AGAINST THE NEW ATHEISMAGAINST THE NEW ATHEISM

A Graphic RefutationA Graphic Refutationby Vox Dayby Vox Day

www.voxday.blogspot.com

Religion Causes WarReligion Causes War

“Religion raises the stakes of human conflict much higher than tribalism, racism, or politics ever can... Consequently, faith inspires violence in at least two ways. First, people often kill other human beings because they believe that the creator of the universe wants them to do it.”

- Sam Harris, Letter to a Christian Nation, page 80

“I think that there are no forces on this planet more dangerous to us all than the fanaticisms of fundamentalism, of all the species: Protestantism, Catholicism, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism, as well as countless smaller infections.”

- Daniel Dennett, author of Darwin's Dangerous Idea

“[Religion] must seek to interfere with the lives of nonbelievers, or heretics, or adherents of other faiths. It may speak about the bliss of the next world, but it wants power in this one.... And it does not have the confidence in its own various preachings even to allow coexistence between different faiths.”

- Christopher Hitchens, god is Not Great, page 17

Religion Causes WarReligion Causes War

Religious War Non-Religious War0

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0.5

0.6

0.7

0.8

0.9

1

3.8% 3.2%

93.0%

1,763 Wars by cause, 8000 BC to 2000 AD

Source: Encyclopedia of Wars

Islam

Non-Islam

Religion Causes ViolenceReligion Causes Violence

““Religion is as much a living spring of violence today as it was at anytime in the past.”

- Sam Harris, The End of Faith, page 26

“Religion kills.”- Christopher Hitchens, god is Not Great, page 15

“It would be interesting to know whether there was any statistical tendency, however slight, for religious believers to loot and destroy less than unbelievers. My uninformed prediction would have been opposite. It is often cynically said that there are no atheists in foxholes. I'm inclined tosuspect (with some evidence, although it may be simplistic to draw conclusions from it) that there are very few atheists in prisons.”

- Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, page 229

Religion Causes ViolenceReligion Causes Violence

Racial/Religious/Ethnic Non-Religious or Unknown0

2000

4000

6000

8000

10000

12000

14000

16000

18000

6

16,686

Motivations for Murder

Source: FBI Crime in the United States 2005

Murders

Atheists Commit Less CrimeAtheists Commit Less Crime

Prison General0

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31.6%

15.1%

39.1%

71.8%

U.K. Prison vs General Population

Source: 2001 Census and 2000 Inmate Information System

No Religion

Christian

The Red State ArgumentThe Red State Argument

This is an argument first put forth by Sam Harris in Letter to a Christian Nation. It so impressed Richard Dawkins that he quoted it in full in The God Delusion. The Red State argument purports to disprove any strong correlation between Christian conservatism and social health based on Harris's comparison of the crime statistics of 25 cities with the percentage of Republican voters in the states where those cities are located. Harris writes on pages 44-45, (Dawkins p. 229):

“If there were a strong correlation between Christian conservatism and social health, we might expect to see some sign of it in red-state America. We don’t. Of the 25 cities with the lowest rates of violent crime, 62 percent are in “blue” [Democrat] states and 38 percent are in “red” [Republican] states. Of the twenty-five most dangerous cities, 76 percent are in red states, and 24 percent are in blue states.”

The Red State argument is riddled with errors of logic and math. While the entire basis of the analysis is fallacious, even if one accepts it at face value, the conclusion Harris reaches is nevertheless precisely backwards. Harris appears to have forgotten that in addition to the state, there is another civic unit for which national voting data is available, and which serves as a much more accurate indicator of a city's voting population than the state. Namely, the county in which the city is located.

The Red State ArgumentThe Red State Argument

By State By County0

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76%

16%

24%

84%

The 25 Most Dangerous U.S. Cities

By State vs By County

RedBlue

The Extinction EquationThe Extinction Equation

The Extinction Equation is the central theme of Sam Harris's The End of Faith and provides his justification for calling for an end to religion. It involves the hypothesis that the combination of science-based technology with religion is a deadly danger to Mankind that will inevitably lead to the extinction of the human race. On pages 13-14, Harris writes:

“Our technical advances in the art of war have finally rendered our religious differences—and hence our religious beliefs—antithetical to our survival.... There is no doubt that these developments mark the terminal phase of our credulity. Words like “God” and “Allah” must go the way of “Apollo” and “Baal,” or they will unmake our world.”

Harris not only forgets that his argument cuts both ways, but also fails to see how logic clearly dictates that the correct solution to the Extinction Equation would be to put an end to science rather than religion. The five major religions, Hinduism, Chinese folk religion, Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam have collectively been around 33 times longer than modern science without ever once threatening the species, whereas in a mere 350 years, science has managed to produce multiple threats to continued human existence.

The Extinction EquationThe Extinction Equation

Religions (5) Modern Science0

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350

Collective Number of Years

Science vs 5 major religions

Religion Inhibits ScienceReligion Inhibits Science

“The truth, however, is that the conflict between religion and science is unavoidable. The success of science often comes at the expense of religious dogma, the maintenance of religious dogma ALWAYS comes at the expense of science.”

- Sam Harris, Letter to a Christian Nation, page 63

“The Party cannot be neutral toward Religion because Religion is something opposite to Science.”

- Josef Stalin, TIME Magazine, Feb. 17, 1936

“All attempts to reconcile faith with science and reason are consigned to failure and ridicule.”

- Christopher Hitchens, god is Not Great, pages 64-65

“In parts of the United States, science is under attack from a well-organized, politically well-connected and, above all, well-financed opposition.... Scientists could be forgiven for feeling threatened, because most research money comes ultimately from government, and elected representatives have to answer to the ignorant and prejudiced, as well as to the well-informed, among their constituents.”

- Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, page 66

Religion Inhibits ScienceReligion Inhibits Science

USA Switzerland France0

0.5

1

1.5

2

2.5

3

3.5

4

4.5

5

76% 77%54%

15% 11%32%

2.30

4.72

1.77

Genetic and Biological Science,1996-2008

Source: SCImago, ARIS, CIA World Factbook

Christian

No Religion

Papers per capita

Improbability of Divine Improbability of Divine ComplexityComplexity

This is an idea put forth by Richard Dawkins in The God Delusion as an integral part of his Ultimate 747 argument, which he describes as the book's central argument. He writes on page 114:

“However statistically improbable the entity you seek to explain by invoking a designer, the designer himself has got to be at least as improbable. God is the Ultimate Boeing 747. The argument from improbability states that complex things could not have come about by chance. But many people define 'come about by chance' as a synonym for 'come about in the absence of deliberate design'. Not surprisingly, therefore, they think improbability is evidence of design. Darwinian natural selection shows how wrong this is with respect to biological improbability.”

Dawkins makes several errors here. First, he confuses the specific mathematical probabilities that are utilized in the anthropic principle which underlies the aforementioned argument from improbability with an imprecise and casual sense of the word “improbable”. Second, he fails to define “complexity”, which serves as the basis for his non-specific, non-mathematical concept of probability. Third, unless his undefined concept of complexity does not concern information, Dawkins is incorrect to imply that Darwinian natural selection entails increasing complexity, as can be seen by comparing the informational complexities of the various stages in the assumed evolutionary progress from fish to amphibian to mammal.

Improbability of Divine Improbability of Divine ComplexityComplexity

Fish Amphibian Mammal0

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

16

18

20

1.93

18.14

3.37

Comparative Genomic Information

Source: Animal Genome Size Database

mean picograms

Atheists Are Very IntelligentAtheists Are Very Intelligent

“Given that we know that atheists are often among the most intelligent and scientifically literate people in any society, it seems important to deflate the myths that prevent them from playing a larger role in our national discourse.” - Sam Harris, 10 Myths - and 10 Truths - About Atheism

“'the higher one's intelligence or education level, the less one is likely to be religious or hold "beliefs" of any kind.'”

- Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, p. 103 (quoting Paul Bell)

"Why should fewer academics believe in God than the general population? I believe it is simply a matter of the IQ. Academics have higher IQs than the general population. Several Gallup poll studies of the general population have shown that those with higher IQs tend not to believe in God."

- Richard Lynn, Times Higher Education Magazine

Atheists Are Very IntelligentAtheists Are Very Intelligent

Retarded Average Atheist Mensa Genius0

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100 103

132140

Average Intelligence Quotients

Source: Social Psychology Quarterly, March 2010

The Irrational AtheistThe Irrational Atheist

If you are looking for more information on addressing common atheist arguments, you may be interested in reading The Irrational AtheistThe Irrational Atheist by Vox Day. It is available from BenBella Books and free downloads of the complete text in PDF, DOC, PDB, and LIT format can be found at http://irrationalatheist.com/downloads.html.

www.voxday.blogspot.com