction. The previous owner (who was meant to be my partner in the scheme) told me he had sold the site and lost the contact details of the new owner. This apparently happened several months ago, and meant that we were left with a forum that we couldn’t upgrade or fix the current errors.

We decided that since we only had 1000 posts, we’d simply move domain and start again. The new forums are running well and everyone is happy. I started a thread in which members could post their picture if they wanted to, and I suddenly realised that other than small gravatar images, most people probably have no idea what I look like.

So without further ado, here is a picture I took this afternoon. It’s not very good quality and I should have done the flash a bit better, but it’ll do. The t-shirt I am wearing is one of my favourites (for good reason). About a month ago I decided that since I had 3 months of nothing all summer, I would grow my first beard and see what it turned out like. I’m not an expert on beards, but I reckon it looks ok, obviously a bit patchy in places. I’m thinking of getting rid of the moustache, only it might actually look better when it connects to the rest of the beard. Obviously I need beard growing advice, so please throw it at me! What should I do? Shave it off? Keep it growing? I need your opinions!

Anyway, here goes.

The essence of a geek.

Also, if the blog goes down in the next hour it’s probably me messing about with the upgrade.

Edit: Justin wanted to know where I got the t-shirt. Why, from ThinkGeek of course! I also have this one, and this one.

It has often been wondered if Ray Comfort is simply ignorant of science, willfully ignorant of science, or simply lying for Jesus. We now have an answer; he is part of the third group.

For anyone who took Biology at high school, you will know that the Taxonomic rank is the way scientists organise the tree of Life. It has many models, both simple and complex. For the purposes of this article, we will discuss the most common and simple version:

Domain -> Kingdom -> Phylum -> Class -> Order -> Family -> Genus -> Species

Using this method of classification, we can show where humans come on the tree:

Eukarya (Domain) -> Animalia (Kingdom) -> Chordata (Phylum) -> Mammalia (Class) -> Primates (Order) -> Hominidae (Family) -> Homo (Genus) -> H. sapiens (Species)

Ray Comfort however, has a different idea of how this all works. It is great because his classification is so much easier to understand!

Wolves, coyotes and German shepherds are of the same species (the canine family or “kind”), but they can’t breed with cats or tigers (which are the felidae family or “kind”).

So that classification would probably go something like this:

GOD -> “Family Species Kind” hybrid

At least we have a reason why Ray Comfort doesn’t understand Evolution. When you redefine basic tenets of Biology so that the theory of Evolution collapses, of course you will think that it doesn’t work! Using Ray Comfort’s methodology I will now debunk a couple of “popular” scientific notions.

1. 1/0 now equals 9,999,999 since I reckon the whole concept of “Infinity” is so flawed we just need to use a really big number to represent it.
2. Think we can’t travel faster than the speed of light? Think again! Now that I’ve redefined the speed of light to approximately 30kph (in a vacuum), I’m pretty sure we can beat it! Welcome to the new world of interstellar travel!!!
3. The boiling point of water will now be set to 50 degrees so it takes half the time to boil an egg!

They may sound crazy ideas, but this is exactly what Ray is doing when it comes to the theory of Evolution. You can redefine as many things as you like and eventually an idea will sound impossible, but it doesn’t make it false. Evolution is supported by evidence and the evidence doesn’t suddenly change. It will always remain. As new and different evidence comes into play, the theory might change, but the fact of evolution will not.