New To Atheism - Part 1 "Welcome to atheism"

Dear reader,

Welcome to atheism. 

I guess that's a strange thing to say. Coming 'to' atheism isn't really a thing. What is atheism really but a doubt in the claims that a god exists? There are some who say that in order to be an atheist, the question itself never had to be considered. These people say that atheism is the default - that we are atheists the moment we're born. So maybe I should be saying 'welcome back to atheism'? 

Regardless, whether you consider yourself new to atheism, returning to atheism, or new to coming out as the atheist you've always been. I'm glad you've found your way here. I hope that I've written something below that you find helpful. 

The first, and most important point to make - you are NOT alone. There are atheists everywhere. Millions of us in fact. You may think there are none in your house, your street, or even your town - but there's a chance someone you know is thinking exactly the same thing. The question is...how do you find these people? How do you connect? 

The obvious answer (for those who can access it) - is the internet. I have had more than a few people tell me, or mention to others, that they didn't know any other atheists, until they came online. They honestly thought they were *alone*. As I've said on twitter -

I wish theists would understand that #atheists are not vocal just to argue with them, we're vocal so other atheists know they're not alone.
— Donovan (@MrOzAtheist) February 23, 2012

In part 3 of this 3 part series of blogs on 'New To Atheism' I highlight some of the ways someone new to atheism can find other atheists to interact with. Given that you've found your way to my blog, you've clearly got internet access - this is a wonderful place to start. 

Becoming an atheist after years of theism can often be daunting. You might be turning your entire world upside down, everything you thought about the universe and our world within it is suddenly 'wrong'. 

Some people can make this change without issue. For others, it's a very trying and testing time. It's common to be angry at the loss of one's understanding. You might feel cheated and\or lied to. You might feel that you can no longer trust anyone, especially if the beliefs you previously held were given to you by an authority figure (which is likely the case).

I understand why these negative emotions come about but they are not permanent. Once you learn to see the universe for the natural wonder that it is, the feeling of being cheated and disappointed will disperse. You'll need to train yourself to look forward, and not backward, to celebrate what you have, not lament what you don't. 

How? Recognise that this IS the life you get and that time wasted is time you'll never get back. You've come this far with a false idea of 'creation' and a false idea that a 'god' is watching and caring about everything you do. But you've given up that idea and come to the realisation that the universe is a natural place. Rejoice in this. Celebrate it. Look at the universe without the god-shaped blind spot in front of your eyes.

It is an amazing thing that you are here at all. For 'you' to be in existence, an extraordinary number of coincidences must have fallen into place, make the most of this. 

Understand that people who brought you to theism probably didn't do it with malice. They, like you before, more than likely believed what they told you. They haven't deceived you deliberately. Anger at these people is wasted. It will serve you no purpose. I understand the need to vent and I'm sure the need to question the people who convinced you that theism was correct will be strong, but confronting them in anger will not help you in the long run. If you feel the need to question any of the people who were involved in you becoming a theist, do so with kindness and understanding. Remember that they still believe the falsehoods that you've now given up. Ask them your questions if you need to, but keep in mind how you would feel if someone confronted you angrily when you've told them what you thought was true. 

We're told that as atheists we must have nothing to live for - of course we have everything to live for. There's nothing for us once we die. I've written a blog here about the claim that atheists have nothing to live for. Obviously you can adjust this how you see fit - but it does show that in a world without a 'god' there is PLENTY for atheists to live for. If you feel that leaving theism has left a gap in your life, I hope you can find some ideas which give your life some meaning. 

There are also people who've been atheists their whole lives but are still 'in the closet'. They don't have the same issue of having their understanding of the universe drastically altered but the thought of coming out as an atheist can still be a frightening idea, especially if there's a threat of losing family or friends if you 'come out'. 

One thing to keep in mind here is that announcing that you're an atheist is not an obligation. If you don't feel safe or comfortable, keeping atheism to yourself is okay. There are plenty of atheists I interact with on twitter who are anonymous because of the potential impacts in their real life. This is where the online atheist community thrives. It's a wonderful place for people who don't have another avenue to connect with people who share their point view. 

So whether you are a lifelong atheist or one who's recently turned away from theism, coming out can lead to alienation of friends and family. It can lead to being ostracised. I've read a case of family being forced out of town,  I've read how being an atheist can lead to imprisonment and even death in some parts of the world. This is, of course, totally unacceptable. It's not all negative though. Not by a long way. Being an atheist can also lead to any number of positive feelings. The idea that you can  'finally' talk to someone who shares your point of view. The opportunity to share your thoughts and ideas on how theism impacts the world and how we can do things better. There's the wonder at the natural beauty of the universe and what seems like a strange mixture of chaos and order. There's the thrill of learning how something really works versus the notion that we must be satisfied with 'god did it'. Being an atheist when coming from theism can be liberating. It is the clichéd weight being lifted off one's shoulders. I look at world and know that I am lucky to be here and that life is to be valued. As atheists we need not think that we're in god's waiting room, we're not here to pass some bizarre character test in order get a 'pass' into the afterlife. We no longer claim that we're being good just because some overlord is watching our every move - we can be good for goodness sake. We can have sex without worrying that any number of our dead relatives might be watching. 

I'm confident that there will come a time where being an atheist - everywhere - is not only acceptable, it's irrelevant. Because that's what it should be. It shouldn't matter. We should accept people based on their actions, based on how they treat others, based on the value and ideas they bring to the community. I hope we get to the point where we stop accepting or rejecting people based on which version of the creation myth they do or don't believe. 

For this to happen we need all atheists to feel that can say it with no expectation of negative reaction. For some of us it's easy, the more we do it, the more we say it, the easier it will become for everyone. 

Until this happens, being an atheist is going to be a struggle for many people. If you are one of them, please know you're not alone, I commend you for beginning and being on this journey. I hope you learn to be comfortable as an atheist, I hope you can be comfortable with all your family and friends knowing that you're an atheist and that you don't have to hide it. If you wish to, seek out other atheists, say hello, interact, get to know them. Speak up if you feel the need and most of all, don't allow anyone to make you feel bad for being who you are. You are an atheist, and this is nothing to be ashamed of. 

Thanks for reading
~Donovan

________________________________________________

This is part 1 of a 3 part series of blogs title 'New To Atheism'. 

Part 2 is a guide to being a vocal atheist. It's not a set of rules, more a series of tips and advice that I've learnt from my time as a vocal atheist - particularly on twitter. 

Part 3 is a resource guide. It will detail blogs, books, podcasts and other methods where people new to atheism (and others) can find information about atheism and atheists. 

Dear Yahweh

Dear Yahweh, 

Regarding your application for permission to create a universe. I've taken a look at your plans and before I can give you my decision there are some things I need to highlight. 

First thing I'd like to address is the size of your universe. If I'm reading this correctly, you're building hundreds of billions of galaxies, each with hundreds of billions of stars. However you plan on putting life on only one planet. Although I can understand that such a universe would look spectacular, I'm concerned at the waste of materials that your proposal would generate. 

I fail to understand why you're going to create everything in six days but all evidence will point to the universe being billions of years old. Are you deliberately trying to delude the humans? Is it your goal to make the people who literally believe your story look like morons? I can't understand why you'd do that if these are the people who will be your biggest supporters. This is a big area of concern. 

As Earth is the only planet on which you plan to place life, I'll concentrate the rest of my review there.  

You're starting with just two people, though leaving evidence that evolution is actually responsible for the diversity of life. Again I must ask, are you deliberately trying to make your biggest supporters look stupid? Why would you do that? Regarding your original two people, it seems you plan on 'tricking' these people, with talking snake I might add, into eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil - even though you don't actually want them to. You're then going to cast them out of this 'Garden of Eden' for doing this? I hate to sound rude, but are you crazy? If you don't want them to gain knowledge of good and evil...why put the tree there in the first place? What's wrong with you? Then you plan on labelling all humans from this point on as 'sinners' because of this one event, this 'original sin' in their past. Do you understand the descendants of these people had no control over this event? More on that later. 

Moving on a little - After a few generations you're flooding entire planet. Again, I need to ask, what is wrong with you? You seem to fail to understand these people are going to behave AS YOU CREATED THEM! It is completely insane to wipe out the planet when the people are as you intend them to be. You have foreknowledge, remember? Why create these people if they're going to be so 'sinful' that you will then feel the need to wipe them out? I don't think you've considered this at all. Then to continue on with the human race you're going to save some bloke called Noah and his family. You're going to have him load millions of animals onto a boat. Seven pairs of each kind of clean animal and one pair of each kind of unclean. I've seen the dimensions you propose for this boat. It's simply not going to work. He's going to need a bigger boat. 

At this point I will need to skip forward a bit because, well, to put it bluntly, your plan involves an incredible amount of nonsense and I simply don't have time to address each and every issue I've found in your submission. I would like to say though that your plan of having a rape victim marry the rapist is simply outrageous and one of the most disgusting things I've ever been presented in Universe Planning. I saw too that you include a guide for people regarding how much they can beat their slaves. I'm struggling to understand how you can plan on being a god of your own universe yet still think that slavery is an acceptable idea. 

I'm sure you were aware this was coming - we need to have a talk about this Jesus character. So many problems here. Not the least of which is that you're going to go to earth...but not as you, as your son. Then you will sacrifice yourself as your son...to yourself as 'God', to save people from...you? You are joking, right? First of all, you wipe out the planet with a flood, then the humans go 'bad' again so you want to save them with human sacrifice? I'm really not sure how you can expect people to take this plan seriously. You say that 'Jesus' will die for the humans' sins but again you seem to completely fail to understand that YOU are creating all these humans with sin to begin with. This is amateur to say the least. 

You say that for humans to come to you in heaven once they die they will have to accept you - but as Jesus - as their lord and saviour. However I've looked at the numbers and by the year they call 2013, only 2 in every 7 humans on Earth will believe the Jesus story. I cannot highlight the significance of this enough. You are starting what is essentially a cult of human sacrifice in order to have humans 'saved' from sins which, as previously mentioned, THEY didn't commit. This is just preposterous. I can see why so few humans are going to be convinced by this story. It's completely asinine. And for this imagined 'crime' of not being able to believe this ridiculous story, your plan is to sentence these humans, by the billions, to eternity in 'Hell'? How can you claim to be an 'all-loving' god and condemn billions of these humans you claim to 'love' to eternity in hell? I'm staggered. I highly recommend you have a cup of tea and a sit down. 

This leads me to my next point. You state that you want want to be known as an all-loving, all-powerful, all-knowing god yet no aspect of your plan points to this being the case.

All-loving: As previously stated, billions of people will end up in hell under your plan. For centuries women are going to be treated as subservient to men. Homosexuals are going to be persecuted and receive disgusting treatment because of your teachings, and millions and millions of people are going to be killed by people who believe in you because they don't like the way other people believe in you. How can you expect to be considered 'all-loving'? All loving, but 'conditions apply' perhaps. 

All-powerful: First - Satan. How do you expect to be considered all-powerful when you allow a nemesis, which you created, to have control over people? Your plan involves Satan bringing people to evil and having them do things you'd rather them not do. It seems pointless to point out to you that an all-powerful god would defeat this 'Satan' character in an instant if he didn't want him doing these things, but what's worse is that you KNOW this is going to happen. You needn't defeat him, you needn't create him in the first place. Why have him in your plan at all? You plan to allow evil and tragedy but do nothing about it. Your plan has you nowhere near 'all-powerful'. 

All-knowing: You expect to be considered 'all-knowing' but you make mistakes? You're *twice* going to set in motion plans to right the wrongs of the humans. You're going to send humans to hell knowing in advance what 'sins' they're going to commit, and knowing that billions of them won't be able to believe in your story. Your plan also includes you being 'tricked' by Satan. You're going to kill Job's children, kill his livestock, then you're going to torture Job and you're then going to tell Satan that he, Satan, caused you to move against Job without cause. You *know* this is going to happen because it's part of your plan yet you're going to try the 'The Devil made me do it' excuse? I cannot, for a single moment, understand how you would think any reasonable person would consider you all-knowing if you're going to claim to be tricked when it's all part of your plan! 

Yahweh, your plan is atrocious. You're going to sit idly by why children are raped, yet intervene on Earth to allow already millionaire sports people become richer by helping them win sporting events. You're going to allow millions of children to starve to death while accepting praise from privileged people sitting down to meals that are essentially feasts. You're going to send millions of genuinely kind, caring, honest people to hell because they can't accept the Jesus story, whilst allowing life long thieves, paedophiles, rapists, and murderers into heaven if they accept Jesus and are saved. You're going to send natural disasters to earth killing tens, hundreds, thousands and on occasion millions of people at a time, so you can be praised for sparing one life. You're going to provide absolutely nothing a critically thinking person could accept as evidence you exist and then demand that they believe in you anyway. I could go on and on about how ridiculously bad this plan is but I have neither the time nor inclination. 

Yahweh - it's not going to come as a surprise, but your submission is terrible. Your application to create a universe is, without reservation, denied. 

As an atheist

We atheists often get told that we can't be good without god in our lives. We can't be 'moral' and we've no reason to live. 

When people tell us this they are, of course, wrong. 

As an atheist I can give my life my own goals and I need not exist simply to please an overlord.

As an atheist I can do good for goodness sake. 

As an atheist I can strive for societal improvement for the sake of future generations.

As an atheist I can do good because I'm driven by conscience, not because I'm trying to pass a test to get into 'heaven'.

As an atheist I can accept people for who they are and not need to condemn them for acts imagined to be 'sinful'.

As an atheist I can base my decisions on empathy, logic, reason, and understanding, and not some antiquated, superstitious scripture.

As an atheist I will never hold a sign condemning people to hell.

As an atheist I will never hold a sign declaring that people who disagree with me should be beheaded.

As an atheist I will never wish violence on those with opposing views.

As an atheist I will never threaten someone with eternal damnation for the crime of 'not being convinced'.

As an atheist I will never think that a child, friend, or even stranger is an abomination for being gay. 

As an atheist I will never let my child die while I pray instead of seeking medical attention.

As an atheist I will never set fire to a human being because I think them a witch. 

As an atheist I can appreciate the natural wonder of the universe.

As an atheist I can condemn tragic acts without excusing them as being part of 'god's plan'. 

As an atheist I can freely admit that I don't know something without the need to make up an answer. 

As an atheist I understand that unexplained and unexplainable are two different things. 

As an atheist my life's goal can be a healthy planet and a healthy and happy population (including non-human animals)

As an atheist I can be good without god.

What is God?

When we talk about God (capital G God) we're talking about what theists believe is the creator of the universe. I know there's pretty much as many definitions as there are theists but I think it's safe to say that most people think of God as the being that created everything and is in control of everything and who decides who gets to heaven and, if that religion has it, hell. Some people believe this being to be real. Others don't. Then there are poly-theists who believe in gods and goddesses rather than a single God.

But what is God really?

God is sometimes presented as a 'model' for the creation of the universe. God isn't a model. It isn't even a hypothesis. It's a wild guess at the very best. The 'god' answer to how the universe was 'created' is barely worth considering. It's a wild stab in the dark dreamt up by people who didn't yet know how to rationally investigate anything.

You might hear that 'someone' must have created the universe. But of course this is not true. What's more accurate is that 'someTHING' must have caused the universe to be in the form we see it today. There is no evidence to suggest that our universe was ever deliberately created.

When people posit God as a reasonable explanation for the existence of the universe they seem to be forgetting something - God has never been the verifiable conclusion to any mystery. Ever. There is no exception. To suggest that God created the universe is to go from the understanding that God is not demonstrably responsible for anything, to claiming that God is magically responsible for everything. We used to think God was responsible for lightning, eclipses, thunder, tides, epileptic fits, mountains, and so on. Investigation into these things shows they all have natural explanations - no god needed.

So God becomes the ultimate give-up answer. It's your answer when you can't be bothered looking any longer or the question seems too hard. God is how ancient peoples said 'I don't know'. Ancient people didn't investigate lightning and reach a verifiable conclusion that a god was throwing it across they sky. They had no idea what was causing it. They didn't yet have the means to investigate what was happening. They didn't know - so they called it God.

It's the classic argumentum ad ignorantiam or argument from ignorance. There is a gap in knowledge and rather than performing a thorough and detailed investigation, the claimant says 'God did it' and is very often believed but never, ever validated. 

Then there's the personal side of God. The part that people think answer prayers and gets us through tough times. Now we know prayer doesn't work. It's been shown time and time again and I needn't go into it here. If you doubt me (and you should) just give it a quick google.

Another part of the emotional god is the god that will get you through tough times. People will pray to this god for strength. They'll praise it when the tide turns and things look bright again. We all go through incredibly hard times in life, not all of us are praying to any god to get through them. But we still manage it and we know that it was us relying on other people (family, friends, colleagues, professionals) in combination with our own inner strength.

I recently had this exchange on twitter with a lady who I'll call S:

Me: I think a question theists don't ask enough is not why god, but why THEIR god? Why are they the religion they are and not another. I bet it's rare that they reached the age of reason and did a thorough, in-depth analysis of the various claims and came to a conclusion - - that just one of the religions was right and they therefore decided to join. No, it's that they are the religion of their parents. S: I was not baptised at birth and my father was Anglican I chose Catholicism. I do not subscribe to any now and yes I know that I baffle the crap out of ya. :( but generally speaking you would be correct. Children are usually baptised into the religion of the parents without a choice Me: And that's how religion survives. Imagine if you weren't allowed to teach religion to people until they were 25 and already had a scientific understanding of the universe. Religion would all but disappear in a generation. S: I understand what you are saying but it makes me sad to a degree. God has been my rock for many years. Me: I would suggest that YOU have been your rock. You've just labelled that part of you god. :)

S: Through my tears I want to say I love you for saying that and thank you. :)

I have no doubt that S is convinced that the god she happens to believe in was her 'rock' but I stand by what I said to her - SHE is the rock. Whatever she needed a rock for it was HER that got her through it. Her own strength was what she relied on, she just called it God. This leads to one of the things that bugs me about religion - it teaches people to discredit their own qualities.

Without any good reason to do so some people think they have a soul and this soul 'lives on' after a person dies. Many people don't want to think that this life is it, that dead is truly the end. To avoid this confrontational thought they imagine an afterlife where they hope to live 'forever' and, of course, to see loved ones again. God, they think, is this hope.

Another thing that happens is that people want to discriminate and oppress. Have a problem with homosexual people? Blame Leviticus 18:22. Want women to be submissive to their husbands? Ephesians 5:22-24. Or Qur'an 4:34 for instructions on how much a man can beat his wife. I could fill an entire blog on its on with instructions from the bible and the Qur'an on how to discriminate against and oppress people. The avenue that 'allows' this kind of thinking is, obviously, the word of 'God'. 

So what does it boil down to? What is God?

God is a cheat for intellectual laziness, a crutch for emotional frailty, a pacifier for the fear of death and an excuse for prejudice and discrimination.

Let's try to find out

I'm glad people are moving away from 'god did it' and are going with 'let's try to find out'. We no longer need to rely on faith for the answers to anything. We have investigative methods that we can use to show us actual answers. Verifiable answers. Answers that are unambiguous and need no interpretation. 

The problem with 'god did it' is that it's the ultimate non-answer. It's totally intellectually unsatisfying. Once you've assumed god did it where's the desire to pursue knowledge? What fuels the quest to find out more? If one assumes that our universe was created by a god and that all that we see is part of this god's plan then why would we bother to try to find out what's really going on? We would stop looking because we assume we already have the answer - 'God'. 

Alternately the joy of learning is fuelled by the desire to know more. It's curiosity about what we don't know but want to know. We investigate, study and analyse. We show our results to our peers and get them to check that what we've done is valid. We ask them to look into things too and see if their findings are the same as ours. We're not satisfied with knowledge gaps and nor should we be.

We should be comfortable with not knowing everything *yet*. Comfortable that we have a gap in our knowledge, while we actively try to fill that gap. What we shouldn't be comfortable with is trying to fill that gap with the strange superstitions of pre-science shepherds. When we do this 'God' basically becomes a synonym for 'I don't know and I'm either too stupid or too lazy to find out'. How can anyone possibly find that satisfying?

Imagine the possibilities if everyone thought 'hey, let's look into that' instead of praying to deity that's never going to answer them. I wonder how many bright minds have been wasted by the thought 'god did it' rather than 'how do you suggest we find out?'

As a society I think we'll benefit far more if we are driven by the desire for knowledge rather than being held back by the desire to worship. I want our children to reject the idea that we should rest our understanding of the universe on 'well how else did we get here?' Instead of 'Well if god isn't real, where did all this stuff come from?' We need only ask, 'From where did all this stuff come?' 

If we investigate and find that the superstitious writings of pre-science shepherds are actually accurate then, and only after this investigation, should we accept them. And if this happens I'll stand on a busy street corner and shout 'I was wrong!'

But until this happens, let's not settle. Let's not rely on the guesses and assumptions of people that didn't have investigative skills. Let's keep looking. Let's keep investigating and testing and experimenting and checking. 

I much prefer 'this is what we think and this is why we think it' over 'you just need to have faith'. I don't want to accept anything on faith - I want evidence. I don't understand why anyone is happy to have 'faith'. 

An open letter to argumentative evolution deniers.

I've read many and been part of many conversations about evolution. It's always atheists (often biologists) on one side and theists (never biologists) on the other. Most commonly it's theists refusing to accept any argument for evolution whilst continuing  to argue against something that evolution is not. 

It includes tweets that  show a lack of understanding that we are animals, that we "believe evolution as fact without evidence" and the old standard "r u saying u believe evolution to b 100% true? U just admitted its a theory."

It's a shame and a frustration that people think like this. I was part of yet another one of these conversations yesterday. For some reason it felt more frustrating than usual. There was something about the dogged determination of the people on the denial side. That happens all the time, but...there was a level to this that went beyond what I'd seen before. I then happened across a tweet that said 'It's like talking to a brick wall'. This was not one of the biologists to another biologist (which would have been perfectly understandable), but one of the theists to the other. It prompted me to send a few tweets which I'm turning into an open letter to argumentative evolution deniers.

Dear Evolution Denier. 

I understand that talking to someone who won't accept the evidence before them can be likened to talking to a brick wall. There's a unique frustration when presenting someone with evidence and they have a steadfast refusal to accept it. 

It does seem, though, that  you have a terrible misunderstanding of what evolution is. Actually, it seems that you're completely clueless as to what evolution is. Evolution: the change in the inherited characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. Is that really so hard to understand? Now don't get me wrong, there's a lot more to understanding evolution than just that, but that's it at its most basic definition. 

It takes no 'faith' to accept this. It's not a belief or a religion. It is an observable and demonstrable fact. As species reproduce, things change and we can see it happen. We can MAKE it happen. We can see it happen with Ring Species, we've made it happen with dogs (modern canines are descendants of long-ago wolves). These are just two examples. The process is slow. For example, mouse sized mammals to elephants took around 24 million generations. The changes are slight, not dramatic. If you follow your evolutionary path back to the origin of life, you'll see that each generation is as similar to the previous as you are to your own parents. Evolution takes A LONG TIME. To quote a shampoo commercial, it doesn't happen over night, but it does happen. 

What evolution is NOT is one species giving birth to a new species. A monkey is not going to give birth to a human (more on why there are still monkeys later). Evolution is also NOT the existence of strange half-breeds such as the Crocoduck. What you evolution deniers fail to understand is that a monkey giving birth to a human being or the sudden appearance of the Crocoduck would actually DISPROVE the theory of evolution. This is how much you misunderstand what evolution is. One species suddenly appearing, fully formed, as the very next generation to a different species is NOT what the theory of evolution says. Remember what I wrote about each generation being as similar to the previous as you are to your parents? THAT is what evolution says. So please, quit demanding that we show you a Crocoduck, and quit asking for a monkey to give birth to a human being. Saying these things only confirms your massive misunderstanding of what evolution is. 

Speaking of monkeys, why are there still monkeys? It's a very common question about evolution. As I child I asked the question myself. Evolution deniers get it into their heads that human beings evolved from modern day monkeys or apes. If that is the case, they ask, how is it that we can still see monkeys? Surely if we evolved from them, they should be extinct! And here in lies the problem, yet another misunderstanding. We humans did NOT evolve from modern monkeys or apes. We ARE apes and we evolved WITH the other apes. A term you should familiarise yourself with is 'common ancestor'. Humans and the other apes share a common ancestor. We ALL evolved from it. Our evolutionary timelines split at different stages. Our common ancestor with the Orang-utan is a lot further back than our common ancestor with Gorillas. Our common ancestor with Gorillas is a lot further back than our common ancestor with Chimps. Chimps and Bonobos share a closer common ancestor again, one that we don't share with them. Professor Richard Dawkins explains this below. It's just 1 minute a 47 seconds. Please spare the time...

If you have a bit more time (7 minutes 2 seconds for example) please watch the fantastic presentation by Steve Shives. Steve goes into a bit more detail and also explains how one species can still exist even if another has evolved from it. 

I hope you took the time to watch them, they are short, but really quite informative videos. 

As Steve explains in his video. part of the issue with 'why are there still monkeys' is the assumption that humans are further along the evolutionary ladder than the monkey. That if we 'the new and improved model' exist, how can the old and inferior model exist? I need to point out here that evolution is not a ladder, it's not lineal and there is no reason to think that humans are evolution's 'goal'. (If evolution did have a goal, I would certainly hope that humans were not it!) Evolution is a tree, not a ladder. There are millions of branches and we are as evolved as all other current species. Part of the blame for this misunderstanding must lie with pictures like this: 

This picture makes it look a chimpanzee gave birth to a more upright monkey/ape type thing and this process repeated as we stood straighter and straighter, lost most of our hair until out of an ancestor hominid popped 'modern man'. As discussed above, this is not how evolution works. 

This picture:

Is a MUCH better graphical example of how evolution works. For a larger version of this picture, click here. As you will see, fungi, centipedes, sea urchins, and salmon are as far, in terms of years, from the start of evolution as elephants, rabbits, and humans. They have just evolved down different paths. They have branched differently to the path taken to get humans. And to reinforce an earlier point, take a look at the number of years involved...evolution takes a long time!

Now if you've made it this far, and thank you if you have, you're possibly thinking to yourself 'How can you be going on about this, evolution is just a theory'. Yes, well the short answer is 'so is gravity, but I bet you won't leave a tall building via a 12th storey window'. 

The longer answer is that when we say 'theory' in everyday language, we're using it as synonymous with 'guess' or a 'hunch' or perhaps it's even a little more solid than that. But this is not what's meant by 'theory' in 'scientific theory'. Eugenie Scott describes scientific terms, including Theory, here. Briefly, a scientific theory is an explanation of observed phenomena. Laws are used to describe facts and observations and theories are used to describe laws. Theories are "the most important things in science". Theories don't "grow" to become laws, laws are part of the group of data that contributes to a theory. Theories are the TOP of the scientific tree. Theories are built on mountains of evidence. They exist because all the relevant evidence supports them and no evidence disproves them. 

Important to note - Evolution is a FACT (remember, evolution is: "The change in the inherited characteristics of biological populations over successive generations") The Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection and Genetic Mutation is the scientific explanation of this fact. It has been studied, scrutinised and tested for 150 years and is supported by all the relevant evidence. As with asking for a crocoduck and asking why there are still monkeys, when you say 'just a theory' you are immediately exposing to everyone that you have no idea what you're talking about. Don't do it. 

Micro v Macro evolution. This is another old chestnut that we hear from creationists. When evolution was proven beyond reasonable doubt, and some evolution deniers finally realised evolution is observable, they had little room to hide. So the claims that 'micro' evolution is true but 'macro' evolution is false, because it's never been observed, started to rise. What you don't understand when you don't understand evolution is that micro and macro are the same process - macro is just over a longer time period. Macroevolutionary studies focus on change that occurs above the level of species. Microevolutionary studies focus on change that happens within a species. To say that micro evolution can happen but macro evolution can't happen is like saying you can build a brick wall, but you can't build a brick house. Or that you can move ten metres, but you can't walk 10 kilometres. 

Put simply, macro evolution is the result of micro evolution happening a lot. Remember, evolution is change over time and differences in generations take a long time to happen. Even if that change is very, very slight, do it enough and eventually you're going to end up with something very different from where you started. 

Just quickly - don't come at me with 'there's no transitional fossils.' There ARE. There are, in fact, thousands of them. Here is a great FAQ about them. When you say there's no transitional fossils, you are exposing to everyone that you have no idea what you're talking about.

My last point I'd like to address is the claim that evolution is not supported by evidence and that it requires just as much faith as religion. Wrong. Evolution is OBSERVABLE. That's right, evolution - the change in the inherited characteristics of biological populations over successive generations - can be OBSERVED. It's not a guess. It's not a hunch. It's observed and verified and if you bothered to do a little bit of research you would know this. The study of evolution is something you learn in university, years of university. Then you do lab work and field work and more research and more study. The basics of evolution are - basic, but evolution is complex. It's a massive area of science and it is NOT something you can expect to learn on twitter at 140 characters a time. I have never met anyone that both understands and rejects evolution. As Professor Richard Dawkins says - Evolution is almost universally accepted among those who understand it and almost universally rejected by those who don't. I can almost guarantee that you argue against evolution because you have some misunderstanding about it. 

The good thing is that there are several wonderful resources available on the internet to get a basic understanding of evolution and to allow yourself to move from uneducated and ignorant evolution denier to educated evolution accepter. Below are some of the best...

www.talkorigins.org A massive resource. Probably the best on the internet. Pages and pages of data, explanations and references. If you read your way through this website with an open mind and STILL reject evolution then I don't know what else I can do for you. 

www.evolutionfaq.com As the name suggest a list of frequently asked questions about evolution. Great to get a basic understanding evolutionary terms and introductory level information. There's also some articles and videos. 

http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evosite/evo101/ Again, as the name suggests, this is the Berkeley university 'Evolution 101' website. A wonderful resource for beginning your journey to understanding the fact of evolution.. 

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=Evolution Over 300,000 scientific articles citing evolution.

http://scholar.google.com.au/s cholar?hl=en&q=evolution&btnG=&as_sdt=1%2C5&as_sdtp= Over 4 million pieces of scholarly literature when searching evolution. 

There are also some books that you should read:

The Greatest Show On Earth, the Case for Evolution - Richard Dawkins

Why Evolution is True - Jerry Coyne (there's also a YouTube video of the same name by Jerry which is very much worth watching). 

Evolution vs. Creationism: An Introduction - Eugenie C. Scott

Well congratulations for making it to the end. I hope you have actually paid attention and have learnt something. I hope you take these points on board and if you do, for some strange reason, still feel the need to argue against evolution, please don't use any of the arguments above, because as I've said a number of times, saying those things doesn't disprove evolution, saying those things proves you don't know what you're talking about. 

Thanks for your time.

Does 'God' want me to believe in him.

I'm writing this blog entry as though Yahweh - the god of the bible - is real. At least in part. I'm doing so in order to point out a ridiculous premise in the faith of Christianity. This blog entry is inspired by a point Matt Dillahunty made on a recent episode of The Atheist Experience. 

Christians tell me that their God (Yahweh) wants me to believe in him. He loves me and doesn't want me to burn in hell and to avoid that I need to believe that he is real. Of course if big Y doesn't want me to burn in hell then all he need do is let me into heaven when I die, right? 

But apparently that's not part of the deal. Now not all Christians believe this but many will tell me that in order to get into heaven I need to believe in God and I need to believe that Jesus is God's son, he died for my sins and that he's my savior. 

Now let's just put all that aside for a moment. 

Yahweh has given us a tool that we can use to determine how to tell fact from fantasy. How to tell whether we should accept something or discard it as nonsense  It's called 'Reason'. I don't think we're born with it, I think it's something we develop over time and, with the right education, it's something that becomes very valuable to us. We learn reason from those around us - particularly our parents and teachers. 

As I said, reason is very important to us. It lets us know there isn't a Nigerian prince waiting to give us a great deal of his fortune. It lets us know that although leaving from the roof is the fastest way to reach the ground from the top of a skyscraper, it's not going to be safe. It's a good tool to use if you need someone's help and they're reluctant or if someone's a bit angry or upset or frustrated and you need them to be calm. I'm sure we've all heard or said 'can't you just reason with them?'. 

There are countless other examples of where we need reason to live the lives we do. Without reason society as we know it would cease to exist. 

Let's return to Yahweh and his need for us to believe in him to gain entry to heaven (assuming heaven is a place I want to go). The question one must ask is this - why did Yahweh give me such a valuable tool and then make it necessary for me to suspend its use? I can think of no other aspect of my life where suspending reason would be a beneficial thing for me to do. I'm sure I have done it in the past and it's resulted in me being injured, losing money or getting yelled at. Why then would Yahweh make believing in him conditional on me giving up reason and relying on 'faith'? 

The simple point is there's no reason to suspend reason. The idea that a god would value faith not just over reason, but as THE most important trait a person can have is ludicrous. The idea that a god appeared to people, instructed them to do things - including wiping out whole towns (except for the female virgins in one case), told a bloke to build a boat and then flooded the entire planet, came to earth as himself/his son and sacrificed himself to himself to make up for the sins HE knew we were going to commit because he created a world in which those sins were possible and then this God would suddenly vanish without a trace (except for the odd appearance on toast and the arses of dogs) and that this 'God' would then expect the rational, clear thinking humans which HE created to suspend reason to believe in him is totally preposterous. It sounds like exactly what it is - a nonsense idea invented by an ancient superstitious people that didn't know better. 

What kind of god would give us the gift of reason and then ask us to suspend it so we can believe in him and make it to heaven? My guess is an imaginary one. 

Misconceptions about atheism

There is a common trend on twitter for theists to tweet something like 'Atheists believe...' and to then write something about atheists which is just simply not true. This picture gets tweeted quite often: 

Of course it's wrong after the second word. Atheism isn't the belief of anything let alone what's described above. I won't go into detail on what's wrong with the above (magically? That's very much the theist position isn't it?) but I will just point out that atheism has NO position on how the universe started, except to say we don't believe a god was responsible. And as I've described here not believing in something doesn't mean you believe the opposite is true. So I'm not going the list each thing about one by one and say atheists don't believe it. The entire thing is incorrect. 

Atheism is quite often associated with science and in particular the science of evolutionary biology. Atheism has no position on evolution. It does very much seem to be the case that atheism and evolution go hand in hand. The feeling I have from chatting with fellow atheists on twitter particularly is that the vast majority of atheists accept the fact of evolution. But it's not a 1 for 1 relationship. There are many theists that accept the fact of evolution, including over 10,000 clergy from The Clergy Letter Project. And there are also atheists that do NOT accept evolution. One notable group are the Raëlians. So although there does seem to be a strong correlation between atheists and the acceptance of evolution it is certainly not a case of atheism = evolution = atheism. 

The same can be said of Big Bang cosmology. Again experience suggests that atheists accept the Big Bang theory as the best current explanation for the beginning of the universe as we know it. And again it's a position that theists can accept just as easily as atheists. That the universe was started by the Big Bang is not an 'atheist' position it's a scientific position. It's something someone like Professor Lawrence Krauss can explain a lot better than I can (given that I can pretty much not explain it at all that's probably not a big stretch). 

Big Bang cosmology and the scientific theory of evolution are not a positions of 'faith' they're not something atheists or anyone else 'believes'. They are the conclusions reached by thorough scientific analyses of available data. People study these fields after years of schooling they then spend years doing research, including, for evolution at least, field work. Their work is reviewed by peers before being published in scientific journals and then being read and, importantly, scrutinized by other experts in that particular branch of science. It's NOT a case of Big Bang or God. It's NOT a case of Evolution or God. 

I've mentioned just two areas of science above but you can feel free to insert any other scientific field and the answer is the same - it is not an atheistic position. Atheists are not required to have a position, one way or another, on any of the sciences. 

Another common claim about atheists is that we have nothing to live for. As I've said before I'm an atheist - It doesn't mean I have nothing to live for, it means I have nothing to die for. I don't mean that I wouldn't die for my children, for example, I mean there's nothing for me AFTER death, there's no 'great power/lord/being' that I'm going to meet. I don't have any reason to think I'm heading to any kind of paradise or heaven. I don't think there's any virgins waiting for me and I don't think I'll be given my own planet to be god over. So this is what I mean when I say I have nothing to die for. For a longer post on atheists having nothing to live for, you can see my earlier post here. 

Atheists hate god - apparently. Hopefully you are already aware of the absolute absurdity here. To highlight it in a question - how can someone hate something in which they don't believe? It's not possible right? As soon as someone thinks there is a god to hate, that someone ceases to be an atheist. We may hate the 'concept' of god. We may hate what the idea of god does to people.We may hate the character 'god' like we do the bad guy in a movie. But hating a god or goddess itself as though there was something to actually hate? No atheist does this. 

We atheists also get accused of being Satanists. Now although the Church of Satan is actually atheistic organisation (IE it doesn't have a supernatural deity that it worships) there is, as with the above, no one-to-one relationship between Satanism and atheism. Yes, all the members are atheists but not all atheists are members. The members of the Church of Satan specify that they are not Devil worshipers, a group of people that pray to and revere the Devil - the nemesis of god from biblical and other theistic stories. Estimates put the number of Satanists in the UK at around 3,000. Given that there's nearly 10 million people in the UK with no religion, if you meet an atheist there, the chances of them being a Satanist is pretty slim.

There's no atheists in fox holes, did you know? One of the most common anti-atheism tweet that goes around. When I see someone tweet this I usually reply with a link to  the Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers.  Once I do that I get little push back. I had just one person argue that the military atheists were lying and they really did believe. Telling other people what they believe seems to be a common habit among some theists. The point is that not only are there atheists in fox holes (and in turbulent planes and on death beds) the tweet and the sentiment is completely disrespectful. It's again a theist putting their own thinking onto others. They see the world in a particular way and they expect others to agree with them. They also forget that even if their statement is true it doesn't prove a god or goddess exists. And they fail to consider that a decision made under extreme duress (let's face it, if you're taking refuge in a fox hole, it's not because a group of toddlers is watching the Care Bears nearby) is not necessarily going to be the most thought out, most analysed and reasonable decision someone could make. A person who thought their life was in grave danger was desperate enough to consider praying? So what? 

On a more philosophical level atheism gets called a world view. We get asked, as atheists, what our goal is, where we think society should head, and if we're so determined to get rid of god and faith, what are we going to replace it with. These are all fine questions to have but they are misplaced when being asked to an atheist because of atheism. Atheism is not a world view. Atheism doesn't guide how we think, it's a result of how we think. Although we do look at the world through an atheist's eyes there needs to be something on top of it to qualify as a world view as repeatedly stated, atheism is a single response to a single question. Similarly it's not an ideology, we're not here saying 'be atheists and live like this...'. Our ideologies differ. Personally I'm a big fan of what Martin Pribble wrote about Methodological Humanism. I can't help but think if the world embraced this idea everyone would be a lot better off, but that is of course one opinion among many. 

It may be a fault of a failing of atheism or atheists that we aren't organised, that we don't have common views outside of not believing in a god. It's a blog for another time but I do wonder sometimes about atheism becoming more of a societal movement and whether that would help or hinder. My first question to myself is always - Would it be exclusionary? But as above, that's a blog for another time.

We atheists get told we're hated, that we're going to burn in hell and yesterday I saw a tweet that read 'No offence, but if you're an atheist, you're disgusting'. You guessed it, from a Christian. I couldn't tell you why they think of us like this. When I was a Christian I never hated anyone - why so much hatred for us? If there was a one-to-one relationship between atheists and people that kick puppies, then maybe you could understand a certain level of dislike. But we're atheists, we're not animal kickers. I think it stems from misinformation and lack of understanding. People fear what they don't understand and fear leads to hate. 

One of the things I like to do on twitter is help educate people on what atheism really is and what atheists are really like. Hopefully the above can put some of the more common misconceptions to bed. 

Why "Look Around You" is not proof of god.

An argument I hear often for apparent proof of god is to 'look around you' and is often followed by something like 'how could all this get here?' or 'where did we come from?'. 

The point being that because we don't have full explanations for everything a god must be responsible. It is, of course, an argument from Personal Incredulity or an argument from ignorance. 

Of course this type of thinking has failed time and time again. In his short film 'Storm' Tim Minchin makes the point....

We can replace 'magic' with 'god' and it's still true and I feel it's important to note. There has been countless phenomena throughout time that started as a mystery but is now explained and not once - repeat NOT ONCE has that explanation turned out to be god. 

What we do have is a bunch of former mysteries that were attributed to gods that we now know are definitely not the direct result of gods. For example live in Greece a few millennia ago and you'd be thinking that lightning was the work of Zeus throwing it from Mount Olympus or his horse Pegasus bringing it across the sky. Others have thought thunder was the work of Thor or that an eclipse was a heavenly dog taking a bite out of the sun. We now know these explanations and dozens more like them are not valid. What we have now are natural, understandable, and - perhaps most importantly - verifiable explanations. 

We have moved past the 'I don't know, therefore god' phase of our existence. Since the development of the scientific method we now investigate until we find the answer. We make conclusions on what is observed and what is demonstrable. We don't, and nor should we, find it acceptable to say 'I can't find the answer to this mystery, therefore a god must be responsible'. To do that is completely intellectually unsatisfying. 

I cannot blame someone without modern investigative tools for not knowing what caused lightning. I can understand a primitive person thinking the sun was a god or that it literally traveled across the sky or even that it was something to be appeased with a sacrifice. These are the kinds of things I would expect people of long ago to think. Remember that not only did these people not know how certain things worked, they didn't know *how* to know. They observed and assumed with no investigation. 

Today though, things are very different. It's not good enough for a person to think a planet was just 'put' here. Thanks to our scientist friends and many, many decades of investigation we know how planets form and a god putting them there is not it. Mix cosmic dust, gravity, and a WHOLE lot of time and you'll get yourself a planet. Or a star for that matter. 

We also know that the circumstellar habitable zone (CHZ) or 'Goldilocks zone' is not narrow. We know that it's not a case of '10 ft closer and we'd burn, 10 ft further away and we'd freeze' as I've seen written as a Facebook status. This passage from bible.org on an 'evidence for God's existence' article is quite misleading and I suspect deliberately non-specific... 

The CHZ is measured in Astronomical Units. An astronomical unit is the mean distance from Earth to the sun. One Astronomical unit is 149,597,871 Kilometres (92,955,807 Miles). 

The CHZ ranges from approximately .725 astronomical units (108,458,455.75 kms) to 3 astronomical units (448,793,613 kms). 

So when the above passage says 'If we were closer to the sun we'd burn up' it's saying that for the Earth cease supporting life it would need to be closer than .725 astronomical units. What they're not saying is Earth could move 41,139,415 kms closer to the sun and would *still* be capable of supporting life. Similarly, when the above says 'If we were farther away we'd freeze' it means is that Earth would need to be more than 3.0 astronomical units away from the sun. This means the Earth could move a not insignificant 299,195,742 kms further away from the sun and *still* be capable of supporting life. 

In essence the passage in the screen shot above *is* accurate. However, they fail to tell you that the 'closer' and 'farther away' they speak of is actually a zone something around 340,335,157 kilometres (211,474,461 miles) wide. I bring this up not to highlight the misleading information in the screenshot but to show that the assumption that we are here because Earth is 'perfectly placed' is simply wrong. It is another example where lack of information was covered over with 'God did it' but further investigation showed that it wasn't quite the work of a god as first thought. 

This is the bottom line problem with the 'Look around you' argument. When I look around me everything I see (with NO exception) has either a verifiable NATURAL explanation or NO verifiable explanation as yet (note - Yet). The only time the god hypothesis is invoked is when a person (who already believes there is a god - it is never a conclusion reached from an unbiased investigation) cannot otherwise explain what they see. They cannot explain life - therefore god. They, of course, ignore all the work going on in the field of Abiogenesis. They cannot explain diversity of life - therefore god. They do this usually having heard of evolution but not really understanding what it is (if we evolved from monkeys, why are there still monkeys!). I have had a person on twitter thank me for sending them links to evolution web sites and telling me that they didn't believe it previously because they had the wrong idea about it. 

It's not just events on a grand scale either. Take a disease such as epilepsy. Imagine living 2000 years ago and having no idea what epilepsy was, having no idea about medical science, but believing in the supernatural. If you were to witness a person having a seizure would you think anything other than some kind of supernatural event was happening? Possession by demons? Some kind of spirit trying to enter the physical realm?  These kinds of assumptions at that time, with limited information, would be understandable. But as is always the case, proper investigation shows once again that this is NOT a case of god did it. 

'Look around you' is lazy. It's intellectually inept. It's not just an admission that you don't have a verifiable answer, it's an admission that you can't be bothered searching for one. It's plugging a gap in knowledge with a phrase that answers and explains nothing. 

Thunder, lightning, mountains, orbits, diversity of life, ears, eyes, thumbs, eclipses, disease, spring, summer, autumn, winter, the moon, the sun, Earth - the god hypothesis fails time and time again. Given that the god hypothesis has never been the verified explanation for anything in the past, why make the assumption that it will be the verified explanation for anything in the future? Surely the logical and intellectually honest thing to do is to reserve judgement, investigate, follow the evidence, see where it leads THEN make a conclusion. 

So in summary, two points:

1. Everything I see has either a verified NATURAL explanation or no verified explanation as yet.
2. God has consistently failed as an explanation in the past, why make the assumption that a god will be the verified explanation for anything in the future? 

With this in mind, how exactly is 'look around  you' proof of god? Simply, it is not. 

Vocal atheism - It might not be what you think it is...

"Vocal atheism". I think this is what people mean when they say 'Militant atheism' or 'Fundamental atheism'. 

I guess I am what would be considered a 'vocal' atheist, especially online because of this blog and my twitter account. It's a label I'm happy to wear, but I wish I didn't need it You see what many people (theists, people that would call themselves agnostic, and even other atheists), don't seem to understand is that being a vocal atheist is a *defensive* position. They don't realise that the vocal atheist comes about because of the intrusion of religious thinking, religious rules, and religious opinions into the lives of those that don't share the religious belief. 

For example - if a religion believes that their god doesn't want same-sex couples to marry then there is a question as to whether or not their church is right to not perform the ceremony. However, that religion does *not* have the right to force their position onto all society. Religion doesn't own marriage therefore religion doesn't get to decide who can get married and who can't.

The issue is that religions and religious groups try to force their beliefs onto society anyway. In Australia we've got the Australian Christian Lobby which is very outspoken in its opposition to same-sex marriage.

THAT is the kind of thing that vocal atheists are against, that is why atheists feel the need to speak up. When vocal atheists speak out, we're speaking out AGAINST something. We're speaking out AGAINST the intolerance of religion, AGAINST the ignorance of religion and we speak out against the use of ancient superstition to justify these things. 

When actions are guided by unjustifiable beliefs (theism), the actions themselves are also unjustifiable. Vocal atheists speak out against religion and argue against religious people because theism IS based on unjustifiable beliefs. When a theist makes a case against something such as same-sex marriage because their 'god says homosexuality is a sin' they have NO valid reason for this position. No theist can prove their god exists therefore no theist can prove that any god is against same-sex marriage. They cannot prove that their holy book is the word of a god so any argument against same-sex marriage based on the content of their holy book is instantly dismissable. 

THIS is what vocal atheism is - standing against the intolerance, ignorance, and oppression of religion. It's standing against the idea that ancient mythology should be taught along side actual scientific theory as a *genuine* alternative. It's standing against the idea that a same-sex couple can't get married because some unproven god doesn't like it. It's standing against the idea that woman are second class citizens, that wives should be beaten because some ancient holy book says it's ok. 

What we're not against is the right for people to believe what they want. If Auntie Doris wants to visit her church every Sunday and hang with her friends and talk about how good they think this Jesus guy is...good luck  to her. If Khaled wants to head to the mosque and worship Allah and think that Allah is all kinds of awesome - good luck to him. As long as this is kept to themselves, there's no problem. But when Auntie Doris says 'Gods says..... and therefore you can't....' that's when we have a problem. Believe what you like, just don't use that belief to negatively impact on the lives of others.

Also, we're not about forcing atheism onto people. We're not about standing on street corners and spreading 'the word' of atheism. Don't want to talk about atheism? Don't bring up religion, don't bring up atheism and I'm sure you'll be fine. If atheists shut up, we'll still hear from theists. If theists shut up, they'll stop hearing from atheists.

Vocal atheists exist because religion does NOT have free reign over society. Religion does not have the right to tell people how they can and cannot live, what is acceptable and what is not. There are millions of people on earth who have no religious belief and we should have the right to live free from the imposition of religion into our lives.We are not religious so religion should have no impact on us whatsoever. 

Vocal atheists exist because not all people are religious and religious people need to know this.