Atheism Board News

Dan Barker, Annie Laurie Gaylor and the Freedom From Religion Foundation gang have again collected donations during a time of worldwide recession not to help anyone in any tangible way but in order to demonstrate just how cleaver they are.
This new billboard reads, "Praise Darwin: Evolve Beyond Belief."1

Annie Laurie Gaylor has declared this "the Year of Darwin."

Indeed, views such as those promulgated by Dan Barker are most certainly beyond belief.He has stated:

"Darwin has bequeathed what is good"2

"abortion is a blessing"3

"a fetus that's the size of a thumb that has, what, what would you put it in a little locket and hang it around your neck?"4

He referred to Jesus as "a moral monster"5

Stated that "There is no moral interpreter in the cosmos, nothing cares and nobody cares."6

As to whether it matters "what happens to me or a piece of broccoli, it won't the Sun is going to explode, we're all gonna be gone. No one's gonna care."7

He also argues that rape is not absolute immoral.8

Perhaps Dan Barker's views require further evolution.

As for the Britons and their bus boards, Prof. Richard Dawkins was asked if he was "surprised that so many individual donors responded to the campaign to mount bus advertisements?" and in a moment of clarity stated:

I'm surprised and delighted but also somewhat embarrassed…The final figure is something like 130,000. That's why I said I was embarrassed, because that is too much money to spend on a bus campaign. That much money would have been better spent doing something else. . . .I was actually in favor of diverting the money to something else, which I thought the donors would approve. But other members of the group felt that [as] the money had been given for the bus campaign they were legally obliged to spend it on that campaign.

He was also asked, "Do you worry that you might be causing people a lot of angst, since for many people religion is an important part of their identity?"

It doesn't worry me very much. I don't have that much sympathy if people get their consolation from an illusion. I wouldn't wish to shatter the illusions of somebody on their deathbed or something, but I think on balance, people should be more thick-skinned.

This is interesting not only in that atheism is a consoling delusion but that he appeals to atheism as providing a sense of "freedom" and liberty (I will be posting on this shortly).

In a typical atrocity discredits theism but good does not accredit it assertion Prof. Richard Dawkins states:

I don't think there's any general reason, any logical pathway, that goes from being religious to being good. . . .It's quite interesting to reflect on the logical pathway that would lead you to be bad. I don't know if you would accept this, but the 19 perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks genuinely thought they were being good. They believed they were doing the will of Allah. . . . There is a logical pathway from religion to doing atrocious things. I don't think there's a logical path that leads you from atheism to that kind of thing. Of course there are atheists who do terrible things. But I don't think you can derive it [from atheism itself]."9 [ellipses and brackets in original]

Just as a particular theology is the first brush stroke that eventually forms a worldview painting atheism is the blank canvas upon which individual atheists paint their worldviews. Thus, both theism and atheist are starting points towards benevolence or malice. The advantage of certain theologies is that they can absolutely condemn certain actions as evil while Prof. Richard Dawkins is left to impotent first shaking condemnations through which he urges us, baselessly, to rebel against Darwinism.

He further states, "Religion should not be a way of answering moral questions either, and to the extent that it is, it should not be relied upon." This is dogmatic atheistic activism at its most militant. By this he condemns the very Christian premise upon which the two countries, upon which he quite safely and comfortably makes a living expressing prejudice, are founded-the very societies upon which he relies for his belief that rape is immoral since this too is a purely arbitrary moral.

One bit of new that I am excited about is that he is due to publish, in September, a book "on the evidence of evolution" (I hope that he defines "evidence" and "evolution") that will be entitled, "The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution." I only hope that he will be able to slit his personality and write science whilst keeping his atheistic activism at bay. Seeing as he has comingled atheism with biology ever since he was taught Darwinism at the age of 16 this seems like a vain hope and we would all do well to, as usual when reading him on science, parse real science from worldview adherence.

1. 1. Trina Hoaks, "'Praise Darwin Evolve Beyond Belief' billboards go up," Atheism Examiner, February 2, 2009
2. 2. Stated during debate with John Rankin - Evolution and Intelligent Design: What are the issues?
3. 3. Ibid.
4. 4. Stated during his debate with Dinesh D'Souza - Christianity versus Atheism
5. 5. Stated during his debate with Paul Manata
6. 6. Ibid.
7. 7. Ibid.
8. 8. Stated during his debate with Peter Payne on ethics Part 1 and Part 2.
9. 9. Henry Chu, "Richard Dawkins on board with a pro-atheist message," LA Times, January 11, 2009